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Watercolor Cake

Friday, January 13th 2023. | Weddings

Watercolor Cake – While cake decorating has never been one of my strongest suits, this week I came across a sweet trend that is very simple but looks amazing.

It’s known as the butter watercolor technique, and it’s now my favorite way to frost cakes! It’s very similar to painting a canvas in which you’re creating a smooth blend between colors Sounds a little artsy fartsy I know, but the great thing about using this technique is that it’s really hard to mess up. Any flubs or mistakes can be easily corrected as you are with a canvas painting. However, instead of using paint to cover up mistakes, you just spread on the frosting a little, then smooth it out.

Watercolor Cake

As I said, the technique is simple. First, you cover the entire cake in a thin layer of white buttercream, which also serves as a crumb coat. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or until the frosting is firm and dry to the touch. Color some frosting two different colors, making sure to reserve white frosting. In this case, I used pink and peach (yellow + a little red). Add thick patches of each color around the cake, then use a little reserved white to go over all the big empty spots.

Watercolor Cake — Cake Affection

Finally, use an offset spatula to smooth the frosting around the cake until you get the desired look. You’re the artist here, so if there are any holes, dents, or areas you don’t like, just swipe on some buttercream, and smooth it out. Easy peasy!

For that smooth and flawless finish, I went with a lighter, “soft” type of buttercream. Instead of a more time-consuming buttercream like Swiss Meringue or Italian Meringue, I decided to use a standard American buttercream frosting. To make it easier, I used heavy cream instead of milk. And boy, does it make a MAJOR difference! It’s so light, so fluffy, so creamy and spreadable like a butt. It also pipes like a dream. I think I will stick with this buttercream frosting from now on.

For the little dollops around the top of the cake, I ended up using the discarded frosting that I had swift on the cake when I was smoothing the sides. The color combination looks really good, so I thought why not?

The sprinkles were basically the reason why I made this cake. I have gone through sprinkle withdrawals and need a reason to finally break them. Also, my sprinkles collection got “a little” off the rails…it’s like “Hoarders” meets “My Strange Addiction.”

Textured Watercolor Buttercream Cake

While the peach flavor in the cake isn’t really noticeable, it still tastes bombtastic and is super moist. Yes, it uses cake mix, but the additions and spices make it taste more homemade. With so many components involved in this cake, I want to keep things a little simple.

Fortunately, the peach mousse turned out as I expected—floral, light, mousse (that’s how you notice the word), and full of fresh, summery sweetness. It is flavored with REAL peaches that were actually picked from my uncle’s farm in Hood River. You can’t get any cooler or REAL than that! However, if you don’t have an uncle who owns a farm in Hood River, then rainbows from the grocery store will work just fine.

With a beautiful watercolor effect, I must say this cake tastes as amazing as it looks. The buttery sweetness of the cake combined with the fresh peach mousse and fluffy buttercream is everything. Home » Desserts » Cakes » Cakes for Special Occasions » How to make Watercolor Cakes (with natural colors!)

Watercolor Cake

Learn how to make a watercolor cake in the easiest way possible, but still achieve a beautiful and elegant look! With step-by-step instructions and picture tutorials, you’ll love making watercolor cakes!

Watercolor Floral Cake

For this watercolor cake, I used my vegan buttercream recipe. But don’t worry, even non-vegan cake eaters will absolutely LOVE this buttercream recipe. In fact, my mom admits it’s her favorite (which is great for me!).

Here we are going to use a lot of buttercream, as we are making the crumb coat and then coloring the frosting.

The full recipe for my dairy free buttercream is below on the recipe card. However, you can use your favorite buttercream recipe if you have it (it doesn’t have to be vegan if you don’t want to!).

You can use your favorite food colors, but since this is a vegan dessert blog, and most of my readers want natural colors, I want to let you know my favorite suggestions!

Watercolor + 24k Gold Leaf

I bought and tested many vegan food colors, and finally found my favorite. Many vegan food colors tend to fade when baked, and sometimes don’t look healthy, according to the brand.

I finally found some food coloring that will make your watercolor cake look really good, like a Monet painting (if you haven’t noticed, I styled my watercolor cake after the Water Lilies of ‘ Monet ha!).

For liquid coloring, I really like Nomeca food coloring, but for our purposes of just coloring the frosting, the Whole Foods 365 brand works just as well here.

Watercolor Cake

For powder colors, which I really enjoy using (they give a nice richness), I really like Suncore Foods. I used pitaya powder, blue butterfly pea flower powder, and sweet potato powder. They are hands down my favorite brand of powdered food coloring. Remember you can also use beetroot powder, turmeric powder, and matcha for the primary color and blend from there!

Gold Sequin Watercolor Cake

Before we start, you need to figure out what colors you want to use for your watercolor cake. A basic understanding of color mixing, primary colors, complementary colors, and how to make secondary colors is also important if you plan to make your own colors.

I really like Canva’s color combination palette for your color selection. This is just a color palette article that gives you some basic tips, and they are so helpful.

I used almost a triadic color combination (but I actually based it on Monet’s Water Lilies, so my palette was chosen for me!).

2. Prepare the butter cream. I will be sharing a whole post on how to get the perfect vegan buttercream shortly so stay tuned! But for now, please see the recipe card below for instructions.

Celebration Watercolor Cake

3. Crumb cake. This is basically making a base layer of frosting for your cake, a layer of frosting. The technique here is similar to what you do when you do the watercolor part of the cake. You will need a bench scraper to help you get a super smooth outer edge. Then simply put the cake in the fridge to cool for about 20 minutes. This makes applying the next layer super easy (and less messy).

4. Paint the cake with your colors. You won’t use all of the frosting for the crumb coat layer (only about half!). This will leave some frosting residue for your colors. Depending on how many colors you want to use and how much of each color, you will mix your colors accordingly. Then gently place one color at a time around the cake using your offset spatula. This is the easiest tool to use to get the frosting color on the side of the cake. Don’t forget to cover the top of the cake too!

5. Smooth the color using a bench scraper. Remember that LESS IS MORE here. You don’t want to over mix the colors. Use a bench scraper to smooth it out enough, and reapply frosting to any gaps you see, scraping again.

Watercolor Cake

6. Finishing touches. Make sure the areas where the color needs to be fixed (it’s more blended, there are gaps, etc.) are addressed by applying a little more frosting, and clean up all the edges. To get a crisp top, simply pull the spatula offset towards you from the edge of the cake. This will create the “fondant” look that people like the most.

Watercolor Ombrè Buttercream Tutorial

7. Add decorations! This is my favorite part. You can decorate the rest of your watercolor cake in any way you like! Add piping at the top, bottom, paint flowers on the sides (like me – see the next section!), Etc. This is your cake, so make it your own!

Don’t let the idea of painting a cake make you cringe! It’s actually easier than it sounds, and almost like regular painting, only with buttercream!

I like to use an offset spatula to easily place the color where I want it to go. You can think of this almost like palette painting in traditional art.

Another tip is to know what you are going to paint and where before you start. Of course, it’s fun to be born, but having an outline plan will help your painted cake look more cohesive!

How To Make A Watercolor Cake With Recipe

Be careful what colors you choose to mix. A good way to come up with some color ideas is by looking at the color wheel. You will learn which colors are complementary, which colors don’t work together, how to mix which colors to get your palette, etc.

Be sure

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