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Striped Halloween Cake With Gold Buttercream Pumpkins
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Sep 6, 2024
In this cake decorating tutorial I show step by step how to frost a cake with perfect stripes in bright Halloween colours and how to decorate it with gold buttercream pumpkins. For my Black Buttercream That Won't Stain Your Teeth recipe click here: https://www.britishgirlbakes.com/recipes/black-buttercream-recipe/ For my online cake decorating school click here: https://britishgirlbakes.teachable.com/courses To read a transcribed version of this tutorial (with photos!) click here: http://www.britishgirlbakes.com/striped-halloween-cake-with-gold-buttercream-pumpkins SUBSCRIBE to my channel for new cake decorating tutorials every week!
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0:00
Hi! In this video I'm going to show you how to create perfectly striped frosting in bright
0:05
Halloween colors, and how to create these elegant gold pumpkins with buttercream
0:12
To make the striped frosting, you'll need a crumb-coated cake that's either at room
0:16
temperature or chilled in the fridge. Spread a thick layer of frosting all over the cake
0:21
and the color you choose will be the color that's in between every other color of stripes. So for me
0:27
this is black, and it means that my stripes will be the black, orange, black, purple, black, green, so black will be the main colour of the cake
0:35
I'm using my black buttercream that won't stain your teeth, and the recipe and tutorial are
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on British Girlbakes.com, and the link is in the video description. Scrap around the frosting
0:44
with a frosting smoother, making sure you have straight sides, and spread more buttercream
0:49
over any air pockets in the frosting to fill them in, and then scrape again with your frosting
0:53
smoother. The frosting doesn't need to be perfect, but the neater it is, the fewer touch-ups you'll need to
0:59
do later, and it's easier to do touch-ups on smooth frosting than on striped frosting
1:05
If your cake is sliding around on the turntable, use a ring of masking tape or a non-lip mat to
1:10
hold it still. Now use a striped cake comb and rest the bottom of the comb down on the
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cake board to line it up straight against the side of the cake. Then press it gently into the
1:21
frosting and hold it still while you spin the turn table towards you with the other hand
1:25
to spin the cake and imprint the striped grooves of the cake comb
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Do this a few times and then spread more buttercream over any air pockets you can see in the stripes
1:36
If you don't fill these holes in with black buttercream now, then later when you add the other
1:41
colours, those colours will get into the holes and you'll get splotches of green or orange or purple
1:47
within your black stripes. Scrape around again with your striped cake comb to smooth the stripes
1:53
and you can repeat this process of spreading buttercream over air pockets and then smoothing again and again until the black stripes on your cake are fairly smooth
2:01
They don't need to be perfect because you're going to scrape the outer layer of frosting off later
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but you don't want any air pockets in the middle of the stripes and you want the edges of the stripes to be smooth
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so that you'll have neat divisions between the colours. If there are any air pockets along the edges of the stripes
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you'll have blurry edges on your stripes. tidy up the top edge by pushing any frosting sticking up over the top edge of the cake
2:27
over onto the middle of the cake, using your offset spatula and then swiping it off the cake
2:32
If your top stripe is really thin, like mine is here, it's difficult to get it neat
2:37
so if you like you can just scrape off that top stripe with your frosting smoother and then tidy up the top edge
2:42
If you enjoying this tutorial please click the thumbs up button and subscribe to my channel for a new cake decorating tutorial every week Put the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes or in the freezer for 15 minutes and set a timer and I explain why in a minute Meanwhile make the colours for the rest of your stripes
3:00
To make really bright almost neon colours, start with the basic colour and then add a brighter
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So for orange and green, start with orange and green gel colours like the sunset orange and leaf green
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Use gel colours instead of liquid colours because they're more concentrated, so you'll get bright colours without effect
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the consistency of the butter cream. Then add your brightener, which for green and orange is yellow
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and you can see how bright these colours become. I go into this in much more detail in my
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online course on the basics of buttercream, and I've put the link for that in the video description
3:35
To add the coloured stripes to your cake, you'll need three piping bags, or however many colours
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you're using for the stripes. Cut the tips off the piping bags, so that they're about
3:44
as wide as the stripe grooves you've imprinted into the frosting with your cake comb
3:49
Put a colour in each bag and now you'll need a frosting smoother, and a bowl for frosting scrapings
3:55
a turntable with an onslipped mat, and your piping bags. Take your cake out of the fridge or freezer when your timer goes off, and the frosting will be just cold enough so that the black stripes hold their shape
4:07
and don't squish into the stripe grooves to blend with the other colours
