There’s something majestic and oh so beautiful about peonies, the delicate multitude of petals gracefully overlapped, the beautiful colours lending themselves so perfectly to elegant and modern designs. This cake is based on the closed form of Paeonia Lactiflora double peony roses, beautiful multi petalled peonies native to the Far East. It also features Juniper berries and branches, varieties of which grow all over the world. This is my take on one of those stylish, realistic look Korean buttercream flower cakes that have been trending the internet for several months now.
You can relax and watch a video of the process, and all the other details you’ll need are in the blog post below. Enjoy!
Buttercream recipe:
If you’re a home baker or hobbyist, you can use my super easy & delicious Simple Buttercream recipe below. Serious foodies or pro’s should use my original SEBC buttercream recipe, beneath the simple version.
Sawsen’s Simple Buttercream recipe – smooth, easy, delicious & less sweet!
Piping tips:
- Wilton 104 for peonies and leaves
- Wilton 4 or piping cones for buds, branches, Juniper leaves and berries
- DIY piping cones
Colourings:
Watch my DIY food colours video for more details.
- blue: blueberry powder & bicarb of soda
- Brown: melted cooled chocolate
- Pink colour: a little beetroot powder
- Yellow: a little turmeric powder
- Green: Spirulina powder
Take a look at my all new “recommended tools & products” list if you’d like to see which natural colours I used.
Instructions:
- Bake and ice a cake using a recipe of your choice. If you don’t know how to ice cakes or need a recipe, follow the links below.
Secrets for a perfectly smooth buttercream finish on your cake
. - Prepare a batch of my buttercream, links above, and colour using natural or gel colours. For pale colours you can use the powders dry, just make sure they are crushed/ sifted free of any lumps first. Otherwise, you can mix powders with a tiny bit of warm water until you get a thick paste before use.
- Divide the buttercream into piping bags fitted with the appropriate tips.
- Pipe flowers onto parchment paper and freeze solid.
- Pipe a curve of buttercream onto the cake as shown
- Decorate by adding frozen flowers, largest first. Note: this seems like a lot of buttercream, but it is still less on each slice than you would get on a cupcake with a tall swirl on top. Once the cake is cut into slices this becomes obvious.
- Pipe branches at the edges of the wreath using brown buttercream, and Juniper leaves using green buttercream
- Accentuate and fill space by piping berries as shown in the video.
That should be all you need to know to make your own double peony & juniper branch buttercream flower wreath cake 🙂 Thank you for watching, subscribe & stay tuned for more tutorials to come!
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Hi – If I might ask a further question – I can see in the video here that your icing set pretty hard once you had made the flowers. The icing I made following your recipe did not seem to set hard really. I am a vegan and used dairy-free margarine. I guess perhaps this was the reason as a lot of dairy-free margarine is soft even in the fridge. Do you have any suggestions as I guess this would be a sticking point if I want to use your recipe again? Best wishes and many thanks, Adrian
Hi, you need to use a type of fat that sets solid in the fridge if you want the buttercream to have the same consistency as mine – a solid block type vegan butter. A tub style or spreadable replacement isn’t suitable – but may still freeze solid if you put it in the freezer long enough, I have some tubs of spread stored in the freezer and they’re pretty rock solid once frozen through. Best wishes
Thanks – that was what I was thinking. I was wondering about coconut oil as it’s usually solid at room temperature providing it’s not too warm – it could work out expensive though. I’l have to try and find a vegan margarine/butter which is solid. Thanks again Adrian 🙂