Interesting Petal Technique!!

I spend a lot of my free time as possible researching decorating techniques. I love for my cakes to be different from the everyday. My biggest complement is when someone looks at a sugar art piece of mine and says, "How did you do that?" Back in March I was doing the usual research and came across a gorgeous picture of a technique that I had never seen before. I decided that I needed to dig a little deeper to find out how it was done. To my surprise I found a blog on Melissa Diamond's sight mycakeschool.com that showed this tutorial on how to do the technique. Now all I needed was an excuse to make a cake!!

Thank goodness for having a husband and daughter that sometimes crave sweets. ((WINK!!)) My husband said that he had a taste for a cake that had strawberry filling... (Air high five for him coming through for me!!) Of course, I told him that if he brought some ingredients home I could definitely make it. 

I started with 2 eight inch rounds of my vanilla butter cake. I wanted to use the strawberry filling in the middle of the two layers. I decided to add in a lemon filling since I had a sleeve of it sitting in the fridge that I needed to use up soon. I cut the 2 layers in half thus making 4 layers. I placed the first layer on the plate, dammed it with my tinted vanilla buttercream and filled it with the lemon filling. I then placed another layer of cake and repeated using the strawberry filling. I added the next layer and repeated using the lemon filling again. I then placed the top layer on. I crumb coated the whole cake, smoothing as much as possible. I then proceeded to use the petal technique on the sides of the cake. I used a round tip #8 by Wilton instead of the #12 that is used in the tutorial. It made my petals slightly smaller and I piped them closer together. 

 Also,  I decided to carry the design to the top of the cake and made a large flower. I started at the edge and pulled the icing toward the middle of the cake and repeated the same technique to spread it. and repeated until I reach the very middle of the cake. For the center of the flower I used the same tip and just made a large dot.

Thank you so much, Melissa for showing the world this tutorial. Please take a moment and visit her website to see all of the many things going on at mycakeschool.com. This technique looks like it takes a while, but I think that I was finished with the entire cake in less time than it takes me to frost and smooth a basic buttercream cake! And believe me, it tastes as good as it looks!!

 Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to read this post, and I hope it gives you the courage try this technique and to maybe even come up with your own. Enjoy!!