Yay for the tie dye cake! I had wanted to add a tie dye element to this cake and wanted to keep it simple and didn’t really want to use fondant. So after doing some research i came up with this idea. And as i said in the previous post, at first i wasn’t quite sure if it was going to work. Sometimes ideas in my head may or may not work out in reality :) . And it was either going to be incredibly fabulous or go down in flames…LOL. I am so happy that it turned out really great!

So all you need is a bunch of different colored buttercreams (i used a bunch of small bowls and gel food coloring to make the colored icing) and some piping bags (no tip needed!). Once you have your cake assembled, make sure to crumb coat it and let it set in the fridge for at least an hour. For this cake, i did a second coat of chocolate buttercream since i knew i would be keeping the top naked, so that is also an option.

So here’s a look at how i made the cool tie dye buttercream :)

Step 1 – Load each color of icing into it’s own piping bag and cut off the tip so the opening is around 1/4-1/2 inch. Then pipe all different colors onto the sides in a swirly tie dye pattern, yes that is a “technical term” lol.  You can totally have fun with it, there is really no wrong or right way. This part can totally be a little messy so don’t worry if it’s not perfect. Just make sure to fill in all spaces so there is no color underneath coming through.

STEP 2 – take a toothpick and starting from the middle of the swirls, pull strokes outward as shown below in a tie dye fashion

Step 3 – wrap the cake CAREFULLY in wax paper (you could also use acetate sheets, but i had wax paper on hand, and it’s cheaper…lol). Start on one side and smooth it out with your hand or a bowl or bench scraper

Step 4 – This is the important part. Put it in the fridge for 1 hour. Set a timer and as much as you really really want to play with it DO NOT TOUCH IT for a whole hour. It is kind of torturous, but trust me you need the whole hour for it to harden up and it’s totally worth it.

Step 5 – After the full hour, CAREFULLY pull off the wax paper and TADA tie dye buttercream! :)