Hi everyone! I am doing my daughter's birthday cake on Saturday, and it requires LOTS of diamond shapes on the bottom level. I had thought of using a template and cutting the diamonds out in fondant, but then in talking with ladies at work, one suggested actually painting the diamonds on the cake. I would much rather do this, as I hate working with (and eating) fondant, and I have pretty much mastered getting a very smooth buttercream cake. Do any of you have experience or suggestions as to painting on buttercream and if it works?

I have an idea, don't know it's it what you had in mind but I'll try to not be toooo confusing.
It's basically diamond cutouts using frozen butter cream.


1. Ice a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet with you choice of colored butter cream, make sure it's level and even and roll it smooth with a foam roller so there are no air bubble and the underside (which will be the front) is smooth.

2. Freeze until hard, depending on your freezer this could take as little as 20 minutes.

3. Using a diamond cutter and working quickly (if you have room you can do this while the tray is still in the freezer, working with the door open) cut out your diamonds and remove the excess frozen butter cream leaving just the diamonds.

4. Freeze again, and when they are hard cut the wax paper with a xacto knife, cut around the diamonds so each one is on it's own seperate piece of wax paper.

5. Place diamonds on cake, let them warm up just enough so you can mold them to the sides of the cake, be careful not to distort the shape, leave wax paper on and refreeze, cake and all.

6. Once the diamonds are frozen again, carefuly peel off wax paper.
You will have nice neat diamonds that are smooth and have clean cut edges like fondant but are butter cream.

Hope that makes since.

This is a great idea cakemommy!

this is exactly what I did with this piano cake for the black keys.

nah, the lettering was freehand (that's why it's all slanted and crooked LOL)

But you could do it that way.......or do the pin prick method. Just print out what you want to write on the cake and use a straight pin to prick holes in the paper and lay that on the cake and smooth over it gently, then remove the paper and you will have a dot to dot lines of the words to follow with your icing.

I have painted directly onto buttercream and it is really a beautiful effect. Just make sure that your cake is chilled and the buttercream is still hard. I usually use an old egg carton that has been washed and dried to mix my color in. Just take whatever color of icing color that you want to use and mix a little bit of almond extract with it to make a liquid and use a paint brush to paint it on. I've done this on several cakes and the result is breathtaking. If your buttercream starts to pull off a little with your paintbrush, just stick it back in the fridge for a minute to get it hard again. I'll try and post a picture to this thread if I can figure out how to do it. If it doesn't show up, I'll post one of the cakes to "My Photos" and you can take a look there.....

Thanks, I'll let you know how it comes out. Maybe I'll even post my first Pix if it comes out decent

Wow! Awesome ideas!!! I would love to try the frozen buttercream, but just not sure if I can master it by this weekend! Thanks for posting the pics of the painting though. I think painting purple diamonds would be perfect. Thinking I'll make a template and start painting!

My daughter and I are attempting to do our painting on buttercream this weekend.  All the advice has really helped out!  I am a big fan of buttercream transfers.  I do them often.  It is so easy and inexpensive and turns an OK cake into a Wow cake!