Make 2022 the year to take your cakes to the next level with these 8 baking, frosting, and decorating tips!
If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.
#1
If you struggle with domes on your cakes, meaning that they rise higher in the middle than around the edges, your oven temperature is too high.
Try decreasing the temperature by 25F or 15C to get perfectly flat cake tops and you’ll also find that by reducing the temperature, your cake layers will be more evenly baked AND more moist!
#2
After baking your cake layers, when they’ve cooled completely wrap them in cling film or Saran Wrap and put them in the freezer for 15 minutes, before you assemble your cake and frost it. The cake layers will firm up and be more stable and less crumbly when you frost them, making your frosting much neater. 15 minutes in the freezer won’t affect the taste or texture at all – when the cake comes back to room temperature it’ll taste just as good as when it was freshly baked.
#3
Make this the year to perfect smooth frosting on your cakes. The keys are to apply a crumb coat first, layer your frosting on thickly and so that it sticks up above the top of your cake, and do touch-ups to fill in indents as you go, after every few scrapes around the cake with your cake comb. Check out my tutorial on 15 Frosting Mistakes You’re Making And How To Fix Them for more tips!
#4
Invest in some gel colours to get really bright and bold frosting. Gels are much more concentrated than liquid colours, and with just a few drops you can make colours like this fuchsia, which would take probably a whole bottle of a liquid colour to achieve.
After mixing a coloured frosting, cover the bowl and leave it for an hour to allow the colour to develop and get even darker and you’ll blow everyone away with your brightly coloured cakes!
#5
Branch out and try different piping tips for different textures. For examples, instead of always using a 1M star tip to pipe swirls onto the top of a cake, try a 2D instead.
The 2D tip on this pink and red cake makes wavier swirls with more movement than the stiff lines of 1M swirls on the green and yellow cake above.
#6
If you struggle with sinking, leaning or bulging cakes, refrigerate them after you frost and decorate them and that will keep everything firm and stable.
If the cake will be in the fridge for more than 6 hours, take it out after an hour, once the frosting is firm, and wrap it in cling film or Saran Wrap to seal it from the moisture in the fridge to prevent condensation, and then put it back in the fridge for up to 24 hours. Take the cake out 2-4 hours before serving it, and that will allow it to warm up to room temperature, when it tastes the best.
#7
Take a cake decorating course! I have LOTS on my online cake schoolthat you can take from the comfort of your own home, watching the modules whenever is convenient for you and ask questions in the comments that I’ll reply to straight away!
#8
Finally, learn how to cut your cakes! I always used to dread taking my cakes to events because people would assume I would cut the cake, until I figured out how to do it without making a mess! Tall cakes can be cut into traditional slices but try this technique to get more portions out of each cake, with different ratios of cake and frosting so each person can choose what they like best! You’ll need a cutting board and a knife. Cut above an inch off the side of the cake and lift up your cutting board and use your knife to tip the slice over onto the cutting board. Then cut this end slice into three pieces and these are perfect for people who LOVE frosting.
Use the same technique again, cutting another inch off and tipping it over onto your cutting board but for these wider slices from the middle of the cake, cut them into half and then half again to make 4 portions, and if you want smaller pieces you can cut across the middle, too. The middle pieces have much more cake than filling or frosting, so they’re great for people who don’t like super sweet desserts, but the edge pieces have a LOT of frosting so they’re great if you have a sweet tooth. There’s a piece for every kind of taste bud when you use this method of slicing your cake!
How will you improve your cakes in 2022?
If you’re looking step by step courses on hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs, join my ClubPLUS for access to ALL of my online courses as well as Live Workshops!
Here’s the video version of this tutorial:
I’m going to show you how save a huge amount of time, free up your schedule, and get neater frosting by freezing cakes.
If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.
I know what you’re thinking and before getting into the technical details, I want to address your concern: that frozen cakes taste bad. If you follow these steps, you can confidently freeze cake layers and even entire cakes (frosted and decorated) for two months!
I’ll show you how to defrost your cakes properly too and when you slice into them you will never know they were frozen because the taste and texture will be perfect, the same as on the day of baking the cake.
How to freeze cake layers
After you bake your cakes, let them cool completely. If you want to level and divide them and drizzle them with simple syrup, do that now because it’s easier when the cake is at room temperature than when it’s frozen.
Wrap the cake layers in cling film or saran wrap. It’s important that they’re sealed so there aren’t any gaps where the moisture from the freezer can get through to the cake because that’s what can dry cakes out and make them taste like the freezer.
You can wrap layers individually or stack them but make sure there’s plastic wrap in between each layer otherwise they’ll stick together when they freeze. I only stack two layers at a time because these layers are freshly baked and very delicate, and adding the weight of another layer could cause the bottom layer to crack or crumble.
You can do this with any cake flavour and size. Being able to freeze cake layers means you can bake double or triple batches of cake, minimizing baking time and then pulling the layers out of the freezer whenever you want to make another cake!
Put the layers in the freezer and when you want to make a cake, move the layers to the fridge the night before and they’ll thaw overnight, ready to use the next day.
How to assemble and frost a cake with frozen cake layers
When cake layers are frozen they’re firm and stable and not crumbly, which makes them easy to handle so I like to assemble cakes with layers that are still frozen, straight out of the freezer. Because they’re less crumbly, they’re a dream to frost so you can even apply your crumb coat while the cake is still frozen! The frosting will glide over the cakes without pulling off crumbs and it will be easy to smooth the frosting as it starts to chill and sets against the cold cake layers.
I like to wait for the cake to thaw before applying the final coat of frosting because then you’ll have much more time to perfect the frosting. I don’t recommend frosting frozen cakes because those frozen cake layers will chill and set the frosting very quickly, making you race against time to get your frosting smooth before it sets.
