Hi everyone,
Sorry it’s been a while!
The last month has been a bit bleurgh health wise, and before you ask, no it’s not about the dreaded Coronavirus!
No, I’ve just been trying to shake off an infection, that refused to go away! I ended up taking two courses of antibiotics over 3 weeks before I felt human again 😞 The culprit was a urinary tract infection and if you’ve ever suffered from this, you’ll know how painful and unpleasant it can be! It really knocked me off my feet for a while but after the first course of antibiotics, I did manage to make a little birthday cake for my sister in law before the darn thing came back again!
It was quite a simple little cake, lemon flavoured with Sugar and Crumbs icing sugar, but I was so pleased with the water colour effect buttercream I achieved. It was soooo pretty! I used purple, lemon and pink, but the effect can be achieved using any colours you like 😀
Here’s how you do it.
First bake your cakes and let them cool. I use PME cake strips for an even bake. You need to bake a little lower and slower, but the end result is a light, moist and fluffy sponge. I used my vanilla cake recipe, but swapped out the caster sugar for Sugar and Crumbs lemon drizzle flavour icing sugar. Anywhere you would use sugar, you can swap for a flavoured icing sugar, it’s so versatile and very yummy!
Check out the whole range of flavours here
I also used it in my buttercream, lots of lemony goodness!
Stack your cakes using filling of your choice, I used buttercream and lemon curd, then use your buttercream to apply a thin coat all over the cake. This traps in any crumbs, and is called a crumbcoat (funny dat 😆) Let that firm up in the fridge for around 15 minutes, then apply a more generous coat of the buttercream, smoothing it out as best as you can using either a metal spatula or bench scraper. There’s a YouTube tutorial on how to do that here by Cupcake Jemma
Divide the remaining buttercream by however many colours you want to use for your watercolour effect. I used three, and I’ll leave the links to the colours I used below.
Then, using your spatula, swipe small amounts on to the sides of your cake at random intervals. Using a bench scraper or spatula, lightly blend the colours using the same technique you use for smoothing your buttercream (see above YouTube link)
To see a more in-depth description on how to achieve the water colour effect, click on the following link, also by Cupcake Jemma, where she shows a non baker ( Tom Daley) how to do it!
You can either smooth it all out completely, or leave it with a textured look. Both look beautiful in my opinion.
Finish off by piping some swirls on top, and adding sprinkles and a pretty border around the bottom of your cake. Et Voila!
Until next time
Stay safe and healthy
Debbie ❤️
- Products used
- Sugar and Crumbs lemon drizzle flavour icing sugar
- Colour Splash pink gel food colour
- Pro gel purple gel food colour
- Wilton lemon yellow gel food colour
- Straight Spatula
- Cake Scraper (Bench Scraper) metal tall
- Turntable
Baking for Therapy 