I started my cake career making fondant cakes and a few years later switched to exclusively buttercream cake decorating. Yes, you can make sculpted, realistic designs using fondant. But here are 10 buttercream cake decorating techniques that I think are better than fondant!
With buttercream you can create all kinds of texture with just a piping bag and a piping tip. Vintage or Lambeth cakes are really trendy at the moment:
Or try Russian tips to pipe every petals of each flower with a single squeeze of the piping bag. Piping buttercream is not only a quick technique, it's also a beautiful one. It takes both simple or intricate elaborate cakes to the next level.
Did you know that you can carve buttercream? When buttercream chills in the fridge it gets firm so you can layer different colours on top of each other. Then use a piping tip or carving tool dipped into warm water to slice through the outer layer of buttercream. You'll reveal the layers below, creating colourful and dimensional patterns and shapes.
Another surprising technique that works on buttercream is painting. Use gel colours and a paintbrush on buttercream that's been in the fridge for at least an hour to set. When it's cold and firm, it doesn't blend with the gel paints.
Or try your hand at the buttercream version of oil painting. Use a palette knife or a tapered offset spatula to layer buttercream colours. You'll create a textured painting like on this floral cake:
With fondant you can model figures to make 3D characters like Paw Patrol or the Ninja Turtles or Minions. But my favourite characters are cheaper and quicker and more recognizable! With just a few pieces of parchment or wax paper you can make your own stencils. Trace an image one colour at a time to make an identical version of the character. You'll layer these to make characters.
The trick here is to make sure each layer of buttercream sets. Chill the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes or the freezer for 15 minutes before applying the next stencil. With this technique you can make accurate and delicious buttercream representations of characters.
You can make fondant flowers with a stamp but make them even faster with buttercream and a piping tip. This is a 2D, which is a closed flower tip.
With just a squeeze and a twist of your wrist you'll make these gorgeous flowers. By layering different colours in your piping bag you can create all sorts of colourful effects!
Put the flowers in the freezer for 5 minutes to chill them and then press them onto your cake.
To make beaded borders with fondant you need to roll tens or hundreds or thousands of identically sized balls. And then attach each one individually to the cake. The buttercream equivalent is... you guessed it! Faster and easier. Put buttercream in a piping bag and squeeze the bag to push the buttercream out. After it bulges to form a ball, swipe the piping bag away, leaving a tail on the dot. Cover up the tail with the next dot.
With buttercream you can pipe bottom borders but also borders on top of the cake like this trendy rope border. Borders on top of the cake add height and colour and texture. They're such a pretty way to finish off a cake!
Buttercream cake decorating is unique because you can do it without tools. Fondant, on the other hand, requires specialist tools like silicon rolling pins and fondant smoothers and cutting tools. Decorate buttercream with household utensils like a spoon, a fork, a ruler, a spatula, a Ziploc bag and even bubble wrap for stunning results!
With a cake comb you can create perfectly smooth buttercream frosting. Or imprint any texture you like using a textured cake comb. This technique is not possible on fondant. It's the same technique as smoothing frosting, which means there are no new skills to learn. It adds detail to a cake in just one to two minutes!
Buttercream cakes can be wrapped with very detailed buttercream designs. Start by piping onto acetate or parchment paper, tracing a drawing or printed image if you like.
Then transfer it onto a cake covered with a thin layer of buttercream frosting. The design will sit flat against that frosting. Check out my details tutorial on how to use this technique to make a mosaic cake like this:
You can also do this with melted chocolate, which will attach to buttercream frosting on a cake. Both buttercream and chocolate wraps add delicious detail that will make everyone wonder how you achieved the attention-grabbing effect.
Sprinkles are great on buttercream because they're easy to attach. Just press them gently against soft buttercream or more firmly against buttercream that's set. You can use sprinkles to add colour, to match a colour scheme, to outline shapes or even to cover a cake completely. And they make for an insanely quick and easy but eye-catching border.
So, which buttercream technique is your favourite or is there a fondant technique you'd love to find a buttercream replacement for? Tell me in the comments and to learn hundreds more buttercream cake decorating techniques visit my cake school. Try out my All You Can Cake membership for access to everything on my cake school with a 7-Day free trial! See you there!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 5 buttercream cake decorating techniques that are better than fondant:
