Flowerpot cake tutorial

Chase away the winter blues with this pretty Flowerpot cake tutorial from Liz Fox from BuBakes - absolutely perfect for Mother's Day gifting!

Brought to you by Liz Fox from Bu Bakes

Get bloomin' marvellous with this flowerpot cake tutorial!

Chase away the winter blues with this pretty Flowerpot cake tutorial from Liz Fox from BuBakes - absolutely perfect for spring birthday and Mother's Day gifting! Take a look at our step-by-step below, and you'll have an edible masterpiece in no time at all!

Take a look at all our other cake decorating tutorials here!

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You will need

For the cake:

round cake: 15cm (6in) in diameter and height
buttercream frosting

To decorate:

round cake cards: 13cm (5in), 15cm (6in)
cake drum: 20cm (8in)
sugarpaste: brown, grey
flowerpaste in assorted colours for the flowers
100g (3½oz) caster sugar
75g (3oz) dark chocolate

Equipment:

sharp knife for carving
gum tragacanth
edible glue
airbrush with brown and green
colours (or lustre dusts in greens and browns and a large fluffy brush)
embossing sheets: a gravel effect sheet and a pebble/stones/giraffe print sheet
washi tape or a length of 13mm (½in) ribbon (to wrap around the 20cm (8in) cake drum)
FMM cutters: simple rose, carnation, rananculus and dahlia
Blossom Sugar Art cutter and mould set
Katy Sue flower mould
Karen Davies flower mould
ivy leaf cutter
rose leaf cutter
wire whisk
baking tray lined with non-stick paper
small saucepan

Instructions

Creating your flower pot: Slice your cake into four layers, frost between each layer and stack. Centre a 13cm (5in) cake card on top of your cake. 

Start to carve into your cake. Hold your knife so its base is against the edge of the cake card, while its tip is angled out and runs along the outside of the cake roughly threequarters of the way down. Use the cake card for guidance to enable you to carve an even flowerpot shape (1). 

Remove the 13cm (5in) cake card, crumbcoat and frost your cake (2). Now cover with light brown sugarpaste. You will need to use some of this brown sugarpaste again, so keep the excess to one side in a sandwich bag to keep it fresh. 

Use an airbrush to spray darker brown patches onto your ‘pot’ and set it aside to dry. If you don’t have an airbrush, you can use lustre dust with a big fluffy brush (3). 

Add some gum tragacanth to the remaining brown sugarpaste to make it dry faster and firmer, then roll it out to 5mm (¼in) thick and cut a long strip (approx 3cm (1¼in) wide). It needs to be long enough to wrap around the base of your cake. 

Slide your cake onto a 15cm (6in) cake card, then place this onto a jar lid or another object that is about 1cm (½in) high. You need a gap between the work surface and your cake. (Using the cake card will prevent the jar lid from leaving an imprint on your cake) (4). 

Starting on one side, attach your strip of brown sugarpaste to the bottom of your flower pot, resting the bottom of the strip on the work surface. Follow this around the base to create a rim for your pot (5). 

Carefully turn your flower pot the right way up and use some scrunched kitchen roll to stop the rim falling inwards as it dries. (6).

Once dried, use your airbrush to spray more areas of brown, along with a misting of green patches. These will help give the appearance that the flowerpot has been sitting in a garden for a while (7). 

Covering the cake drum: For the gravel effect, I used a sheet from the Autumn Carpenter ‘Manly’ Selection and a giraffe print mat by CK Products. 

To use an embossing mat, roll your sugarpaste and lightly dust with cornflour before laying the mat on top to prevent sticking. You can then either use a rolling pin or an icing smoother to push the pattern into your sugarpaste. Alternatively, for a rough pattern like this, you can run your hands over the mat and it works perfectly well (8).

I then used the giraffe mat to create random pebble shapes and a Sugarworks soft tip tool to trace over the indentations (9). Doing it this way meant that I did not smooth out the gravel texture I had already created. Leave your drum until it is fully dried out (10).  