4:10
Pipe your coloured buttercream into the grooves, making sure you push the buttercream all the way into the grooves
4:16
and that the colours go up to the edges of the grooves. Otherwise you'll get air pockets when you smooth the frosting
4:22
Don't worry if you pipe the colours over the top of the black stripes
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because they'll scrape off easily in the next step. When you've filled in all of the grooves with colours
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use your frosting smoother to scrape around the cake just like you would if you were doing smooth frosting
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And you'll scrape off some of the coloured frosting, but also smear it all over the size of the cake
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and that's fine. The frosting that comes off on your frosting smoother will be all of the colours that you piped into the grooves
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because you're just taking off all of the excess right now. Wipe any buttercream off from your frosting smoother into a bowl and scrape again
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and with each scrape you'll take off the excess of coloured buttercream
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and then you'll start taking off the top layer of the black frosting too, so you'll see all of the colours of buttercream come off on your frosting smoother with each scrape
5:07
At this point your frosting will be fairly smooth, and your stripes will begin to look neater
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but you'll probably have some gaps or air pockets in your frosting where the stripe grooves weren't completely filled in
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with the piped colours of buttercream. Fill those holes in by spreading on some more of that
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colour of buttercream and don't worry if this colour spreads over the surrounding stripe colours
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because you're going to scrape all of that off and just leave the buttercream that's filling in the
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hole. Scrape around with your frosting smoother and now the frosting that comes off on your
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frosting smoother should be in even stripes like the ones on your cake. Now the reason for setting
5:39
the timer when you put the cake in the fridge or freezer after using the striped cake comb on the very first color of frosting is to make sure your frosting doesn get too cold because if it very cold and hard it will be difficult to smooth now as you scraping around the cake And instead
5:54
of coming off easily, with the other colours you've just piped, making the frosting smoother and
5:59
smoother with each scrape, and also making the stripes neater and more defined, if the frosting
6:04
is too cold, you'll struggle to scrape off that top layer, and you'll leave jagged texture in the
6:09
cold frosting. When you're happy with your stripes, you can either tidy up the top edge as
6:14
or you can put the cake back in the fridge or freezer for about 30 minutes to set the frosting
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and then use a sharp knife to trim around the top edge of the cake to take that excess frosting off from around the top and leave a nice sharp angle around the top edge
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While the cake is cold, wipe around the cake board with a paper towel to take off any smudges of frosting, and now we're ready to make this cake even more Halloweeny
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To make some elegant gold pumpkins, you'll need two piping bags of buttercream, one fitted with a little bit of buttercream, one fitted
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with a 1M start tip and the other with a smaller open start tip, like this number 199, or a 4B
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would work too. Spread out a piece of parchment paper or wax paper and use the piping bag with
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a smaller piping tip to pipe a stem, starting at the top of the stem because where you start
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is the neatest part, and the top is the part that will be visible at the end. Switch to your 1M
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tip to pipe the pumpkin, piping two curved lines for the middle and two more curved lines around
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the outside. Always piping from the top down to the bottom because where you start piping is the
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neatest, and we're not going to see the messier parts at the bottom when we're finished. The beauty of
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piping these onto paper instead of straight onto the cake is that firstly, it's easier to pipe
7:27
downwards than onto the side of a cake. But also, you can practice and experiment as much as you
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like until you've made enough pumpkins that you're happy with, and only use those on your cake
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You can scrape any ugly pumpkins off the paper and put the buttercream back in your bowl to reuse for something else
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The other reason for the parchment, the obvious reason, is so that we can paint these pumpkins gold in a minute
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Slide a cutting board or baking tray under the paper and put it in the freezer for at least an hour to set
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Just before you take the pumpkins out, make some gold paint using gold bluster dust and a few drops of clear alcohol
