by @heckyescake

For this cake, I have applied the Florence mesh stencil and have used Italian Meringue Buttercream on Italian Meringue Buttercream to achieve this effect. 

I started by freezing my cake for 30 minutes. While it froze, I mixed a small amount of buttercream with Colour Mill oil-based colours until I achieved the army green I was after. The oil-based colouring turned the buttercream to the consistency of paint.

Once my cake was frozen, I brought it out and worked very quickly. Italian Meringue Buttercream does not like the heat from our hands, so touching as little as possible I lined up the stencil and using only the head of a spatula, I put a small amount of the paint-like buttercream on the stencil and wiped off the access as I went.

Some tips include: 

1. Don’t put on so much icing that you need to scrape it off. Dab on a bit at a time. IMBC doesn’t like to be “overworked” and I find that the ‘final scrape’ can make the icing bleed. 

2. Make sure the colour of the icing that is going on the mesh is slightly dark than what you want. The lines are so fine and detailed that if the icing is too light, it doesn’t look as crisp.

3. Refreeze the cake between stencil uses to firm up the icing. 

4. Work fast, stay cold. 😀  

By Natalie from @heckyescake