How to Make Shimmery Buttercream Roses - 50th Anniversary Cake

This 50th Anniversary Cake was the perfect order to help me share a short tutorial for How to Make Shimmery Buttercream. More specifically, Shimmery Buttercream Roses!

But this could technique and spray could be used on any buttercream, not just piped roses!  I'm asked about this often and while this won't get you full-blown glitter or bling - you will get a beautiful shimmer on your cakes that's 100% edible.

One of the big hot-button issues in cake decorating is edible vs non-edible vs non-toxic vs FDA approved glitters and shimmers and lusters and dusts.

Well I'm not going to get into that today, but I will say that for this look, I use 100% edible, FDA approved food sprays.  Here are a few brands I've tried and liked...

COLORED FOOD SPRAYS

My favorite is PME brand and I've used the Silver, Gold, Bronze and Pearl. There are differing opinions on this, but I love the smell of this brand and the coverage I get from it.  The gold is really pretty!!

Another brand I've used often is Wilton. The fumes from Wilton are ... whew - strong!  Like, be-sure-you-open-a -window-and -have-a-fan-going strong. But Wilton is cheaper than the other options, AND easy to find at Walmart and other craft stores. So for convenience, I've used it many, many times. In addition to a rainbow of "regular" colors, they also have Gold, Silver and Pearl (although I don't love the gold as much as other brands!)

Another brand I've heard great things about (but haven't personally used) is Chefmaster brand. They also have Silver, Gold and Pearl.

One last thing I'll mention is this New Wilton Glitter Spray that is also labeled as edible. I'm pretty excited to get my hands on some of it and see how it works!  I've found Silver and Gold on Amazon.

Okay... now let's get on with the tutorial!

How to Make Shimmery Buttercream Roses

This is a terrible picture but it's the only one I have of the cake before I started adding the shimmery buttercream.  At this point I had baked, chilled, filled and frosted the cake.

I'd also cut out the letters using these Groovy Clickstix Letter Cutters , sprayed them with Gold Spray and let them dry, then placed them on the cake.

My only request from my client was that phrase, "Remember the Summer of 1967" and that it include gold decor. I decided putting the cake on a gold board then adding gold accents would be an elegant but simple design.  My client loved it, by the way!!

In addition to the gold spray mentioned above, you'll need wax paper (or parchment paper) and buttercream in a piping bag with a 1M or Ateco #825 Piping tip.  You'll also want to put your wax or parchment paper on a cookie sheet or some other stiff surface you can move to the freezer. I used a stiff cutting board like this one.

FREEZE THE PIPED BUTTERCREAM

Pipe the buttercream roses and stars onto the wax paper.  Then freeze them!  I put the cutting board into the freezer for about 15-20 minutes to get the flowers frozen solid.

While these were in the freezer, I piped some white roses onto the cake directly. I have no pictures of this, but you can see them in the background of the gold ones above ⬆

USE LIGHT, QUICK SPRAYS

From here you'll want to work quickly. Take the frozen buttercream roses out of the freezer and give them a quick spray with the gold spray. Don't saturate the color on the flowers - it won't take a lot to get a very pretty gold coat.

Let them dry for just a few seconds, then begin placing them on the cake!  I continued to mix with some fresh piped white roses and stars until I got a look I loved.  And you're done! It's a beautiful easy effect with lots of shimmery and shine ❤️️

Isn't that beautiful? I was so proud of this cake when it was finished.  The cake was made to celebrate a 50th Anniversary!!

Cake Details...

• This was 9" round cake baked in my favorite Magic Line pans.
• White Almond Sour Cream was the cake flavor and it was covered in vanilla buttercream.
• The cake was presented on this gold scalloped 10" round cake board.
• As previously mentioned, I used PME Gold Spray.
• The letters were cut from the lowercase Groovy cutters, uppercase Groovy cutters and Groovy number cutters.

Alrighty, that's all I have for you today!  I hope you'll make a cake like this and if you share on social media, tag me so I can see 🙂

Happy Caking!

Rose

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Here are some other 50th Anniversary Cakes with gold that I think you'll love! Click on the images to read the blog posts with all the details!