- Today I'm going to show you how to
paint a winter scene onto a cake.
It's not going to be a soup to nuts
batter, baking, frosting situation.
Just the painting part.
You can see step-by-step how I got this image
and watch it come to life.
All right, let's get started.
So for the cake itself,
I whipped up my favorite vanilla cake,
you can click up here for that,
and a nice batch of creamy, dreamy,
Swiss merengue buttercream.
Click up here for that.
It is so good and perfect for decorating.
I have a huge selection of food colorings.
I got this giant box which I love.
I add a tiny bit of food coloring
to lots of tablespoon-sized batches of the buttercream
and just stirred it to combine and get the right color.
First off, let's make that sun.
Just dab on some of that yellow buttercream.
I used a small round-tipped brush, but anything would work.
And now I'm going to add some of the pink.
I used a bunch of filbert brushes to add on the buttercream.
This is number eight that I'm using for that pink
and then for the light blue.
My goal was just to add on the buttercream
and kind of get coverage, and then worry about
smoothing it all out later.
I'm using that same filbert brush
to dab on some of the darker blues.
And once again, just get coverage.
It's not going to look pretty.
I was actually really, really concerned
when I made this cake because I was like,
"Oh my gosh, this looks horrible."
And I know that underpainting
when you're painting an actual painting,
it's just like it doesn't look
anything like the photo or the picture.
But it was concerning. (laughs)
So have some confidence and just get the coverage,
get the colors on.
Once you're ready, it's time to start smoothing things out.
You want to have the background basically done
as much as possible before you start adding on top of it.
So here I'm using a giant number 32 filbert brush,
but you can also use a two-inch flat brush
or even a pastry brush
just to get that nice and smoothed out
and it will be creating a smooth gradient.
Something to keep in mind, though,
is to move from light to dark, light to dark,
or dark to light, dark to light,
and then clean your brush off in-between swipes
because you don't want to contaminate the pink
with too much blue.
That's important.
You can use smaller brushes
to get some of the details closer together.
And you can add paint on at this point, too.
You don't have to just smooth and only smooth.
You can smooth and add, smooth and add.
And as you work with this buttercream,
here's the thing, it's so deceptive
because you start working out the buttercream
and you're like, "Oh, okay, it's one color."
But as you work it more, it darkens up.
So here you can see that color is really opening up
as you're manipulating the buttercream more
and those little pieces of food coloring
that you initially mixed in are mixing in even more.
Okay, so now it's time for the happy little trees.
(laughs)
I added a bunch of really, really faint,
snowy, almost off-white trees.
I wanted them to be in the distance,
they're fading away, it's a snowy morning.
And you just get the outlines of some of these
snow-covered trees.
Once you get some of that coverage in
you can take a smaller round brush
and work some details into it.
I want them to look more like trees, not just blobs.
So go ahead and work your way up
with a bunch of diagonal brush stroke.
And yes, in case you're wondering,
I only decorated the front of this cake.
I left the back blank because I just don't want to be
moving the cake around and spinning it.
I want it to be nice and still for the camera.
And it's half the work. (laughs)
Once you have your trees down,
you can add in a little bit
of more light or dark for contrast.
I'm adding in some white here for the snow.
Just to give it some more texture.
I don't want it to totally flat.
Now it is time for that all-important red barn.
Okay, I was a little bit nervous for this part.
But just get the paint on.
Don't worry about because you can go over it.
It's not a one-and-done situation.
Using a small number six or number five filbert brush
to just paint on some of that red buttercream.
I have my angled roof line.
I'm just painting it out.
And then occasionally I'll use a toothpick
just to outline where the roof is going
so it's a guide for me as well.
Okay, this is very fancy barn so it has a cupola on top.
Using a small round-tip brush just to get the red on there,
I will be cleaning it up with a toothpick later.
I want to tell you that you can also
chill this cake at any point,
so if it starts getting a little bit too wet,
you want to firm things up again,
just throw it back in the fridge.
And it's nice to get some distance from it, too.
Take a step back, take a step back from the painting.
Don't be all up in it's face the whole time.
The cupola has a nice angled roof covered in snow,
so for that I'm actually just using a toothpick
to remove some of the buttercream
and show the white underneath.
The roof is also covered in snow.
I'm adding on a little bit more white buttercream
to create some of that texture and just make it really pop.
Don't be scared to use that toothpick
to clean the sides up, get more definition.
It's really hard to get tiny little details
in buttercream on a cake.
I will tell you.
It gets easier with practice
but a toothpick will be your best friend.
I'm using it to create little windows and a doorway.
A little bit of brown buttercream for the door.
And I just want you to see that
just by painting up and down with my red buttercream,
it creates the illusion of some wooden slats.
You can kind of imagine it being an actual structure
with just an up-and-down brush stroke.
And even though I said you needed
to just finish the background before you moved on,
I took a look at it and thought, "You know what?
"This should be a bit darker,
"I want some more color in here."
So just start going for it. (laughs)
I'll jump ahead but you can see.
Just add on a little bit more color.
Keep moving.
And the buttercream's really darkening up as it moves.
I chilled the cake so after you chill the cake
and you start brushing at it, it really darkens up.
So here, I found this out the hard way,
I'm just going to just keep brushing
until it darkens up to the right amount.
And it's going to becoming more believable.
I really wanted to have a nice, magical, morning sunrise
that's only there for a few moments,
but you have the darkness
and just that pinkish-orange sun coming out there.
Okay, now it's time for those trees in the foreground.
I'm using almost like a grayish-green
for the base of the trees,
but then we're going to add some more green-green.
I want them to have some dimensionality
and I like the muted colors, but you need to have some pop.
The barn is popping, the sky is a pop,
and then the trees are also going to have some moments, too.
So now we're using a palette knife
to add in that buttercream,
and it really creates a lot of dimension
and makes the trees stand out.
There's a play of light and I like the way it looks.
It's an easy cheat to get your trees
to look happy and bright and really stand out.
I'm using a pretty big palette knife and it works,
but if you had a smaller palette knife,
that would be great for this.
You'll add some buttercream onto your palette knife
and then wipe away the excess
so it's not trailing off the sides.
It's just underneath the palette knife.
And then swoop it on.
That's how you get those little Christmas tree branches.
Don't be afraid to mix different colors of green.
They don't all have to be the same color.
Your trees can have some variety,
and it creates more visual interest and depth, too,
because this tree I'm doing right now
is a little bit lighter and it looks like it could be
just a bit further away on a misty morning.
For smaller trees, I'm using round brushes
and just getting some of that buttercream on there.
You can see it's almost an impressionistic look.
It's not a perfect tree.
Don't worry about it looking
like the best tree in the world.
It's part of a group,
and you're creating a general sensibility.
And it's also your personal style.
So my barn will have a little bit of a split-rail fence
and I'm just going to use a very small
number one round brush
to add a little bit of buttercream on.
You can use a toothpick, too, or whatever you'd like.
The foreground looks a little plain to me.
So here's what's going to happen.
I'm adding in some very, very, very pale grayish-blue
and that will be giving me the effect
of some snow that is catching the light
and having some shadows.
Using the palette knife is definitely
the easier way to add these snowbanks on.
You're going to add some on the beginning
with your palette knife, and then just scrape
until there's no buttercream left.
It gives you a nice fade, a nice fade of subtle color.
For some visual interest,
I'm adding a split-rail fence in the foreground, too.
And let me tell you, it is really much easier
to paint when you're not trying to block the camera
so I'm at the weirdest angle trying to do this
to give you the best view,
but just use a small round brush
and here it's like almost a black buttercream.
Paint it on, mine's a little bit messed up,
but I'm going to be using a toothpick to clean it up
because that's just the easier way.
You can also even pipe it on
with a really, really small round piping tip
or just by snipping the very tip off of a piping bag.
All right, that fence is all done,
so let's add some bushes into the foreground.
I just want to create that depth
so it really looks like that barn is not right in your face,
it's kind of in the distance a bit.
I'm using a small round brush just to add on big globs,
messily, of that green buttercream.
And if you want you can add some white on top for some snow.
You could even dust some confectioner's sugar on top
and it will look like sprinkled snow.
As you might have seen in my
how to make a Christmas tree cake video,
which is like a much more basic version of this,
it's just one tree.
You can click up here for that if you want, though.
All right, that looks pretty good.
I'm just adding a little bit more snow into the foreground
and we're done!
Let me know if you'd like to see
more of these painterly cakes.
I could do one for Easter for example
or any kind of holiday you can imagine.
All right, I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
Give it a try.
If you have any questions about painting,
let me know in the comments.
I will answer all of them to my best ability.
Thanks so much for watching and if you like my videos,
hit that like button and subscribe!