Piped buttercream cakes are making a comeback, with styles ranging from basic borders to elaborate rococo-style designs with multiple piping tips, ruffles, and shell borders.
You don’t need a lot of tips to make a pretty cake, I did this one with two tips used in different ways.
This article includes affiliate links that will pay a commission if they’re used to purchase something. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Icing recipe for piping.
I used the vegan version of American buttercream for this one, which is basically air-dry buttercream since it has nothing perishable in it. You can also use this to make flowers to make up ahead of time.
Recipe for air-dry practice buttercream:
- 1 cup of shortening
- 1 pound of confectioner’s sugar
- 1/4 cup of water or a little more or less depending on the humidity!
Start with the shortening in the mixer, and cream it to smooth it out. Don’t beat too much air into it or the icing will be bubbly.
One small container of Crisco is about 2 cups of shortening, so if you use the entire container and one 2 lb. bag of confectioner’s sugar you won’t really have to measure out the crisco!
Use a pouring shield on the mixer to minimize the confectioner’s sugar cloud that happens when you add the sugar to the mixer!
Make sure that the shield fits, then start mixing. You can also use a kitchen towel that you put over the entire mixer to prevent the cloud from spreading if you don’t have a pouring shield.
Put the shortening in the mixer and beat it on low speed to smooth it out. Add the sugar and water in alternating each, and only add as much water as you need to keep the texture of the icing as spreadable as you want it to be. It should be thicker for things like piped flowers that need to keep their shape, and thinner for icing that you’re going to spread.
Scrape the mixer bowl in between sugar additions to make sure that everything is mixed in completely. When you get the icing to the consistency that you want, turn the mixer on low and let it stir the icing for a couple of minutes to help mix out any air bubbles.
Piping video.
When you have the icing ready, you can plan the cake design. This video shows the one that I did with two tips, piping tips 103 and 32.
The piped cake.
I used piping tip 103 for the petal tip ruffles on this design, and piping tip 32 for the shell borders and zig zag side designs.
I would pipe the side designs first, because that way you can cover up the spot where they join the top edge. That will make the design cleaner because the seams won’t be showing.
You can get some downloadable piping practice sheets here: Free printable piping practice sheets
The top of the cake started with a simple shell border around the very edge, then a ruffle layer around that, and another shell border inside of that.
The side designs should be done in this order:
- Mark the spots where the swags will come to the top edge.
- Pipe the vertical shell border from the bottom of the tier to the top edge.
- Pipe the zig zag shell border between the tops of each vertical shell border.
- Add a ruffle using tip 103 on top of the zig zag swag.
- Pipe the bottom border with a shell then a ruffle
- Pipe the top border with a shell border, then a ruffle, then another shell.
If you want to add flowers to this design you can put them at the top of the swags where everything meets, or put them on the top of the cake. This is a pretty design that’s really not that hard to do if you practice with those two tips, and it can be used for events ranging from a birthday to a wedding.
Click here to see another vintage-style cake piped in pastel goth colors.
