Cake Tutorial: Petal Technique

One of my favorite things about the "petal technique" with buttercream icing is that it covers the side of a cake so well that you don't have to worry about how smooth you get the sides.  A quick coating of icing will do because the petals will cover up any crumbs or thin spots!  To start out, I iced the cake with a crumb coat followed by a second thicker layer of icing at which point I smoothed out the top with a spatula and smoothed the sides with a scraping blade.

Crumb Coat

Thicker base coat of icing

Use a scraping blade to smooth the sides

A fairly smooth cake to start with.....

Now it's time to use one of my favorite decorating tools...the Wilton small offset spatula.

Place the spatula at the outer edge of the top of the cake and while turning the cake stand in a clockwise position, allow the blade of the spatula drag across the top of the cake, moving in a little each time you make a full circle, until you end up with a complete chocolate spiral design ending in the center of the cake.

Use the spatula to make a spiral design.

Now you have the beautiful spiral design going around the top of the cake..

Now to create the petals.  You'll need to fit a piping bag with a large piping tip with a round opening.

Working up the side of the cake, pipe four balls of icing in a vertical line.  I was able to fit four up the side of the cake!

Using the same offset spatula that made the spiral on the top of the cake, press the spatula into each icing ball and drag it to the right to turn the icing ball into a petal.  You will need to stop and scrape the icing off of the spatula onto the edge of a bowl to keep it cleaned off as you go.  I'd suggest for every three balls you turn into petals you stop and scrape off the spatula.

Scrape the balls to the right to form a petal.

One row of petals complete.

Next move to the right and pipe a new set of icing balls to form the next column of petals.

Continue dragging the balls of icing to form the petals and work your way around the cake, covering the entire outside of the cake in petals.

When you get back to where you started, the last column of balls will be scraped as close to the edge of the first column as possible.  This portion of the cake will definitely be the BACK of your cake when you display it.

A nice finishing touch on this cake is a border on the top in white which really stands out on the chocolate icing.  I did a "c" border around the top with a large open star tip.

To give the bottom a more finished look, I used the same large open star tip to create a drop star nestled into the bottom petal all the way around the bottom of the cake.

And the finished product looks like this...

When I do this petal technique, the cake doesn't stay on the shelf long.  It sells fairly quickly every time.  Some other options with the petal technique would be to do an ombre look where the petals go from a dark color at the bottom to a lighter color at the top.... or to alternate colors (white, chocolate, white, chocolate).  Another option would be a rainbow look with each color being completely different and then alternating the order of the colors each time.

Here's a shot of the same design with chocolate borders and drop stars....

And in all white....

And also in alternating yellow and white petals...

A final tip.... each cake is a different height, and you can alternate the size of the icing balls as well.  It won't always be the same number of icing balls in a column depending on the size of the cake you are decorating.  

The "petal technique" is such a wonderfully easy way to cover the side of a cake without the pressure of having to try to smooth it out and trying to keep the crumbs from showing up!  Give it a try.  You'll be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is, and it just requires a big round piping tip and an offset spatula!  Good luck!!!