I'm trying to come up with a cute and girly cake design for my niece's 1st bday. I have a whole set of petal pans that my grandmother gave me (she used to decorate years ago but can't anymore due to arthritis, so she gave me most of her pans) and I thought that might be cute. I'm wondering how hard it will be to frost around all those corners and get it smooth, though.

Just an idea, but you could use some sort of a star tip around the side of the petal pan if you are not confident about smoothing it there....then there would only be the top to smooth and you could do that...

If you ice it with SMBC, then you can stick it in the fridge...it gets cold like butter and then you just use a scraper to smooth it...not too hard...

If you use reg crusting buttercream, then you could just use the viva towel/computer paper type of smoothing...for any imperfect parts, add flowers, vines etc....

HTH

The best thing I have found to ice these is to use the icer tip. This allows me to put an even amount of buttercream on the whole cake So I have a pretty decent contour to follow and I just have to smooth it out. It works well for me.

Yes, the icer tip is a must, especially for that darned tiny one. Why did wilton think they needed 8 damn petals on that thing anyway?? The other sources mostly have 5...