So after applying the crumb coat, leave the cake at room temperature for 30 minutes or in the fridge for an hour or two and then it won’t be as cold. When you frost the cake it will be stable, not wobbly, so you’ll find it much easier to get your frosting really smooth than if you try frosting a room temperature cake.
How to freeze a cake
After you assemble and crumb coat a cake, getting those stages out of the way, you can freeze the crumb coated cake. This way, you can do the preparation in advance and then when you’re ready to frost and decorate the cake, you don’t have to dedicate a whole day and start from scratch – you can skip straight to the fun part of frosting and decorating!
Even more useful, you can freeze a cake after frosting and decorating it, which is really useful if you need a cake for a certain date but your schedule is really busy that week so you won’t have time to make the cake. After decorating the cake, put it into the freezer for one hour to chill and set the frosting and the decorations and then take it out.
Wrap it in as many layers as you need to completely seal the cake so there’s nowhere for the air in the freezer to sneak through. I find that the easiest way to do this is to place two pieces of plastic wrap on the counter, making a cross, and then place the cake in the middle. Fold each end of each piece of plastic wrap over the cake and then crimp the sides together.
It’s the moisture in the air in the freezer that changes the taste and texture of a cake, so that’s what you want to protect the cake from. Put the cake in the freezer for up to two months, until the night before you need it.
That night before, move the cake from the freezer to the fridge, still in its wrapping, and it will thaw overnight. Four hours before serving the cake, take it out of the fridge and put it somewhere cool in your home to continue to warm up slowly.
Straight after taking the cake out of the fridge, unwrap it while the frosting is still cold and firm and the plastic wrap won’t damage it. When the cake comes to room temperature about 4 hours after coming out of the fridge, you’ll be able to slice through it easily and the cake will be as moist and delicious as it was on the day you baked it.
If you found this tutorial useful, check out my online course on the Basics of Cake, which covers every step of making a cake: mixing, baking, levelling and dividing, assembling, frosting, decorating, storing, transporting and serving cakes!
Here’s the video version of this tutorial:
Smooth frosting with sharp edges is the #1 struggle among cake decorators and in this video I’ll share a foolproof technique to achieve them!
If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.
You can use any kind of buttercream for this technique. I’m using my 4 Minute Buttercream, which I love because it’s quick and easy to make, it’s stable, and it makes hundreds of decorating techniques possible!
Frost your cake as normal apart from one thing. Just like you normally would, spread the frosting on and then scrape it with a cake comb to smooth it.
Then do your touchups over any air pockets or indents, by spreading more frosting over those areas and scraping again until the sides are nice and smooth.
The difference for this technique for sharp edges is that you need to push the frosting up as you’re spreading it so that it sticks up above the top edge of the cake, all the way around the cake. You won’t have another chance to fix this later so it’s essential to get it right now so as a double check, after smoothing the frosting on the sides of the cake with your cake comb, it’s a good idea to spread another layer of frosting around the top edge and scrape that smooth. Whether you’re using this techie or any other technique to flatten the top edge of the cake, you won’t get neat results unless your frosting goes up high enough.
Your cake will now have smooth sides but an uneven top edge, which should be sticking up higher than the smooth top surface of the cake. Put your cake in the freezer for 30 minutes, to chill the frosting.
Meanwhile, boil some water and pour it into a cup or a bowl or even a vase, ideally something as tall as the length of the blade of your knife. Take your cake out of the freezer and dip your knife into the hot water and then dry the knife on a towel or paper towel.
Use the knife to cut off that frosting sticking up above the top edge of the cake. It’s going to be messy to begin with, because there are lots of chunks of frosting to remove.
Dip your knife into the hot water every 30 seconds or so, shaking it around to loosen any frosting attached to it. Always dry the knife off before using it on the cake again, and use the knife immediately after dipping and drying it so that it’s hot when you come into contact with the frosting.
You should brush the chunks of frosting that you cut off, off the cake before they warm up and stick to the frosted cake. If you scrape them into a bowl you can reuse the frosting when it warms up!
After several spins of the cake, the frosting on the top will almost be level, so cutting gets easier. If you notice any dregs of cut off frosting sticking to the cake, lift those off with your knife now, before they set onto the cake. Since you’re spinning the cake while pressing your knife down slightly to trim the frosting, your knife will stay at the same height all the way around the cake so you’ll have a perfectly level cake top, with sharp angles from the top down onto the side of the cake.
Any idents you see around the top edge of the cake are there because the frosting wasn’t spread high enough there, and you can keep trimming but just keep in mind that there’s a crumb coat and cake underneath the frosting, so if you cut off too much frosting you’ll expose those!
Your cake board will be covered with frosting smudges now, so wrap a towel or paper towel around your finger and push down firmly on the cake board as you spin the cake and you’ll wipe off all of those smudges. Since the cake has been chilled, the frosting on the cake will be firm and even if you accidentally brush against the side of the cake with your towel or paper towel, you won’t damage the frosting.
Now you can decorate your cake and any design will look its best on a cake with smooth frosting with sharp edges!
If you have any questions about this method, ask me in the comments! Check out my online cake school for hundreds of cake designs and techniques and join my ClubPLUS for access to them all!
Here’s the video version of this tutorial:
Following current cake trends or starting your own can grow your cake business AND your following on social media. Let’s look at how to start and spot cake trends by seeing what types of styles or designs are always popular, however you tweak them to make them your own.
If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.
Dripsare an almost guaranteed success. They started a few years ago, where chocolate ganache or a pouring consistency is “dripped” around the top edge of a cake using a spoon,
The simple drip developed into the mirror cake, where you pour coloured mixtures onto a cake and as the liquid floods and drips down the cake you’ll see beautiful colours and patterns emerge.
Tsunami cakes are the most recent variation of the drip trend, where you frost and chill a cake and then push a ring of acetate or a cookie cutter down onto the top. These were initially done with doll cakes but the trend works for all sorts of cakes like this Christmas tree cake! Pour ganache into the ring and sprinkles or glitter if you like, and when you serve the cake you lift it up to let the drip spill down!
Any kind of drip is satisfying to watch and it’s easy to do if you get the right consistency of the drip so it’s not rushing down the cake all of the way to the bottom but it’s also not so thick it gets stuck and doesn’t actually drip. To adjust the consistency of the drip, add more or less cream and always make sure the cake is chilled and the drip is at room temperature.
Explosions are almost another recipe for success – remember those sprinkle explosions or piñata cakes with candy or sprinkles spilling out when you cut them?
Recently the hot chocolate bomb trend took over, where two chocolate halves of a sphere were filled with hot chocolate powder and marshmallows to explode within a mud of hot chocolate.
Although these started out as a novelty gift idea, it’s been an exciting trend to watch as bakers get incredibly creative and make all sorts of variations of these. They can also be used as eye-catching cake toppers.
Round hot chocolate bombs morphed into these breakable hearts with fun fillings inside, which can also be used as cake toppers. To piggyback on this trend, just keep in mind that any cake or cake decoration that looks pretty but has a surprise inside is likely to trend.
Sprinkle have been popular for a few years now but instead of casually sprinkling them onto cakes, unique sprinkle placements have become very trendy. Sprinkles can be used for borders around the bottom of cakes or scattered onto melted chocolate to make sprinkled chocolate cake toppers but since then, more intricate designs have become trendy.
Sprinkles can be pressed one by one into drips to make sprinkle drips, pressed into specific areas of stencil designs, or even held against a stencil to create designs on cakes made entirely of sprinkles, used to cover up the join on half and half cakes, to create quick and easy stripes… the possibilities are endless!
Sprinkle placement can be time consuming so anything unique but not too complicated to achieve is bound to catch on!
Lots of cake designs are eye-catching but certain colours and colour combinations are particularly attention-drawing. Black and red are the most striking because they’re so dramatic and also notoriously tricky to achieve.
Gold always gets a great reaction because it’s surprising to see metallics on things that are edible. Edible gold can be used to highlight details, like brushing the edges of buttercream flowers, or you can cover an entire cake with gold luster dust to make it really shine!
Any bold colour will be eye-catching like hot pink or dark purple, especially when it’s paired with contrasting colours like purple with orange.
Any colour combination that isn’t typical for a season or holiday is likely to trend, like using pink and orange instead of black and orange for Halloween. Using pink for Christmas is a pleasant break from the expected red and green colour scheme.
Everything rainbow seems to become a trend and cakes are no exception! Tint the layers inside a cake, or use rainbow colored filling between the layers, and rainbow coloured frosting is always a hit.
Rainbow swirls on top of cakes, rainbow cake toppers… basically whatever cake design or decoration you think of, doing it in rainbow colours will exaggerate the reaction!
A key factor in whether something trends or not is how easy it is for other cake decorators to do. Jelly island cakes are amazing to look out but incredibly fiddly and time consuming to make so thats a trend that never really took off.
Same with half and half cakes, where you have to make two flavours of cake and two flavours of frosting AND two types of decorations.
Compare that to unicorn cakes, which were trending for a long time because they’re SO easy: a simple round cake, lots of swirly rosettes, and a few easy fondant details – very manageable, even for beginners.
These rosette cakeswere a huge trend for the same reason: they’re easy! Piping roses petal by petal is much more time consuming and requires a flower nail, which not everyone has. Rosette cakes are simple and the only tool you need is a star tip like a 1M, which every cake decorator has.
I made this porch cake thinking they might trend because they’re so much easier to make than a gingerbread house… we’ll see what happens!
Another reason cakes will be copied and start to trend is that the technique or recipe is achievable by home bakers, not just decorators working in bakeries. Sugar lollipops make fun cake toppers and they’re much easier to make than isomalt cake toppers, which require an unusual and expensive ingredient and also quite a bit of practice.
Meringue pops are made with egg whites and sugar, very simple, and the technique for piping them is the same and making rosettes on a cake so anything who’s done that, can follow a recipe for meringue pops to use as cake toppers.
Buttercream transfers are starting to trend now, popping up all over Instagram, and it’s because they’re a simple, home baker friendly way to create intricate detailed designs without needing to buy an edible printer or any other fancy tools.
Cakes that make you wonder “HOW?” are usually picked up quickly by fellow cake decorators and mimicked around the world with different variations appearing as each person puts their own spin on it.
Examples of this are striped cakes, which seem impossible to make so perfect with just buttercream, and the marble effect which is also mysteriously achieved with buttercream, and the dramatic effect of the fault line cakes.
Cakes that look like they’ve been carved are always an attention-grabber, and the frosting on this actually has been carved! I teach all of these techniques and designs and styles on my online cake school.
An important reason why cakes trend is thats there is an actual demand for them. Why? Because usually, the people who are starting trends are people who make cakes to sell to customers so the designs or techniques or styles are going to be ones that people have ordered.
Number cakes work for literally any age so are great for every birthday celebration and striped cakes and drip cakes are versatile styles that work for any occasion.
Compare that to, say, a cake with piped beads made for a 50s themed party or a poker themed cake. Those are very particular themes that aren’t in high demand so they’re not a likely design to trend.
Cakes decorated with chocolate covered malt balls or any other easily found candy or ingredient might trend but using materials that aren’t super accessible adds a WOW factor to the cake and makes it more likely to trend.
Icing sheets are printed with gorgeous edible designs and they can be ordered online but can’t be found in your local supermarket or grocery store, making these cakes more elusive and mysterious because unless you know about icing sheets, you would never guess what was used to achieve this effect. Wafer paper, gold dust and edible glitters are other examples of this.
So if you want to start a trend or choose one of the designs or techniques you’ve seen to put your own spin on, choosing something that falls within one of these 10 categories will increase your chance of creating a popular cake, getting more cake orders, and blowing up on social media!
Check out my online cake school for LOTS of courses to take your cake decorating skills to the next level with hundreds of designs and techniques to learn!
Here’s the video version of this tutorial:
Ever wondered how bakeries make cakes so quickly, easily, and profitably? I’m going to share 11 secret tricks that bakeries use to make cake decorating quick, easy, and more affordable, AND to make their cakes look beautiful and taste delicious!
If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.
Bakery secrets for speed
#1. Quick clean-up
Minimize time spent cleaning up by using a baking sheet or tray to catch falling ingredients – sprinkles are the worst so this is great for those! A non-slip mat is useful to hold the cake in place while you decorate it.
As you decorate, the sprinkles will fall down and bounce off the cake board but the rim of the tray will catch them. This way, you won’t be stepping on crunchy sprinkles on your floor for weeks!
When you’ve finished decorating, tip the tray so that all of the sprinkles roll down into one corner and pour them back into the jar or packet to use for another project!
#2. Quick cake toppers
Fondant is beautiful but it’s very time consuming to work with. For a much quicker way to make cake toppers, bakeries will use cookies instead!
Remember to press a paper straw or cookie stick into the back before baking. This will act as support to hold the cake topper in place on top of the cake.
Not only are these much faster to shape and decorate with buttercream, they’re also delicious so they’re sure to actually be eaten!
Bakery secrets to make things easier for cake decorators
#3. Increase productivity
To make scheduling easier and increase productivity, bakeries hardly ever bake, frost, and decorate a cake on the same day. The secret for spreading out the stages of making a cake is the freezer. After baking cakes, let them cool and them wrap them in two layers of cling film or Saran Wrap. This makes them airtight and keeps them moist.
Put the wrapped cake layers in the freezer for up to a month. This means you can mix double or quadruple batches of batter to save time, bake several cakes at the same time, and then pull them out of the freezer on different dates to frost and decorate then.
#4. Cheap tiers
If you make cakes, I’m sure someone has asked you for a four tier cake to serve… two people. Tier cakes are gorgeous but not always practical and that’s where dummies come in.
These styrofoam cylinders look just like cakes when they’re frosted and decorated. You can buy them in every size (width and height) and use them to replace one tier or several!
Cake dummies make it easy for bakeries and cost effective for customers to create the tier cake of their dreams without have leftover cake for weeks.
Bakery secrets to increase profits
By minimizing waste and lowering costs, bakeries increase their profits which is a priority for bakeries as well for anyone who wants to make money with their cakes.
#5. Reduce waste
Wasted ingredients mean higher costs and lower profits so bakeries will re-use buttercream leftover from frosting cakes. You can use the leftover frosting as is to pipe borders around a cake or swirls onto the top of the cake.
Another option is to add colour to the bowl of leftover frosting to tint it another colour to use for the decorations on this cake, or on the next cake!
#6. Smart tool investing
To stretch any investment in tools, use cake decorating tools for cookies and vice versa. For example, cookie cutters provide a neat outline for designs on cakes, which can then be piped onto.
If you’re buying cookie cutters, choose shapes that can be used for lots of designs. Simple shapes are the most versatile like a set of circles or squares of different sizes.
Using cookie cutters is much quicker than printing or sketching a design yourself. It also guarantees that if you’re piping a circle, that circle will be round instead of lopsided, which would probably happen if you free-handed it.
#7. Cheap piping bags
Bakeries love piping because it’s quick and easy but makes cakes look highly decorated. Piping bags are expensive but using parchment paper, you can make your own piping bags for a fraction of the price.
Cut a triangle and fold one corner down and underneath the bottom corner.
Do the same with the other corner and you’ll have three points down here at the bottom.
Pinch them and fold them over to make a cone, which you can fill with buttercream and then cut the tip off to pipe a message or a border or a design.
#8. Bold colours
You could use a whole bottle to tint buttercream red or black but bakeries limit how much they need to use with this trick: first, use gel, not liquid colours, because they’re more concentrated so you need a lot less.
Then, add just enough to make your buttercream a dark pink or very light red. You would need almost double this amount of gel to make a bold red colour. Now put a lid on the bowl or cover it tightly with cling film or Saran Wrap.
Leave it for an hour or overnight, and tada! Bright red buttercream with a minimal amount of gel!
Why do people order cakes from bakeries? They’re beautiful and delicious!
Bakery secrets for beautiful and delicious cakes
#9. Smooth frosting
To get super smooth frosting bakeries use metal or cast iron turntables, which have a very smooth spin and that creates very smooth frosting without dents or indents.
Plastic turntables are much cheaper but their wobbly spin makes it almost impossible to get perfectly smooth frosting and any cake decoration looks its best on smooth frosting.
#10. Flawless cakes
Bakeries refrigerate cakes after decorating them, until they’re picked up or delivered. When cakes are cold they’re firm and the decorations are stable so they’ll survive the vibrations of a car and sudden breaking, and the frosting won’t sink or get bulges in the sides, which happens when they sit out at room temperature for a long time.
#11. Moist cakes
To ensure that cakes stay moist even though they’re rarely baked and decorated on the day they’re picked up, the secret ingredient used by bakeries is simple syrup. This is the formula for moist cakes, even days after baking them!
The recipe is super simple, no pun intended: put equal amounts of water and sugar into a pan, bring to a simmer over medium heat, let it cool and then pour it into a squeezy bottle.
Drizzle over cake layers, paying special attention to the edges, and this will keep the cake layers moist for several days, giving you flexibility to bake, frost and decorate cakes in stages if you want to divide the work between different days.
I hope these secrets will be useful to know! Visit my online cake school for LOTS of courses teaching hundreds of cake designs and techniques and join my ClubPLUS for access to them all!
Here’s the video version of this tutorial:
There are SO many fun way to decorate cakes at Christmas and I’m going to share 5 fun ideas with you, showing the steps to decorate each one!
If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.
To make a cute reindeer or snowman or any other character, print or draw the character and tape a piece of parchment paper or wax paper on top. Tint buttercream to make a spoonful of each colour you need and put the colours in piping bags with small round tips, or use ziplock bags and cut a small piece of one of the bottom corners to make your own piping bags!
Start with the small details, piping the colored buttercream to trace the design, skipping any complicated details if you want to simplify the design. This side of the design isn’t going to be visible so don’t worry about messy textured piping. Save the largest colour section until the very end and when you finish all of the other colours, put the design in the freezer for 5 minutes to chill and set those colours.
Then pipe the final colour on top of the frozen details, spreading it with an
Straight away, pick up the parchment and gently press it against a cake. Push the parchment paper gently all over the design so that it sticks to the frosting on the cake. The frosting on the cake should have already set, so I put this cake in the fridge for an hour before doing this. Put the cake with the parchment transfer back in the fridge for another hour, or in the freezer for 15 minutes, to set the design so that it attaches to the cake.
Then peel the parchment off to reveal your design!
To make your own cake stencil, cut a piece of parchment or wax paper so that it’s as tall as your cake and wide enough to wrap around half the cake. Draw or trace a design onto it and then cut it out with scissors, poking the shape in the middle and cutting around the outline without damaging the parchment paper that surrounds it.
Make sure the shape fits within the height of the cake. If the parchment paper was on a roll, it will curve, and you can use the curve to help you wrap the stencil around your cake.
You can use coloured buttercream on your stencil or add sprinkles, too. I’ll show you how to do both. If you’re going to use sprinkles, put your cake on a tray or baking sheet to catch falling sprinkles to make cleanup easier, and a non-slip mat will stop the cake from sliding around.
Wrap your stencil around your cake after the frosting has set in the fridge for at least an hour, so that it’s firm and the stencil won’t damage it. If the parchment paper is from a roll, follow the curve of the parchment paper so that it wraps easily around your cake.
Pipe or spread buttercream over the stencil to cover the shape. Parchment is delicate and flimsy so as you’re spreading, spread from the outside of the shape towards the middle and that way you won’t push buttercream underneath the stencil, which will smudge the outline of your design.
When the buttercream covers the whole stencil design, scrape off the excess with your
Peel the stencil off straight away, while the buttercream you just spread on is still soft and this will give you a neat edge on your shape.
You can touch up any smudges with a toothpick, since the frosting on the cake has set so you won’t damage it.
If you want to add sprinkles, do that now while the stencil frosting is still soft and sticky. Scoop up some sprinkles in your hand and angle your hand towards the cake so that the sprinkles press against the stencil design. The sprinkles will stick to the fresh frosting of the stencil, but not the frosting around the rest of the cake because that frosting has set.
Use your finger or a toothpick or a paintbrush to tidy up the edges of the design, so that the sprinkles go just up to the outline of the design and make the shape really clear and recognizable.
By doing this on a tray, when you’ve finished you can tilt the tray to collect the leftover sprinkles and then pour them back into the jar or packet and save them for another project!
Cookies are a fantastic way to make a really unique cake topper yourself! I keep raw cookie dough in the freezer to pull out whenever I want to make a topper like this. Roll the dough and press a cookie cutter into it to cut out your shape.
Push a paper straw into one side of the cookie, which you’ll use to attach the cookie to your cake. Freeze the shape for 5 minutes before baking to help it hold its shape better, so it doesn’t spread out into a shapeless blob in the oven.
Now decorate the cookie with buttercream using piping bags or a ziplock bag with a corner cut off to pipe through. You can spread the frosting with an
To attach this to a cake, start with a plain straw and push it into your cake. You’ll have to push quite hard if your cake has been in the fridge and that’s the reason for using this test straw first. Pull it out and this makes a pathway for your cookie topper.
Push your cookie on its straw into the hole and it will slide in easily without breaking the cookie in the process!
Instead of a cookie, you can make a Christmas tree with cupcakes! Peel the wrappers off and layer the cupcakes like a little cake, with frosting in between to attach them together.
Carve the cupcakes to make a point at the top to make a Christmas tree shape. This is easiest to do with a serrated knife when the cake is cold because cold cakes are less crumbly and wobbly than when they’re at room temperature.
Now cover the cupcake tree with green frosting. This is my 4 Minute Buttercream, which I use for all of my cakes. This is a crumb coat so it doesn’t have to be neat, it just seals in the moisture and traps the crumbs.
Use a leaf shaped piping tip like this #352 to pipe leaves to cover the cupcake Christmas tree. The teeth of the leaf tip should be above each other and the leaf will fan out from the sides of the piping tip. When you pull the tip away and stop squeezing the piping bag, the buttercream will make a point which looks like the spikes of a Christmas tree.
Start at the bottom of the tree, piping in a ring that goes all the way around the tree. Then pipe another ring above that, with each leaf overlapping the leaf below to cover up the base of that leaf.
Work your way up to the top of the tree and then chill the cupcake in the fridge for an hour to set the frosting so that the piped details won’t get damaged when you move the tree onto the top of a cake. Alternatively, you could place the crumb coated Christmas tree on top of the cake before piping the leaves around it.
When the tree has set, take it out of the fridge or freezer and lift it up and lower it onto a cake.
To make Christmas decorations, choose a fun sprinkle mix and press the sprinkles one by one into the frosting. You can do this immediately after piping the frosting, while it’s still soft and sticky, or if you wait until the frosting has set, like I did, you’ll need to spread or pipe a tiny dot of frosting onto each sprinkle to act as glue to attach it to the cupcake Christmas tree.
Don’t forget the top of the tree! If you don’t have a golden star sprinkle you can get creative with a gold ball or even a snowflake!
This festive cupcake Christmas tree makes a delicious addition to any cake!
Now let’s pipe some Christmas trees straight onto a cake! There are loads of different piping tips you can use for this and I’ll show you my favorites now.
I like to press a cookie cutter into a frosted cake to give myself an outline to follow and here’s a crash course on Christmas tree piping:
Use an open star tip like a #32 to pipe rosettes or spikes to fill in the outline like on the tree on the left. You can use the same tip a bit differently, starting with a dot and after it bulges out, pull the tip upwards to fork a peak, which you’ll cover up with the next row of piping.
Both of these create texture similar to on a Christmas tree, with multiple ridges of texture in each piped detail.
Next up, a petal tip. This is a #104 and there are two ways you can use it for Christmas trees. First, you can pipe ruffles like this if you keep the narrow end of the piping tip pointing down and the wide end pointing up. Create layers of ruffles that overlap each other to fill in the tree outline.
Holding the same piping tip in the same way, with the narrow part pointing down, pipe these little petals along the tree, starting at the bottom and overlapping each row as you work up the tree.
With a leaf tip like this #352 you can make spikier shapes, holding the tip with the two little teeth above each other.
This is what the finished Christmas tree looks like when you pipe it with a leaf tip!
Use a medium round piping tip like a #12 to pipe dots and as you pull away after each dot you’ll leave a point behind, which give the Christmas tree that branch texture.
Almost everyone has a 1M tip, a star tip, and that works too, piping little lines downwards to resemble the branches.
Instead of dragging the tip downwards, squeeze a bit out to make these spiky star dots!
I hope you’ve seen a fun idea you’d like to try! Visit my online cake school for LOTS of courses teaching hundreds of cake designs and techniques and join my ClubPLUS for access to them all!
Here’s the video version of this tutorial:
Cakes with a cute or recognizable character are really popular but it’s difficult to replicate all of those tiny details onto a cake. Here’s where buttercream transfers come in: you can trace an image and then put it on your cake!
If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.
The first step is to frost your cake. It’s best to start here because then you’ll know how much space you have for your design, so you can choose the size of your character. Also, the frosting needs to set before you transfer your design, so after you frost the cake it needs to sit in the fridge for at least an hour while you prepare your design.
Now for the fun part: the character!
Print out an image, making sure it will fit within the height of your cake, and tape it onto a flat surface like a tray or cutting board, something you can move around easily later. Now put a piece of parchment on top, or wax paper or baking paper, lining it up so that the bottom edge is at the bottom of the design, which makes the transfer onto the cake the easiest.
Mix all of the colours you need for your design and put them in piping bags or ziplock bags. You only need a tiny bit of each colour. Cut a little piece off a corner of each ziplock bag, or piping bags if that’s what you’re using, or you can use a small round piping tip like a #2 or a #3.
Use one colour at a time, starting with the smallest details. Squeeze the buttercream out to outline a section and then fill it in by zig zagging the buttercream within the outline.
You can use a toothpick to spread the piping around, pushing downwards because you want the buttercream to be pressed flat against the parchment paper, which is the side of the design that’s going to be visible. This side you see here is going to be pressed against the cake so this texture on the buttercream is fine.
To pipe a colour right next to another colour, chill the design first by putting the tray in the freezer for 5 minutes. That sets the first colours so when you pipe beside them, the new colour won’t distort the first colour. I like using ziplock bags for this because I don’t have 7 small round piping tips, which is the number of colours I’m using for this design. Save the colours after you finish piping because you’ll need them later.
When you’ve done everything else, put the design back in the freezer for another 5 minutes to chill everything.
Then outline and fill the shape with the final colour. It’s fine to pipe over the other coloured details because remember, no one will see this side of the design. Use an
As soon as you’ve finished the design, transfer the design to the cake. You want to do this straight away, while that biggest section of coloured buttercream is still soft and sticky, so that it attaches to the cake. Take your cake out of the fridge and the frosting should be cold and firm. Lift your character up on the parchment paper and line it up against the cake. Press it against the cake, pushing gently against the parchment paper all over the design to stick it to the frosted cake.
Don’t remove the parchment yet! Put the cake back in the fridge for an hour or in the freezer for 15 minutes to set the character on the cake and then peel the parchment off to reveal your character! We still need to do some touch ups so don’t be put off by the air pockets in the design.
Use the leftover buttercream from piping your design to cover up any air pockets, doing one colour at a time and then scraping off the excess with an
Do as many touchups as you like, until you’re happy with the result. Tracing the character keeps everything in proportion and it’s much easier than piping a design straight onto the side of a cake, and it creates a perfectly flat design!
Take my FREE course on 10 Frosting Techniques and check out my online cake school for LOTS of courses on hundreds of cake designs and techniques.
Here’s the video version of this tutorial:
Instead of buying expensive cake toppers, use these ideas to make four stunning homemade cake toppers that will add colour, texture, and height to your cakes! In this tutorial I’ll show you step-by-step how to make each one AND how to attach them to cakes!
If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.
For detailed shapes, melt chocolate chips and spoon the melted chocolate into a cookie cutter placed on top of a piece of parchment paper.
Use the spoon to push the chocolate around to completely fill the shape, right up to the edges. Save a spoonful of the melted chocolate for later and then put it in the freezer for 10 minutes or in the fridge for 30 minutes.
When the chocolate has set, take it out of the fridge or freezer and gently pushing the chocolate out of the cookie cutter. Flip the cookie cutter over and push from the bottom, up to the top, and this makes it much less likely to snap as you push. Push all over the shape to gradually ease it out of the cookie cutter. The thicker the chocolate is, the stronger the shape will be, which is important for this part!
