Buttercream lovebirds

Crumb coat and cover a 20cm (8in) double-barrel cake using light pink buttercream.

Trace the design on the cake using a cocktail stick. Start off by drawing a few branches and then the birds - an easy technique is to draw a circle for head and a heart shape for body.

Using white buttercream in a piping bag with a hole cut at the end, fill the traced bird design and the branches. Use a painter’s brush to smooth and even out the buttercream.

With various coloured buttercreams in piping bags (all with small holes cut at the end), pipe borders and features to resemble the wings and tail of the bird. In this project, we have used yellow, pink, red, blue and brown coloured buttercream. Use a painter’s brush to smooth the various colours together.

Using green buttercream and Wilton 352 nozzle, pipe some leaves along the branches. Place the nozzle at 30-degree angle and apply firm pressure releasing a good amount of buttercream to form a wide base. Gently release the pressure as you reach the desired length for the leaf and stop piping as you pull the nozzle off to form a nicely tapered leaf.

Using yellow buttercream and a PME 58R nozzle, pipe some simple flowers. Place nozzle at 30-degree with the narrow tip facing upwards. Gently apply pressure to form a fan shaped petal, taking special care to keep the centre of the flower at one point. Repeat the same process to pipe four more petals. With blue coloured buttercream in a piping bag with a hole cut at the end, you can pipe a small dot to form the centre of the flower.

Repeat the same process to pipe smaller pink blooms by using PME 32R nozzles.

Finish off the cake by piping a border along the cake and small peaks of buttercream on top. You can use Wilton 4B or Wilton 2D for this.