Quilted Buttercream- A Video Tutorial
In this video tutorial, we'll show you how to create a beautiful quilted buttercream effect as well as a ruched buttercream design!
This cake would be perfect for any special occasion, from birthdays to bridal showers and more! We'll show you how to make a quilted design using an impression mat, as well as how to create an elegant ruched effect.
This cake design would make a great birthday cake idea, bridal shower cake, or for any occasion that calls for an elegant cake design.
Table of Contents
Materials
This cake is two stacked (6" & 8") tiers which are each on their own cake cardboard. The top tier is supported by 4 bubble tea straws from beneath as usual (For more info on tier stacking, see our video tutorial). The tiers are frosted with our Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream recipe from the Recipes section.
Your crusting buttercream of choice (we used our Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream recipe but our Classic Vanilla Buttercream is a great choice also!)
Clear/Plastic Diamond Impression Mat (I've had mine for years but you can find them on Amazon as well as most cake decorating websites.)
Lollipop stick (or skewer, etc.) for the ruched technique. I wanted to mention that you could do something in the same spirit of the ruched design by dragging a small tapered spatula through the frosting before it crusts for a textured look, but we preferred this effect of creating impressions for today's cake.
Piping tip 81 for the Chrysanthemum petals, Piping tip 4 (any small round tip will do) for a small bead border.
Gold dragee (or your dragees/sugar pears/decoration of choice) for the center of the flower
*Allow approximately 20-30 minutes for the final coat of smoothed frosting to crust before creating your impressions. Crusting buttercreams can be effected by humidity- it may take a bit longer to crust if it is very humid it your kitchen.
More Buttercream Techniques!
We love decorating cakes with buttercream! If you love today's cake, don't miss our other cake decorating tutorials with buttercream. Here are just a few:
Cake Recipes
You can use this cake design with all sorts of cake recipes! Some of our most popular are our white velvet cake, lemon cake, strawberry cake, and yellow cake.
Don't miss our full collection of cake recipes and cake decorating tutorials for even more design and recipe ideas. Thanks so much for stopping by today!
Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
What size of diamond pattern is your mat? (inches please) - thank you!!
Beautiful cake! I'm making a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Will rouching work on that as well?
Hi, I love the look of this cake and can't wait to try it myself. Did you find a link to the clear plastic diamond impression mat?
Hi Jeanne, Thanks for reminding us, click on the link below.
https://www.countrykitchensa.com/shop/icing-fondant-tools/earlenes-diamond-impression-mat-1/38/527/1327/633897/
Hi Sherry, the diamond measures 1 1/4 inch from point to point
Have you quilted a non crusting buttercream? Any tips please?
Hi Teresa, I have not...but it would be fun to experiment. Impression mats will not work on room temp non-crusting buttercream. However, if you chill the frosted cake until the frosting is very firm, I think that you could make at least a faint impression with a mat. Then, this will give you a map to follow as you go in with a hot knife or hot metal gum paste tool to trace back over those impressions. This is all a guess...but I think that it could work. I would first test it on a smaller scale before accepting an order just to be on the safe side. I think that you could do the ruching as we did on the top tier in the same way (and much more easily than quilting) -- Let us know if you try!
Would this quilt pattern work on fondant?
Hi Janelle, this is a good reminder to me that we need a quilted fondant video! We had one many years ago but took it down last year because the lighting was just not good enough to see the details.
To answer your question, you can use an impression mat but it can be a bit difficult to get the impressions as easily as you can with crusting buttercream. To remedy this you can use the imperssion mat to map things out, and then trace over the faint quilted impressions with a stitching wheel to make them deeper.
I have a 3 diamond embosser for fondant that I like to use instead of a mat for fondant quilting because you can easily get deeper quilted impressions. Mine is several years old and so I don't have a link to share, but you can google to see many options & styles of quilted fondant embossers.
Here is a good YouTube video that demonstrates using an embosser (and tracing over with stitching wheel). I hope this helps:
Hi Melissa. I can't find your video links. How can I get them please.Thank you
Hi Susie! It's showing for me but I've just updated the video to a different format-- you should be able to see it now at the bottom of the post.
I used the quilted pattern on a buttercream wedding cake and it turned out great.
Hi Melissa is crusting buttercream different of chill buttercream ? sorry I am new in cake decorating if it is please explain how to crust a buttercream? thanks I love My Cake School.
Hi Marilyn- Most of the recipes that are known as "American buttercream" frostings, involve combining butter (or shortening), confectioners sugar, flavorings, a pinch of salt, and a bit of milk or cream. These are very often crusting buttercream recipes which means that they will develop a light, thin "crust" when left out at room temperature.
Under the Materials heading in my post, I've linked two the two that we use most often (Classic Vanilla Buttercream and Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream).
When frosting cakes with a crusting buttercream, they will start to develop a very light crust just from sitting out at room temperature-- usually after about 10-15 minutes or so. I usually wait about 20-30 minutes before using the impression mat as we did in this tutorial.
I'm not sure what you mean by chill buttercream, except that I often say to chill buttercream or the frosted cakes- meaning in the refrigerator or freezer for 15 minutes to firm things up. At cold temperatures, buttercream recipes that contain butter will firm up, which is helpful for stacking frosted cakes, or using the hot knife method of smoothing as we sometimes do, etc.