Once the shape is out you can brush it with edible glitter or luster dust to give it some colour and sparkle. Remember to do the sides as well, so that those match the colour of the front of the shape.
To attach the shape, flip it over and use the spoonful of chocolate you saved to make a line down the middle of the shape. You’ll probably need to re-melt this chocolate because it will have set while the chocolate shape was setting.
Press a paper straw into the melted chocolate, which will act as glue to attach it. You can put the chocolate shape with the straw in the fridge for a few minutes to speed up the process.
Meanwhile, push a straw into your cake to forge the pathway for the straw attached to the cake topper. Then when the chocolate has set to attach the straw to the chocolate shape, push that straw into the hole and the shape will slide in easily and secure the cake topper in place.
With just a cookie cutter you’ve created a perfectly shaped cake topper!
With a petal tip you can create all sorts of flowers using buttercream, or any other frosting. You’ll need parchment paper (just a small square), a flower nail and a plate or a tray.
Choose a petal tip that’s the right size for your cake. I’m using a #126 to pipe a rose on top of my little 4” cake but for a larger cake you might choose a larger tip like a #127.
Drop the petal tip into a piping bag and you’ll notice it’s a teardrop shape with a narrow end and wide end and that’s going to be very important in a minute.
Fill your piping bag no more than half full with frosting and push the frosting down to the to[, twisting the bag to make piping easier. Squeeze a little smear onto the flower nail, which will act as glue to attach the parchment square.
Now squeeze a blob onto the middle of the parchment, which will support the rosebud.
Hold the piping bag with the narrow end of the top pointing up and squeeze the buttercream out, spinning the flower nail between your thumb and fingers to make a ring and keep piping to overlap it, creating a rose bud.
Roses are really easy to pipe because you use the same motion to create petals, just changing the length and the angle. Start by angling the tip in to keep the petals as tight as you can, as close to the rosebud as possible, and overlap each petal by a bit so they sort of wrap around each other.
After one ring, pipe another ring, and with each ring the petals should get a bit longer and also start angling a bit further out so they’re less tight around the rosebud, because rose petals start to fan out as you get towards the outside of the rose.
When you’ve covered the parchment, pinch a piece of it and carefully slide it onto a plate or a tray and put it in the freezer for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, pipe a generous blob of frosting onto the top of a cake which will act as glue to attach your rose.
Take your rose out of the freezer and it will be cold and firm for a few minutes so work quickly! Lift the rose on the parchment paper up from the plate. It might be easiest to slide an
The buttercream will already be starting to warm up and soften so while it’s still firm, peel it off the parchment paper.
Lift it up and place it onto the blob of buttercream on the cake, angling it so it’s facing outwards rather than straight up. You might find it helpful to use your
Spin the cake so you can see the back of the rose and pipe move petals around the back to cover up that blob.
Keep the narrow end of the piping tip pointing up and overlap the petals so that the blob of buttercream and the underside of the rose are no longer visible.
If you want to you can tidy up the petals with a toothpick, because the frosting is soft and sticky so you can manipulate it.
Roses are so elegant and this one has the added benefit of being delicious, too!
Another delicious way to add height and colour to a cake is with any kind of hard candy. Place them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat and put the tray in the oven at 350F or 180F for about 2 minutes, until the candy melts into a puddle.
The candy should have a few bubbles on the surface but don’t wait until the candy is bubbling furiously because the candy will spread out too much and be too thin and delicate.
Let the candy cool for about 5 minutes. Those big bubbles will settle as the candy cools, leaving shiny colourful shards. Lift them off the parchment paper and they’ll peel off easily because of the non-stick surface of parchment paper.
Push the shards into a cake either straight after frosting it, or after the frosting has set. I prefer to do it after the frosting has set because the cake and frosting are firmer and will support the shards better. The shards will have thin, sharp edges so they’ll poke through the firm frosting easily.
Don’t be shy as you push the candy in, pushing all the way through the frosting until you feel it sink into the cake underneath. The frosting will hold the topper in place so it doesn’t topple over. No one will guess how easy it is to make these colourful cake toppers!
To make a basket or sail, melt chocolate and pour it onto parchment paper and spread it around to make (approximately!) a circle.
Use your
Immediately lift the parchment up and drape it over a bottle or an upside down bowl or any other object. You can use clothes pegs or pins or clips to hold the parchment in a certain position to create the shape you want for your chocolate.
Put the chocolate in the fridge and this is essential – it’s almost impossible to get the chocolate at room temperature off the parchment without breaking. When the chocolate is cold, take it out of the fridge and remove the clothes pegs or clips or pins.
Peel the parchment paper away from the chocolate and you’ll leave behind a pretty chocolate basket!
You could fill the basket with sprinkles or candy or fruit, or leave it empty and the unique shape will be dramatic and eye-catching.
If the frosting on your cake has set, spread a bit of fresh buttercream onto it and press the chocolate into that and the chocolate will stick to it. So pretty!
I hope you’ve seen some fun ideas you’d like to try. Visit my online cake school for LOTS of courses teaching hundreds of cake designs and techniques and join my ClubPLUS for access to them all!
Here’s the video version of this tutorial:
Using two identical cakes I’m going to show you which tools I use to frost and decorate each cake and tell you where I think it’s worth buying the cheapest option, and where it’s worth splurging for better quality. I hope this helps you choose what cake decorating tools to invest in!
If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.
Here are two cakes ready to be covered with frosting. I’ll be using my 4 Minute Buttercream for both the frosting and decorations. First,let’s look at the different options you have for colouring your frosting.
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The first option is liquid colour, which is water based and you can buy very cheaply at a supermarket or grocery store. You need a generous squirt, maybe a quarter of the bottle to achieve a bright colour of buttercream.
For really bold colours like red or black you’ll need the whole bottle, or maybe more than one, which will affect the consistency of the buttercream so I don’t recommend using liquids for those colours, but for this blue the liquid works perfectly.
