A Floral Face Cake Made of Gorgeous Buttercream Roses

This floral face cake gives new meaning to ‘flowers in your hair’!

I’ve been seeing these gorgeous cakes all over Insta, faces with hair made up of everything from buttercream flowers to fresh blackberries. The creativity right now is absolutely insane, and as soon as I spotted these I knew I had to give this floral face cake idea a try.

The easy part of this cake is the flowers. The hardest part is definitely piping the outlines of the face, and don’t even get me started on how scared I was to do those red red lips! I drew the face on parchment paper using a pencil, and then proceeded to sit and stare at it for a couple of hours. Doing a buttercream transfer was out of the question, too thick and too many chances for it to smudge. Jon suggested using the old-fashioned needle technique of making tiny holes along the lines, basically like a dot-to-dot. I really didn’t love that idea either since you can still see the holes if your piping is very thin or you go off course by a fraction. 

So eventually I decided to use a needle on it’s side, or you could use a scribe tool if you have one. Mine was thicker than the needle, so I chose the needle, and then traced over the entire cake. You really can’t see the markings all that well on camera, but it made a massive difference, and they were super easy to follow. 

Now about that black buttercream! A saner person would have gone for black royal icing. Easier to control the consistency, and definitely less chance of getting an air bubble. But, I took a #1 Wilton piping tip, and threw caution to the wind and hoped it would all work out. I just squeezed and flattened the icing in the bag a few times to get some heat into it (it’s freezing here!), and also to eliminate as much air as possible. If in doubt, go for royal icing though, because it’s more forgiving if you make a mistake. 

KEEP SCROLLING FOR A VIDEO OF THIS  FLORAL FACE CAKE

Getting back to the technique, this video is sped up in the piping section by 400%. So go v-e-r-y slow. Be sure to attach the buttercream to the cake and then gradually rise up to between 5-8cm off the cake surface. This allows the buttercream to hang in mid air and be manipulated. It makes following a line a thousand times easier. It’s terrifying the first few times, but you’ll get the hang of it, and then piping while shaking will be a thing of the past. Just take it slow, and apply constant light pressure. Oh and those lips, they were smoothed out wonderfully using a modelling tool usually reserved for fondant and modelling chocolate! 

 

Floral Face Cake Materials

• Three 10″ round white chocolate mud cakes (2 batches) baked at 150C for 2 hours 10 minutes
• Sweet Buttercream (750g (1lb 10oz) with raspberries added for the filling layers
– 850g (1lb 14oz) Blush for the cake itself (Americolor Blush)
– 650g (1lb 7oz) three shades of Pink (Sugarflair Claret and Ruby) for roses- I did the palest pink in Claret only, then added more Ruby and Claret for each darker shade as I went to save on wastage.
– 200 (7oz) natural for blossom flowers
– 75g  (2.5oz) Black, and 50g (1.5oz) both green – (Americolor Forest Green) and red ( Americolor Red Red)
• Spatulas
• Scraper
• Piping bags
• Piping tips – #1 – black #2 blossom centres, #102 small blossom flower, #104 larger blossom and roses, #352 leaves
• Turntable
• Scissors
• Flower nail
• Parchment paper and pencil
• Edible pearl bead earring
• 10″ round cake plate