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like vodka or this is almond extract and any clear coloured alcohol based flavour extract will work
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You want a fairly thick paint to get a strong golden colour. If you add too much liquid
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the colour will be watery, but the liquid will evaporate and the paint will get thicker with
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time, or you can just add a bit more powder to thicken it up straight away
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Take your pumpkins out of the freezer and brush them with the gold paint. A large paint brush will be quicker but it's useful to have a fairly small tip to be able to be able to
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able to get into all of the creases within the piping so if you like you can use two
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different brushes for this spin the paper around to check the pumpkin from different angles to make sure you covered all of the buttercream with gold paint but don worry about the very bottom of the pumpkin because that going to be pressed down onto the cake board so you won see it
8:49
You could pipe these pumpkins straight onto the cake and then chill the whole
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cake and then paint the pumpkins gold but it would be difficult to paint the
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whole pumpkin all the way up to the edges without getting gold paint on the frosting
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of the cake too. If you notice the buttercream getting soft while you're painting
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and the paintbrush is sticking to the pumpkins or texturing the as you paint, put them back in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up again
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When you've painted all of your pumpkins, save your leftover paint for later
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Put the pumpkins into the freezer for about another hour so that the gold paint dries
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and so that the buttercream firms up again, because it will have warmed up and
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softened while you paint. Now pipe or spread a bit of buttercream onto the frosting on your
9:30
cake wherever you want to place the pumpkin. Lift a pumpkin up with your offset spatula
9:35
and press it into the buttercream you've just piped. You'll probably wipe
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wipe off some of the gold when you press it on, but don't worry about that, we'll touch it up in a minute
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Also, don't worry that the pumpkins are straight, instead of curving around your cake. We'll fix that, too
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If you've just rusted your cake, and the frosting is still sticky, you don't need to pipe on any
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extra buttercream. You can just push the pumpkins straight into the frosting on the cake
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After you've arranged your pumpkins, wrap a strip of parchment or wax paper around them
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and press gently to curve the pumpkins to wrap them more tightly around the cake
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They will have softened a bit at room temperature, so they should curve easily, but if they crack
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don't worry, we're about to touch them up. Add a drop of alcohol or extract to your leftover
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gold paint if it's dried up, and paint any areas of the pumpkins where the white
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butter cream is showing through, where you press them onto the cake and wiped off the gold paint
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If the pumpkins have cracked anywhere, paint over the cracks and you'll disguise them
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You can use your paintbrush to manipulate the butter cream too, pushing sections of piping back to
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towards the cake if they're still sticking out. I'm piping some swells of buttercream onto the top of the cake using a 1M star tip
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and I'm using a clock method to space them equally around the cake
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To do this, pipe the first two swells opposite each other, at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock
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and then the next two at 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock, looking at the other swells as you pipe
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to make sure you finish each one at the same height, and then add another swirl in the gaps in
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between. For each swirl aim to get right up to the edge of the cake without actually
11:10
piping over the edge. As a finishing touch I'm pressing a few sprinkles into the
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frosting and although the frosting has set because I chilled it to make the stripes
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with just a bit of pressure I can push the sprinkles into the frosting and they'll stick
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And there it is! A colourful cake with elegant gold pumpkins all made with buttercream frosting
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Thank you for watching! Please remember to click the thumbs up button and subscribe to my
11:35
channel for a new cake decorating tutorial every week
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