Every year for my daughter’s birthday, I take on the special task of making and decorating her cake.
It’s become a tradition, and while there have been a few birthdays where I didn’t make the cake, most of the time, I love creating it, and she looks forward to it too.
A couple of months before her birthday, we start brainstorming ideas.
This year, she wanted a spring-themed birthday party, and I thought it was a great idea.
I decided to take it a step further and turn it into a garden party theme.
Watch the YouTube video below to see how I made this cake and get a glimpse of the party and the cake-cutting process!
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We went all out with outdoor games and entertainment, and to add a little something special, all the ladies at the party wore flower crowns.
Here’s a picture of me with my crown!
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to:
- Build and frost a cake
- Pipe buttercream flowers
- Cut the cake
Let’s dive in!
Step 1: Build and Frost the Cake
The first step was building and frosting the cake.
But before that, I made a simple vanilla cake using my go-to American buttercream recipe.
I love this buttercream because it’s quick, easy, and takes on color and flavor beautifully.
For the filling, I used rich chocolate ganache—delicious, right?
In my YouTube video at the end of this post, I explain why it’s so important to build a dam around your cake to lock in the fillings.
You’ll also get a behind-the-scenes look at me making this cake, along with a peek into the party and how I cut the cake.
Once the cake layers were leveled and stacked, I crumb-coated the cake.
This is a thin layer of icing that locks in any stray crumbs, helping to create a clean base for the final layer of frosting.
I’m a big fan of crumb coats because they really set the foundation for your cake before you start decorating.
After crumb-coating, I popped the cake in the freezer to chill and firm up.
Working with a chilled cake makes the frosting and decorating process so much easier.
(Here’s a list of tools to build and frost a cake.)
Step 2: Pipe buttercream flowers
Next up was decorating the cake with buttercream flowers.
I used different piping tips to create a variety of flowers, giving the cake a beautiful garden look.
This part is always so much fun because it’s where the cake really starts to come to life.
I love how buttercream flowers can add such an elegant touch to any cake, and for a garden-themed party, they were absolutely perfect.
While my cake was chilling, I got started on mixing my colors and laying out what piping tips I wanted to use and how many to use for the flowers.
I found small and large piping tips and made purple my focal flower.
Since that is my daughters favorite color and mine too.
I used piping tip 1m for the flowers along with a few others I had.
I used brown to pipe a stick boarder to resemble a real flower crown that has twigs and things.
You could barely see it on the finished cake, but I liked using it as a border to help me gauge where to place my rosettes.
I then alternated between colors and filled up the entire top rim of the cake.
For the birthday topper, I found the perfect one on Amazon.
It came with different designs. Check it out – here
Since it was a garden party theme, I added some candles, fake flowers, cups, and dessert plates for my cake table.
Step 3: Cut the cake
After we sang “Happy Birthday,” it was time to cut the cake.
I like to cut my cakes into tea slices—thin, elegant slices that add a little extra flair compared to a regular slice of cake.
I use a cutting board and a sharp knife to get clean cuts, and I always have dessert plates ready so I can serve the slices right away.
In the end, the cake turned out just as beautiful as I had hoped, and my daughter loved it.
The garden party theme was a hit, and I’m already looking forward to planning next year’s cake!
Want to stay connected? You can find me @heavenmycake on Instagram and across all social platforms. Check out my YouTube channel for cake decorating tutorials and more. Subscribe to my channel here.