Cake Decorating Ideas | Free Tips, Techniques and How to Videos

Cake Decorating Ideas | Free Tips, Techniques and How to Videos

Cake Decorating 101

Think great cake decorating is only for the really talented? Well we disagree! You, (with a little know how and practice) can decorate beautiful cakes that will impress your family and friends. Even experts and professionals should revisit the basics from time to time. We’ll cover the tools, supplies and design ideas you need to get started.

Advanced Cake Decorating Tips & Techniques

As your confidence as a cake decorator grows, so too does your arsenal of decoration tricks – pretty soon people are asking you to make cakes for their weddings, anniversaries and birthdays.

A neatly iced sponge with a sugar flower on top is hardly going to cut it for such extravagant occasions, no sir. To be crowned an advanced cake decorator, you’re going to have to pull out the big guns. Create the monster truck of decorated cakes. The Super Bowl of sugar-coated perfection.

Luckily for you there are a raft of tips and techniques that you can take on board to create an edible masterpiece.

How to Raise the Bar

There are certain extra details that turn a nicely decorated cake into an absolute monument. And for those who have perfected the basics of cake decorating, you will be surprised how little extra effort is actually required to produce the variety of cake that even a pastry chef would be proud of.

Fondant Flowers

Make unique fondant flowers to match the theme of your cake and you will graduate from icing amateur to sugar paste ace overnight.

Start out perfecting the basics of:

• Daffodils
• Sunflowers
• Mushrooms and
• Petal Dust

To mold these little marvels make sure your toolbox includes:

• Flower formers
• Petal cutters
• A fondant rolling pin
• Fondant shaping foam
• Several small artist brushes

Cake Tiers

Big really is best when it comes to building a cake that will be the pièce de résistance of a special occasion. The trick to building a strong tier cake is hinged upon some very basic foundations:

1. Ensure your cake is firm, not airy – this may take some serious baking practice, trial and error.
2. Cut the layers evenly – be very precise. The baked top and bottom of the cake should be trimmed off to remove any bowing that occurred in baking.
3. Don’t overfill – if using filling ensure it is thin and evenly spread. Otherwise you will notice a Leaning Tower of Pisa effect.
4. Always ice each layer on a flat surface and wait until entirely set before attempting to tier it.
5. Use pillars – when starting out it is often a good idea to use cake pillars to help you stack tiers.

Crumb Coat

And oldie but a goodie. Frost the first layer of your cake with a thin covering of butter cream icing to smooth off the crumbs and then refrigerate it for 1-2 hours. This will provide you with a great foundation for an advanced cake.

Decorating Turntable

When icing your cake, ensure you do so on a turntable, otherwise known as a “Lazy Susan”. This will allow you to spin your cake while icing and ensure that you do not lift your spatula off the cake and ice with upward motions.

Practice

Really does make perfect in the world of cake decoration:

• Practice baking a cake that can withstand tiering.
• Practice evening out your layering.
• Practice icing on a turntable.
• Practice using your spatula without lifting it off the cake while icing.
• Practice making fondant flowers until there is little difference between your designs and the real thing.

Cake Decorating Tips & Techniques Video

Today we’re going to be talking about cake decorating. Our theme is going to be, “How to make roses.” Now we’re going to make the rose. I have a rose nail in my hand and I want you to watch as I turn that carefully when I make the rose. One of the thing you want to do when you make the rose in have a place to build up on your pattern so that the rose stands up.

You do that with a pumping action, going up and down. And what your going to try to do is make you rose a little bit higher that the other flowers that you have. In order to make the rose it’s real simple. You pump frosting onto your rose nail. And once you get the icing pumped, then you begin to make little petals by making a circular motion back and forth.

Watch what I do. You start with the wide tip facing down and push the icing over and come down. Go back, come over and come down, back over and come down and back over and come down. And there is your rose.

Now you need to take this rose off, so if you have a spatula, just slide it under the rose very carefully and put it on the little mound that you made for it. So let’s take a look and do one more.

Remember, we’re going to pump, get the icing built up and then we’re going to go back and forth. Start back, pull it over and go around. Your spinning the wheel as your turning the rose.