A tisket, a tasket, a chocolate buttercream basket...
The basket of flowers cake was a french vanilla cake with a chocolate buttercream icing. Although this was first time I had made chocolate buttercream, it turned out well (so unusual for a first attempt!). To make the basket weave easier to see, the chocolate is actually two-toned (some chocolate brown food gel was added to a portion of the chocolate buttercream). Tips 47 and 48 were used on the basket weave. The rope border was done with tip 22. All flowers were from royal icing a few days prior.
The most time consuming part of this cake was making the flowers. If short on time, the flowers could be simply be made from buttercream at the same time the basket weave is being done....but the royal icing flowers hold up a little better.
The green leaves on the top of the cake were added last and done with tip 352; the leaves are buttercream. I should mention, the leaves were the downfall of this particular cake. I ran out of fresh buttercream, so I used some old stuff I had in the fridge. What's the big deal? it's just a few leaves, right? Well....even while piping the leaves on, I was picking up on some peculiar scent. Turns out the milk in that buttercream was starting to turn. After taking some photos, we had to throw the cake away. Yes, it sounds wasteful, but I couldn't risk making anyone sick.
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