Welcome to the next innovative buttercream fruit & flower tutorial- this time it’s how to pipe realistic looking blush pears and pear blossoms, and dust them to add colour & depth (yes, it’s possible to dust buttercream flowers as well as gumpaste ones 🙂 ) before assembling into a wreath on an iced cake. If you haven’t seen it yet, my full tutorial of the process is here:This is number 4 of a series of 6 unique and innovative buttercream fruit & flower wreath cake tutorials I’ve made for my YouTube channel.  The full video can be seen here:

More information:

Buttercream recipe: My eggless Swiss Meringue buttercream – SEBC (or here if you prefer no protein powder versions)

Colours: I use a mix of natural and gel colours.  You can see my DIY natural colours video to learn how, or use a combination of similar gel or powder colours to get the same look.  I don’t recommend using any very liquid food colouring as it’ll probably make your buttercream split.

Before you start:  prepare a smooth iced 6″ cake.  If you don’t know how to ice a cake smoothly, I recommend using my tutorials here for a semi-naked cake plus recipe, and here for a fully iced (frosted) one.  My blog posts and videos should help teach you the most straightforward way to get a professional looking result.

Detailed Instructions:

The instructions and products you’ll need are linked in the list below, for both the US and UK.  These are affiliate links, which means you get to support my tutorials without paying a penny more than usual.

Here’s everything, in order of appearance in the video:

1. Pears:
   • #10 round tip: USA: buy here, UK: buy here,
   • colours: turmeric & matcha
   • Steadily pipe a round lump then drag the piping tip away to elongate the neck of the pear. Freeze before dusting.
   • Dusting colour: poppy red: USA: buy here, UK: buy here
   • Fan brush: USA: buy here, UK: buy here
2. Blossoms, petals: 
   • Wilton #102: USA: buy here, UK: buy here
   • pipe 5 small petals on parchment paper.  Pipe the whole flower and freeze before dusting.
   • dusting colour: pink candy (USA: buy equivalent here, UK: buy here)
3. Blossoms, green sepals:
   • DIY leaf tip,
   • colours: matcha & a little melted chocolate
   • pipe fine sepals between adjacent petals as shown
4. Blossoms, stamens:
   • DIY piping cone or #0 tip: USA: buy here, UK: buy here,
   • colour: turmeric
   • pipe fine stamens radiating out from the centre of the flower.
5. Blossoms, centre and stamen heads:
   • DIY piping cone or #0 tip: USA: buy here, UK: buy here,
   • colour: melted dark chocolate
   • pipe acircle in the centre of your blossoms, and small stamen heads dotted around.
6. Branches:
   • DIY piping cone or a #5 tip: USA: buy here, UK: buy here,
   • colour: melted chocolate
   • pipe an abstract wreath of branches onto your cake.
7. Leaves:
   • DIY leaf tip,
   • colours: spirulina, turmeric and matcha (or green & yellow gel colours)
   • pipe leaves spaced around the branches, then position the frozen fruit and flowers around the wreath on top.

That should be all you need to know to make your own pear & pear blossom wreath cake! Take the idea of buttercream wreath cakes to a whole new level by adding realistic looking piped fruit and dusted buttercream blossoms to your cake 🙂 Stay tuned and subscribe to my channel to watch the next 2 buttercream fruit & flower cake tutorials coming up!

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