Flower Petal Cake

I've been seeing this new technique {at least--new to me!} around the Internet.  I think it's called a Petal Cake, but I'm not sure if that's an official name or not.  I just saw that on one particular site.  Anyway, I think it does look a lot like petals, so I'll stick with that.  Another trend I've noticed with design in general is the "ombre" effect, or gradually darkening shades of the same color.  For this cake, I combined the two for a neat effect on the side of the cake.  It was quite simple, but fairly time consuming.  I think the side work took me about 30 minutes.  If I were doing it all in the same color, it would have been a bit faster since I wouldn't be switching pastry bags all the time. 

To start, I frosted a 2 layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream.  I didn't worry about getting the sides perfectly smooth since I'd be covering them up.  I did keep them as even as I could, though. 

I used Wilton's Sky Blue coloring paste and made 4 shades of frosting, each a little darker than the last.  I only used a very small amount for the lightest color because I wanted it to blend in with the white on top of the cake.  I also labeled my parchment bags so that I wouldn't get them mixed up.  I would recommend using Wilton's #12 round tip for these.  Unfortunately, I only have one of those, so I just cut holes in the end of my parchment roughly the same size as the #12 tip.  I think it would have looked neater if I had used the actual decorating tip, though.

Starting at the bottom, I piped a large circle (about an inch in diameter) of each color, working up to the top of the cake.

Then I used the tip of my small, angled spatula to swipe the icing.  I started in the middle of the bottom circle and pulled it to the right, creating a "tail."  I wiped the excess off on the edge of a bowl and swiped the next circle, working my way up.

Then I repeated the process with the next column of circles.

30 minutes later, and this is what it looked like.  I think it's a really pretty effect!  It definitely hides imperfections if your frosting doesn't get as smooth as you'd like it.  It's definitely not a difficult technique.  It just takes a little time.  I sat on a barstool at my bar and worked on it while I watched TV. 

This is the finished product.  It was for a 50th birthday gal who is a big Elvis fan.  The Elvis and "50" are made from candy melts, piped onto parchment paper.  I've never really decorated the sides of my cakes much.  I mainly just focus on the top part.  I think I'll be using this technique a lot from now on, though!