Making flowers: You can of course make a variety of flowers for this cake. The following examples are fairly straightforward ones; some use the FMM easiest flower cutters, which are perfect for a beginner. If you can, use flowerpaste for your flowers as this can be rolled out much thinner. It does dry out quickly though, so be sure to wrap any leftover paste when you are not using it. 

If you do not have flower paste, then adding some gum tragacanth to your sugarpaste will make it dry faster and stronger. 

Roses: Begin by dabbing your mat with cornflour to stop the sugarpaste from sticking to it. 

Take a ball of red flowerpaste and roll it out to 3mm (1⁄8in) thickness. 

Take the long cutter and press it onto the paste to cut out the shape (11). 

Run a ball tool along the edges to frill it slightly (12). 

Sparingly paint a line of edible glue lengthways along the centre (13). 

Fold the paste strip in half lengthways and sparingly paint a line of edible glue along the straight edge (14). 

Start to roll from one end of the strip and, as you do so, watch your rose take shape as the petals are formed (15). 

Gently prise out the tips of your rose petals with your fingertips (16). 

For a carnation, follow the same procedure as for the rose, using the carnation cutter instead (17). 

For a ranunculus, it is also a very similar technique to the rose. However, to start your flower, create a ball of sugarpaste and use the edge of the wavy cutter to mark it (18).

Create your first layer of petals using the smaller cutter in the same way as with the rose cutter. The only difference is you wrap the frilled strip around the green ball of sugarpaste rather than folding it in on itself. 

To create a vivid effect for the first layer of petals, use the same colour as your sugarpaste ball, then add a little bit of yellow to the sugarpaste as you gradually create more layers of petals. After a few layers using the smaller cutter, switch to the larger wavy-edged cutter, once again changing the colour you are using to a pale orange and then on to a pink for the outer petals (19). 

You can mix and match cutters and plungers; for some blooms I used the FMM dahlia cutter and a daisy plunger combined, to create extra layers (20). 

Sets like those from Blossom Sugar Art come with a cutter and a mould. Just dab some cornflour on your flowerpaste to stop it sticking, place it on the mould, press down and you have delicate detailed flowers in an instant (21). 

For smaller flowers, silicone moulds work really well for creating detailed blooms, plus they work brilliantly with sugarpaste (22). 

To use your mould, first dust it with cornflour, making sure you get it into all the little nooks, as this helps to ensure all the details come out on your finished piece. 

Start to ease your sugarpaste (or other material) onto the mould. Try to keep your fingers dusted with a little cornflour too, so that the sugarpaste stays in the mould rather than sticking to your fingers. 

Press firmly into the mould and roll the surface to smooth. Dusting the rolling pin ensures the sugarpaste doesn’t stick and lift out of the mould. 

Take a clean, dry knife and (with the blade lying flat against the surface of the mould) cut away the excess sugarpaste. Turn the mould over and ease out your finished piece. 

Using these different techniques will create a varied selection of blooms, so experiment to see which effects you like best. To create a selection of leaves, use an ivy cutter and a rose leaf cutter (23). 

Making chocolate soil: Chop your chocolate up into small pieces and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. 

In a small saucepan, add the caster sugar and 2 tbsp of water. Dissolve slowly over a medium heat (do not stir) until the sugar starts to bubble gently and the edges of the mixture turn a golden colour.

Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in your chopped chocolate immediately. Keep whisking and the chocolate will start to seize into soil-shaped pieces. Pour onto your greaseproof paper and leave to cool (24). It’s that easy! 

To assemble: Taking care not to damage the rim of the flower pot, spread chocolate buttercream on top of your cake before sprinkling the cooled chocolate soil into it (25). 

Then simply start to arrange your flowers in the flower pot. As you are simply placing the flowers into the soil, you can have a play with which flowers you want in various places to get an arrangement you like (26). 

You may want to stick some leaves in place along the rim or down the front of your pot. 

To finish, I also added a few sprinklings of edible soil to the cake board along with some grey sugarpaste pebbles. 