Hydrangea Flower Cake

Steps involved

Make cake layers
Make buttercream (no color)
Split and color buttercream
Assemble and ice cake
Pipe hydrangeas

READ BEFORE CONTINUING: The following recipes are scaled to make the cake pictured above -- a 4 layer cake made with 6-inch round cake layers. If you wish to make a smaller cake, please scale down these recipes.

recipes used

1 vanilla cake recipe
1 - 1.5 batches Italian meringue buttercream
I made this buttercream vanilla flavored by adding 1 tablespoon of vanilla to my 1.5x batch (can add less or more to taste)

Colors used

To get these colors, I used Wilton's Color Right Food Coloring System and Wilton's Gel Icing Color in Delphinium Blue.*

For the icing:

The colors may differ depending on how much icing you're coloring and the starting color of your buttercream (certain butter brands are more white or yellow which can make the buttercream whiter or more yellow). These are the amounts I used and should get you close.

Pink Icing:

Pink: 2 drops

Red: 2 drops

Purple Icing:

Pink: 6 drops

Blue: 3 drops

Green Icing:

Yellow: 26 drops

Blue: 13 drops

Brown: 1 drop

Blue Icing:

Blue: 10 drops

Delphinium Blue - gel icing color

Supplies/tools

To find the tools I use for almost every cake I make and decorate (including pans, cake boards, icing smoothers, etc.), click here.

The supplies/tools below are specifically for decorating this cake, which I used in addition to the ones in the link above.*

*Some of these links may be affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I earn a small amount from some purchases, however, this does not affect my recommendations.

Decorating the cake

After the cake has been assembled and iced:

(To see any of these steps in action, watch the video at the bottom of the page)

Set up a separate piping bag for each color hydrangea. You'll want to set up each piping bag to pipe multiple colors - using version 2 of my "how-to" here (this allows you to have white in the center of each petal you pipe) - Click here to go to the how-to page on setting up your piping bag and follow the instructions for version 2. **Note: I suggest having some large couplers so you can use the same Wilton 2D tip for each of your hydrangea colors**
Take a piping bag with a hole cut in the tip and pipe a big blob of icing on the cake. This will allow your hydrangea to have a 3-D, "ball-like" shape instead of flat against the cake.
Using a piping bag with green icing and the Wilton 366 tip, pipe one or two leaves coming from the blob of icing.
Then, take one of your piping bags set up with two colors and fitted with a Wilton 2 tip and start to pipe petals on the blob of icing you created in step 2. Continue until the whole blob of icing is covered. To see how I piped the petals using the 2D tip, reference the video below.
Continue piping blobs, leaves, and petals unil you are satisfied with the number of hydrangeas on your cake.
Slice and enjoy :)

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO