Today, cake making doesn’t only involve baking prowess. But it also entails artistic creativity to make plain cakes more visually appealing. Indeed, pastry chefs of today are transforming cakes into exquisite sculptures by using icing or frosting as decorative elements. When it comes to cake decoration, it’s easy to assume that most pastry chefs would pick flowers as their subject matter. True enough, flower cakes and plant cakes have been so popular recently. And now, more and more creative pastry chefs are diving into the flower cake craze. But one particular chef definitely caught our attention. California-based chef Leslie Vigil creates realistic buttercream botanicals that look like actual plants.
Vigil is part of a family-owned cake shop named Tasteful Cakes that specializes in designing ornamental cakes. As a buttercream enthusiast, Vigil uses buttercream frosting to mold realistic flowers and succulent plants on her nature-inspired cakes. Her realistic buttercream botanicals are so stunning that they are almost too good to eat. In some of her creations, she uses a fondant to sculpt a flower pot and planted different varieties of succulent frosting in it. One look at her potted succulent cakes would make you doubt whether they’re really cakes or plants.
Leslie Vigil creates buttercream botanical cakes that look like the real thing
In addition to her realistic buttercream botanicals, Vigil also expands her creativity to other themes such as geodes and paintings. To create sparkling geodes, she uses rock sugars, isomalt crystals, and gold leaf to achieve the desired design. Another interesting piece of her buttercream creations is the Van Gogh-inspired cake featuring the iconic Starry Night and Sunflowers paintings.
Vigil also creates other cake designs such as this sparkling geode cake…
…and this Van Gogh-inspired buttercream cake featuring Starry Night and Sunflowers paintings
Here are some of Vigil’s visually appealing and realistic buttercream botanicals. You can also check Vigil’s entire decorative cake collection on her Instagram page.
Source: Instagram | Tasteful Cakes