Buttercream Gravel Road

Hi everyone! After posting the bale of hay tutorial I received so many requests for a tutorial on how to do the gravel stone road! Thank you all so much for your kind messages! I really appreciate it! You guys are awesome! <3 The method for making the gravel driveway was super simple! It does take a bit of time, but it is not hard to do. And best of all, it's all buttercream! :)

To begin, add a small amount of American Buttercream to the mixing bowl (I'm using my Very Vanilla recipe).

Now it's time to color it gray! To get a true gray (and not purplish gray), add a little black with a tiny little bit of Yellow. I'm using Wilton gel colors in Black and Buttercup Yellow.

For such a small amount of buttercream, I just stirred it by hand with a spoon (or rubber spatula) to blend the colors.

Next, fit a piping bag with a #3 or #4 Wilton round writing tip. For this tutorial I am using the #4 writing tip. Place frosting in the piping bag and pipe tons of little dots where you want your gravel road to be. Be sure to pipe them closely together so no frosting underneath the road will show. If you need to pipe extra little rocks on top of other rocks to fill in gaps, feel free to do so. It will give your road more texture :)

NOTE: Yes, I did darken the buttercream for the tutorial so it could be seen a little better. It would look much better in a lighter shade of gray like what's on the cake ;)

At this point, your hand and wrist might be crying, but doesn't it look neat?!

But there is one more thing we need to do. You may notice that the tops of your little piping dots might have lots of little points coming off of them. That doesn't really make it look like a real gravel or stone road.... not a safe one at least. You'd probably pop a tire if you drove on a road like this ;)

There are two methods you can use to flatten the points on the buttercream stones, the first is to allow the buttercream to sit at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes to crust over and then the tops of the stones can be gently pressed in with a dry finger. This method only works with a crusting buttercream.

-OR-

You can allow the piped buttercream road to chill in a refrigerator for at least 15 minutes to stiffen a little. Remove the cake from the refrigerator and dip your finger in a little water. Shake off excess water (be sure your finger is just damp enough to keep the buttercream from sticking to your skin - you don't want it soaking wet) and press down on the little points on the stones to lightly flatten the tops. And some of the water may cause the color to bleed a little, so if that is a concern, use the dry crusting method above. And if the colors do run a tiny bit, it may turn out to look pretty neat! That is what happened to the stones in the picture below. You can see the variations in light and dark stones... it looks natural :).

And that's how you make a realistic edible stone driveway out of buttercream! I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial! God bless!!

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