Can you paint a cake with Swiss meringue buttercream? Yes! You can use Swiss meringue buttercream like a “paint” by melting it a little to get a thinner consistency.
Now I’ve tried all sorts of cake painting methods, including using a palette knife for a more textured look, using Edible Arts paints, and making my own DIY paints with gel food coloring. (Check out my other painted cakes here). But I wondered wouldn’t it be easier if you could just use Swiss meringue buttercream to paint?
I knew you could use meringue buttercreams to paint in a textured style, but wasn’t sure it would work for more detailed painting. Well, after trying it out I have to say I’m really happy with the results!
Read on OR watch the video below to see how I painted this winter greenery cake!
Painting on a cold cake
I always find it easiest to paint on a cold cake. I like to chill my cake for at least 30 minutes or so, which allows the buttercream to firm up completely. With the buttercream nice and firm, you can press a paintbrush onto the surface of the cake without messing things up.
If you’re working in a warm climate I know that chilling the cake can cause problems with condensation. You chill the cake, then it starts sweating and the beads of water get in the way of painting. If you’re in this situation, know that you can paint on a soft cake, but you have to be very careful and gentle with the paintbrush.
If you do happen to be working in a warm climate, I highly recommend using a crusting buttercream rather than a meringue buttercream. Cake painting is a rather time consuming process, and meringue based buttercreams just can’t hold up that long in extreme heat.
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Getting the right buttercream consistency for painting
To make painting easier, I melted my Swiss meringue buttercream for just a few seconds in the microwave. You want to melt it just enough that it become fluid, but not so much that it starts to separate.
Melted buttercream will be easier to paint with. But the thing about buttercream is it’s never going to act like actual paint. It’s not going to have that same fluidity where it glides really easily off the paint brush. So you have to really embrace that rough style rather than trying to make it perfect. If you like that rougher more varied using SMBC will work just fine, but if you want your paint to be really even and perfect, it wont work so well.
Painting a leaf pattern with Swiss meringue buttercream
For this cake I started by painting the largest leaves all around the cake. Then I gradually filled in with more and more smaller details.
I also piped buttercream poinsettias directly onto the cake. I used a tip 352 to pipe a ring of five red petals, then a tip 2 to pipe a few small yellow dots in the center.
When you are piping petals with a tip 352, make sure to stop squeezing the piping bag before you pull away to get the nice pointed end.
You could also pipe these onto a flower nail and transfer them, but since they’re so small it’s really quite easy to pipe them directly onto the cake.
I also painted some buds/berries. First I painted on the stems. Then I used a small round tip to pipe white dots at the end of each stem. Finally I tapped a small dot of dark blue color onto each dot with my paintbrush.
Lastly, I used a round tip number 6 to pipe some red berries.
And that’s it for this winter greenery painted cake! If you’re inspired to make your own winter painted cake, be sure to snap a photo and tag me @bakingbutterlylove on Instagram!
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