Tutorial Preview
Bite Sized
Watch Valeri make her cake in just one minute!
Highlights
Watch some hand-picked highlights from the full course.
1. The palette knife
Before we start, Valeri talks about the buttercream background and how to use your palette knife properly.
2. Applying the buttercream
- Never start on the center.
- The angle of your palette knife has to be flat. It should be parallel to the surface of your cake. Hold it using the ‘grab’ position.
- Make sure that your palette knife or bendy scraper has to be nice and clean.
- Make sure that you get a good enough of buttercream.
- You can go playful with the colours but be mindful on the shading.
3. Floral design
For the flowers:
- Make sure that you mix or blend your colours to create a different shade of the same colour.
- Don’t use too much buttercream in making your background.
- The angle of your palette knife is very important to do the correct strokes. It should be flat when you hold it. Don’t hold it like a pen.
- Use less strokes.
- Clean your palette knife every after stroke so that petals are sharper and more define.
- If you layer your petals, you should use more buttercream and the angle up your palette knife so that you don’t drag the buttercream and you are still able to achieve a good volume.
4. Making the floral pattern
Now it’s time to apply our floral design to the cake.
5. Final words
Now that the cake is complete, Valeri says a few closing words.
Delightful Hollyhocks Cake Tutorial by Valeri Valeriano
We are delighted to welcome back Valeri from the Queen of Hearts Buttercream Academy. Valeri and Christina were one of our first sets of guests on CakeFlix, when they filmed a beautiful buttercream Flower Basket with us back in early 2013.
It has been great watching their progress and an absolute pleasure to once again have such amazing buttercream work on CakeFlix.
This stunning cake is created using an earth toned colour palette and is adorned with beautiful Hollyhocks. The background is creatively conceptualised to look like gradient tiles covering your entire cake. You will learn basic techniques that once executed properly and combined altogether will make a stunning project. Inspirations for this class can be from textured walls, real paintings, different tiles and even mosaics. The techniques involved in this class is so versatile that you can actually use any kind of frosting as a medium.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to…
- achieve a stunning mosaic tile effect using buttercream
- select and use the correct palette knife for the task in hand
- create effective palette painted designs with your palette knife
- achieve stunning colours using Swiss or Italian meringue
- and lots, lots more
To see more tutorials like this head to the: Queen of Hearts Buttercream Academy
Don’t forget to share your interpretations of this wonderful cake with Paul and the rest of the CakeFlix community on our Facebook group.
View hundreds of more world-class tutorials only at www.cakeflix.com.
Valeri Valeriano & Christina Ong
Queen of Hearts Couture Cakes is a multi-award winning cake company based in London. Founded in June 2011, the company is headed by cake artists and best friends, Valeri and Christina. It was by sweet accident that these ladies discovered their passion and talent. On Mother’s Day 2011, they wanted to give their two friends whom they consider their “second-mums” something special but not expensive and decided to bake for them...and they have never stopped since. Renowned globally for their edible works of art using nothing else but buttercream as their decorating medium, Queen of Hearts Couture Cakes has been featured in numerous well known blogs, local and international news, magazines, TV Shows and have showcased their masterpieces as well as demonstrated in some of UK’s biggest exhibitions. Valeri and Christina take immense pride in their mastery of buttercream and their goal is to revive and modernize this age-old art.
