Buttercream Painted Cake: How to Paint a Buttercream Tulip

If you are looking for an easy cake to decorate, why not try a buttercream painted cake. More specifically, I am going to show you how to paint a buttercream tulip with a palette knife. Tulips are so beautiful and I absolutely love this cake design. Painting with buttercream is so much fun. I call it edible art. Then again, where can you go wrong with a palette knife and buttercream?

Ever since I posted, how to paint with buttercream, I have been meaning to add some more tutorials and never got around to it. Since I am officially finished with all the projects for the buttercream cake decorating book I can blog a bit more. This cake is super easy to make and only has a few steps involved. Really, you don’t need to be an artist or even good at painting to make it. Full disclosure, while, I spent a lot of time around art and artists while working at the Art department in college, I was never good at it. So, I created ways for myself to make edible art without requiring too much art skill. You can have your cake and eat it too *wink*wink (see what I did there?).

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Buttercream painted cake: How to paint a buttercream tulip

There are only a few steps to paint a buttercream tulip. The tulip itself only needs six petals. Only one palette knife is needed to make the petals. You may also the second palette knife to make the leaves and the vines, however, I chose to pipe them. That’s all you need for now so grab your palette knife or knives and let’s start painting.

Materials Needed:

Palette knife #2
Palette knife #1 (optional)
Piping bag with a Wilton tip number 2 filled with green frosting
8-inch Frosted cake (learn how to frost a cake with sharp edges using this method)
Buttercream colored purple, green and white or natural buttercream color (for buttercream recipes check out the ultimate buttercream guide).

Steps for painting buttercream tulip

Mix some buttercream with violet gel food coloring.

Mix some regular colored buttercream with the purple to get a lighter color.
Add some buttercream to the palette knife. Hold the palette knife vertical to the cake and pull down.
Make 3 petals overlapping each other. This is the top of the tulip.

Make three larger petals on top of the three smaller petals. Move the palette knife in a circular motion. Make as many tulips as you like interchanging between larger and smaller.
Then pipe the vines on the bottom of the tulip. Pipe a larger section on the bottom and a thin vine all the way down. Add texture by going back and forth with the piping bag. Of course, you can use palette knife #1 to make the vines. That’s it a buttercream painted cake with buttercream tulips.