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The next option is to use gel colours. These are a bit more expensive but they’re much more concentrated than liquid colours so with just a drop I can make the same bright blue that I made using a quarter of a bottle of liquid colour. For red or black I would definitely choose a gel rather than a liquid color since you need so much less gel to get a true black and red. Also, gels come in a huge range of colour options whereas liquids usually come in little packs with just red, blue, yellow and green. But if you want one of those colours, and a light shade of it, like this blue, the results are the same for liquid and gel, so saving money by buying liquids is smart.
One of the very first tools to invest in when you start cake decorating is a
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The cheapest option is a plastic
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In comparison, a metal
Quick side note: for a
Before choosing whether to save or splurge on a
Getting super smooth frosting on your cake is really important for any cake design and I’m going to show you two very different options for getting that smooth frosting: a plastic cake comb and an acrylic cake comb. After you spread the frosting all over your cake, you use your cake comb to scrape the excess frosting off, leaving a smooth layer behind.
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Plastic cake combs are much cheaper than acrylic ones. Look at the result of the plastic cake comb and the plastic
The little dents you see going up and down the cake all the way around are caused by the jerky movements of the plastic
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Let’s compare this to an acrylic cake comb and a metal
I definitely recommend splurging on a good quality acrylic cake comb over a plastic one and a metal
One the the quickest and easiest ways to decorate a cake is to use a stencil, but there are different options here as well. You can make your own incredible cheaply or you can buy lots of very impressive, intricate designs.
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To make your own stencil, cut a piece of parchment paper wide enough to wrap around at least half of your cake, and draw a shape onto it.
Use scissors to cut out the whole shape or cut out a design within the shape, for example I’m cutting out random triangles and diamonds within this heart to make a mosaic style design. This is time consuming but it’s also very very cheap!
The stencil wraps easily around the cake if you buy it in a roll, which makes applying it to the cake very easy.
Spread frosting over it, scrape off the excess and smooth it with your
You can make your stencil as detailed as you want it to be, and the result is neat and unique.
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For a pre-made stencil follow the same steps: wrap the stencil around the cake and then spread frosting over it and scrape it off.
I should mention that your cake needs to be cold before you do this, so that the frosting has set and doesn’t get damaged by the stencil.
This pre-made stencil is much more detailed than my homemade stencil and if you can find a reasonably priced stencil, I think it’s worth buying one if you want to make your cake really impressive.
Let’s use up the leftover frosting from both cakes and look at two options for borders.
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The very cheap option is to spoon the frosting into a ziplock bag, seal it, and cut a piece off one of the bottom corners to make a homemade piping bag.
To pipe a border, start at the side of the cake and squeeze a dot out, pulling away sideways to leave a tail on the dot and then squeeze out the next dot to cover that tail. The seam of the ziplock bag will leave a line of texture on your dots so hold the bag at the same angle all the way around the cake, so that the seam is always facing the same way.
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The splurge option is a piping bag with a medium sized piping tip like a #12 tip. Put the piping tip in the piping bag and spoon your leftover frosting into the bag. Push the frosting down to the top and twist the end to make piping easier.
Pipe a dot onto the bottom of the cake, using the same technique of pulling away sideways and overlapping the tail of each dot with the next dot. These dots are much rounder and smoother than the dots piped with a ziplock bag, but that’s not necessarily a good thing…
The texture from the seam on the ziplock bag dots looks nice and so does the shape of the dots. For a beaded border like this, I don’t think it’s worth splurging on a piping bag and tips. However, having piping bags and a variety of tips does give you lots of options for different types of borders and other piping.
If you have any questions about this, ask me in the comments! If you’re looking for inspiration, join my ClubPLUS for access to ALL of my online courses as well as live online sessions for members only!
Here’s the video version of this tutorial:
Let’s decorate a cake in five minutes! Use a simple technique with just an
If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.
First, prepare your colour palette. Your “paint” will be buttercream! Check consistency of your buttercream before you start mixing and it should be easy to stir and spread. This is my 4 Minute Buttercream.
I like to use a cupcake pan as a pallet because it keeps all of the colors separate and it’s easy to mix them in one of these. You don’t have to use all 12 cups – I’m just going to use nine for this cake. Since you only need a very small amount of buttercream for each colour, just one drop of gel will create very bright and bold colours.
I tend to gravitate to the same colours for my cakes so choosing a color palette online by googling “colour palette” forces me out of my comfort zone to try new colour combinations, which I almost always end up loving!
Now that your colours are ready, it’s time to paint a cake! The frosting on your cake needs to have set, so that you can apply pressure to it without damaging it. I put this cake in the fridge for an hour to chill and set the frosting.
You’ll need an
Press the tip of the
Before changing colour, wipe your
What’s nice about painting onto a cake when the frosting has sent is that if you paint anywhere you don’t want to paint you can scrape that off with your
Paint onto the cake again and again to go all the way round the bottom of the cake. Always start with the tip of your
To add even more texture you can press sprinkles into the paint, and it’s easiest to do this straight after you’ve painted the cake so that the buttercream “paint” is still soft and sticky and then the sprinkles will attach easily.
The quickest way to add sprinkles is to dip your finger into water, shake off the excess or dab it on a paper towel so your finger is just damp, not wet, and then press your finger into the sprinkles and they’ll stick to the moisture on your finger. Press your finger into the paint and the sprinkles will stick to that instead of your finger.
For my next 5 minute cake decorating video I’m going to choose a tool chosen by YOU – comment below with your tool suggestions and I’ll pick one to get creative with!
If you’ve enjoyed this tutorial you’ll LOVE my classes, where I teach unique cake designs broken down into four manageable steps in less than 20 minutes of video modules. Join my ClubPLUS for access to every class and course on my online cake school!
Here’s the video version of this tutorial:
