Have you ever wondered how to get frosting so perfect that it looks like fondant? I’m going to show you how to get smooth frosting using just 3 tools: a turntable, an offset spatula and a frosting scraper. If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.

I frost all of my cakes with my 4 Minute Buttercream but this technique will work for whipped cream, ganache, and meringue buttercreams as well. Whatever you use for your frosting, the consistency is very important. If it sticks to the cake in clumps and pulls off the cake when you try to spread it, it’s too thick.

To test the frosting before spreading it onto your cake, scoop some up with a spatula. It needs to be thick enough that it holds its shape when you lift a spatula out of the bowl, but the peaks should be smooth, not rugged. If you’re using my 4 Minute Buttercream you can thin it out with a bit of cream or milk until you get a nice spreadable consistency.

After you’ve built your cake, start by spooning some frosting onto the top. Use an offset spatula to spread it all over the top of the cake, going right up and over the edges of the cake so there’s no cake exposed on top. It’s easiest to do this with a cold cake. I put my cake layers in the freezer for about 30 minutes before I frost them. This makes them firmer, so crumbs are less likely to come off.

Never lift the spatula straight up off the cake, because it will pull the frosting and maybe some cake up with it. Angle the spatula slightly and pull it off the cake in a sweeping motion and that way it will come off neatly.

Once the top is covered, put the top of the spatula in the middle of the cake and angle the spatula at about 45 degree and then spin the cake, scraping off the top of the frosting and leaving a smooth top. You can do this a few times until you’re happy with the top.

Then use your offset spatula to apply the frosting to the sides of the cake, spreading it around a bit at a time, swiping the spatula off the cake in a continuous motion when you’re finished with a section instead of lifting it straight off the cake because that would pull off the frosting and maybe some of the cake crumbs.

I like to go from top to bottom with the frosting, and then I go around the top again to make sure the frosting goes up over the top of the cake. If it doesn’t, you’ll have gaps in between the sides and top of the frosting.

This first coat of frosting is a crumb coat, to lock in any crumbs that come off the cake, and we’re going to do a second coat of frosting later so this one doesn’t have to be perfect. You’ll probably be able to see the cake through the frosting in some places and that’s fine. We’ll cover it up later,

Next you need a frosting scraper or frosting smoother. Anything with a flat side – it can be plastic, metal or acrylic. Hold it against the side of the cake and spin the turntable towards you with the other hand, scraping the frosting smoother around the cake. When you can’t spin the turntable any further, swipe the frosting smoother off the cake.

After going around the cake a few times with your frosting smoother, you’ll notice some areas where there are indents in the frosting, where it’s not as thick as it is over the rest of the cake. Use your offset spatula to fill these areas in, spreading a bit of frosting over them and then scrape with your frosting smoother again.

When you’ve filled in all of the gaps, scrape with your frosting smoother again. Remember that this coat of frosting doesn’t have to be perfect – it’s just the first layer.

When you’ve finished your crumb coat, it needs to set before you apply the next coat. I chill my cake layers before frosting so my crumb coat sets within a few minutes in a fridge but if your cake is at room temperature, you can leave it for about an hour to set or put it in the fridge for 30 minutes or in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Now we’re going to repeat the process, starting with the top of the cake, using an offset spatula to spread frosting all over the top of the cake and then spinning the cake to smooth out the top. Your offset spatula should reach from the middle of the cake all the way to the edges. You’re going to smooth the top again later so this isn’t the final surface, but it’s easier later if it’s already neat.

Now apply the frosting to the sides, going from the top all the way down to the bottom, spreading it from side to side to cover the whole cake. You might need to spread more buttercream around the top of the sides to make sure the frosting goes all the way up over the top of the sides of the cake, to make sure there are no gaps, aiming for the same thickness all the way around the sides of the cake.

Scrape around the cake with your frosting smoother and after each scrape, wipe any frosting off from the frosting smoother into a bowl with your offset spatula.

After a few scrapes, use your offset spatula and some more frosting to touch up any indents in the frosting, where it isn’t as thick as on the rest of the cake. Scrape around with your frosting smoother until you’re happy with the smoothness of the sides. It’s important to wipe off your bench scraper after every time you smooth the cake, so you’re not wiping bits of frosting back onto the cake where it’s already smooth.

If you start spinning the turntable just before you press the bench scraper against the frosting, you won’t indent the frosting when the bench scraper touches it. You’ll leave a little textured line when you lift the bench scraper off the frosting so when you do your next scrape, start with the bench scraper on the other side of that line so you cover it up with the next scrape.

Smooth frosting is the foundation for so many cake designs. Once you’ve mastered this, you can decorate all kinds of styles of cakes. I have a free online course on 10 Frosting Techniques and you can sign up here.

When you’re happy with the sides, tidy up the top edge of the frosting on the cake. Swipe your frosting smoother or offset spatula from outside the cake into the middle, pulling any overhanging frosting with it. The pressure of your frosting smoother will cause the frosting on the sides below to bulge a bit but don’t worry about that yet – this is just the first round.

Scrape around the sides of the cake again to flatten the bulge of frosting around the top of the sides and then tidy up the top again, swiping from the outside to the middle.

You can do this as many times as you like, until you like the shape of the cake. By alternating between scraping the sides and the top of the cake, the edge around the top of the cake will get neater and sharper as you go.

This technique takes a few tries to perfect but I love how simple it is – you only need a turntable, offset spatula and frosting smoother. To give you an idea of my process, in real time this cake took me 18 minutes to frost.

You can watch the video of this tutorial below or for my online ‘Frost Along’ class, where I frost a cake from start to finish while you follow each step as you frost your cake, click here.

Here’s the video version of this tutorial:

Meringue pops make fun, colourful cake toppers or they’re a whimsical dessert on their own!

This recipe makes about 24 meringue pops, depending on their size.

Ingredients
4 egg whites (about 160g or 5 1/2 oz)
1 cup (225g or 8oz) of sugar
pinch of salt
about 24 cookie pops, wooden skewers or toothpicks

Method

1. Separate 4 eggs by cracking them and then passing the yolk back and forth between the two halves of the eggshell, letting the egg whites fall into the bowl of your mixer. Save the yolks for another use. Add sugar and salt to the mixing bowl.

2. In a small saucepan, bring about an inch of water to a boil. Turn off the heat and place the bowl of your mixer on top of the saucepan so it’s not touching the water.

3. Whisk the mixture with a whisk for 2 minutes. Pinch a bit of the mixture and rub your fingers together. If you can feel any grains of sugar, whisk for another minute. If the mixture is smooth, it’s ready for the next step!

4. Transfer the bowl to your mixer and use the whisk attachment to whisk until stiff peaks form, about 7 minutes.

5. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and preheat oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit (95 degrees Celsius). Optionally, divide mixture into bowls and add a few drops of gel food colour to each one, folding it gently to mix.

7. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a star tip (I used a 1M) and pipe swirls onto the parchment paper, leaving an inch between each one in case they expand during baking.

For two tone meringue pops, place two colours of the meringue mixture side by side in the piping bag.

8. To jazz up the meringue pops, sprinkle them now (before baking) with sugar pearls, sprinkles or sanding sugar.

9. Optionally, insert a cookie stick, wooden skewer or toothpick into each meringue, pushing in gently into the middle of the meringue swirl. If you prefer, you can place the stick on the baking tray before piping the meringues, piping a tiny dot of the meringue mixture onto the tray to attach the stick so that it doesn’t move around while you’re piping the meringue swirl.

10. Bake for 90 minutes. Touch a meringue and if it’s still stick, bake for another 30 minutes. When the meringues are hard, turn off the oven but leave the meringues inside for 2-3 hours to cool gradually so they don’t crack.

11. Now push the pops into your cake or store them in an airtight container at room temperature or in the fridge.

Watch my video tutorial below for more visual, step by step instructions!

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to decorate a cake with these gorgeous wavy buttercream ruffles and very easy mermaid tail and seaweed made with sugar! If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.

Start by preparing the sugar decorations. You can use any hard candy or boiled sweets for these – I’m using green and blue Jolly Ranchers.

Put them in bowls and microwave them for 30 seconds at a time until they become a liquid that moves around like maple syrup would when you tilt the bowls. These aren’t cooked enough yet – they’re not completely solid but they’re moving very slowly, more like a thick honey than maple syrup, so when I push the green sugar into my mold with a spatula, it sticks to my spatula instead of pouring easily into the mold.

After microwaving them for another 30 seconds the consistency is perfect!

The melted sugar pours easily into the mold, spreading to fill it. This is a silicone mold so its fine to use a liquid this hot, and sugar gets VERY hot when you melt it so be careful not to touch it.

Leave it to set and harden for about 30 minutes and then carefully push it out of the mold. Because the middle of the tail is so thin and narrow, it’s easy to snap it as you push it out and if that happens you can just put the whole thing – the mold with the sugar inside – back into the microwave to melt the sugar again and then leave it to set and try again to take it out.

If you do this too soon, before the sugar has set, the sugar will stick to the mold so you’ll know if needs more time. 15 minutes later and the tail has set so some out of the mold easily. If there are any pieces of sugar around the tail shape you can snap them off now.

Now repeat the process, heating up the rest of the coloured sugar in the microwave and pouring it into the mold, and I like to use two colours for this but you don’t have to. You can try to tidy up the edges now with a knife but sugar I really sticky so it’s a bit tricky, so it’s easier to snap these extra bits off later, when the sugar has set.

Now immediately push the other tail gently onto the top of this one, so that it sticks to the melted sugar and they’ll merge together as the melted half sets.

Leave it for about 30 minutes and then push it out of the mold, pulling back the silicon and using your fingers to push from behind to gently push out the tail.

Now for some seaweed! Use some more candy, melting it the same way and then pouring it in strips onto a piece of parchment paper, or you could use a silicon baking mat. I’m using green and blue again, and after reheating the blue a few times it becomes this dark emerald green colour which is perfect for seaweed.

Leave them to set for a few minutes and as soon as they’re cool enough to touch and hard enough to be able to lift up from the paper, peel them off and gently twist the two ends between your hands.

This light green one is the perfect temperature for this, just set but still flexible enough to be able to twist easily, but the darker ones have sat here for a bit too long so I can’t twist them much.

Now you’ll need your cake, which should be covered in smooth frosting. Use a piping bag fitted with a petal tip and hold it with the narrow end of the tip to point outwards, with the wide end pressed against the cake. Squeeze the buttercream out and lift the bag slowly, keeping the wide end of the tip pressed gently against the side of the cake and wiggling your hand to create wavy ruffles going up the cake.

I’m overlapping each ruffle by about half so that you can’t see any of the frosted cake in between them. The more slowly you move your piping bag up the side of the cake as you squeeze the buttercream out, the more your ruffles will wiggle and become wavy, and you can exaggerate this to give the ruffles even more movement by wiggling your hand slightly as well.

You can do this immediately after frosting your cake, you just have to be very careful that you don’t knock the frosting with the piping tip because you’ll damage it. I like to let the frosting set before piping ruffles because then I can’t damage it and also because it get firmer so it holds its shape, so the weight of the ruffles won’t drag the frosting down which can make your edges around the top of the cake less sharp.

You can use any petal shaped tip for this and with the Wilton petal tips, the higher the number, the longer the petal so the wider your ruffles will be. This is a 104 which I love for this little 4” cake but for an 8 or 10” cake I would use a #125 so that the ruffles would be wider and I think in better proportion to the size of the cake, and I wouldn’t need to pipe as many to cover the surface of the cake.

Now make a little splash for the mermaid tail to stick out of, using the same piping tip with the narrow end facing outwards as you spin the cake on the turntable to pipe a little circle. I’m piping another one of top, and you want the hole in the middle of the circles to be smaller than the wide base of the tail so that it’s buried inside these ruffles and it looks like the rest of the mermaid is inside the cake.

Straight away, before the buttercream sets, push the tail into the middle, pushing down until you feel the resistance of the cake so you know the tail is wedged firmly into the frosting.

To add the seaweed, just choose where you want it to go and press it into the side of the cake. If your frosting has set you’ll have to use a bit more pressure to attach the seaweed, than if you’ve just frosted your cake, but if you have only just frosted the cake and the frosting is still soft and sticky, you’re more likely to create a bulge in the frosting when you push the seaweed in, so I like to let the frosting set before doing this.

Now refrigerate the cake to chill the ruffles so that they set and hold their shape before adding some sparkle. I’m using disco dust on a paintbrush for this.

Gently dab the edges of the ruffles and because they’ve been chilled you can brush along them without damaging them. If they start to soften as the buttercream warms up you can put the cake back in the fridge for 15 minutes to chill it again.

I recommend refrigerating the cake until 2-4 hours before serving it, so that the ruffles hold their shape perfectly without dropping and after a few hours at room temperature the cake and frosting will have warmed up and will soft and delicious!

Here’s the video version of this tutorial:

This one bag piping technique is not only very easy, requiring minimal tools and with minimal cleanup, but it also creates really striking colorful results! If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.

All you need is a piping bag with any piping tip, and I’ll show you a few different examples in this tutorial.

Tint your buttercream the colours you want and the first way to do this is to line them up down the middle of a piece of cling film or saran wrap.

I like this method because you can see what you’re doing and it’s easier to clean the piping bag at the end but I’ll show you two other methods in a moment.

If you use the cling film method, fold the cling film over the buttercream and roll it into a log that will fit into a piping bag later.

Twist the ends to hold the buttercream in place and cut off one end where the buttercream begins.

Then drop the buttercream log into your piping bag with the cut side facing downwards, towards the piping tip.

Now pipe onto your cake and as you pipe, the colours higher up in the bag will gradually push through the middle of the bag and then out through the tip at the end, so the colours will change gradually and blend slowly into each other.

I’m using a 199 piping tip for these rosettes, which are quite dramatic, gothic-like spikes. This one-bag piping technique looks really striking on this cake, as you can see different colours from the bag showing up in different parts of the same piped rosette.

If you run out of buttercream, just add more buttercream to the top of the bag and then continue piping. If you’re using a cling film log within your piping bag, make sure you pull that out before adding more buttercream, otherwise the cling film will get caught in the piping tip as your pipe the buttercream out.

I love how dramatic this cake looks, and no one would ever guess how easy it is to achieve the gradient of colours!

Now for some variations and some notes about what can go wrong and how to avoid or fix those mistakes. You can use this technique for any kind of cake, not just a round one. Here I’m going to use it for a sheet cake and it works well on cupcakes too!

I’m cutting my sheet cake in half to make an extra long cake and arranging the halves on a board to display it.

Instead of the cling film method you can spoon your buttercream into a piping bag. It’s easiest and less messy to fold your piping bag over a glass to hold it open while you do this. Make sure you push each colour of buttercream all the way down into the bottom of the bag so that there’s no air trapped in the bag, which will cause the buttercream to spit out later as you’re piping.

And here are my pretty pastel rainbow colours, ready for one-bag piping! By following the colours of the rainbow in order, not jumping around too much, the colours belnd into each other nicely but I’ll show you on the next cake what happens if you don’t order the colours this way.

I’m starting at one end of the cake, piping with the first colour of buttercream in the bag, which is this pale green colour.

If you have too much of one colour in the bag and you want to move on to the next colour, like I want to do here, pipe some of the buttercream out into a bowl until you see the next colour coming through and then go back to your cake.

As soon as I see the blue coming through the green frosting in the bowl, I’m going back to the cake, and now the rosettes and swirls are green with some blue.

As you continue piping you’ll see the colours blend into each other, moving onto the colours higher up in the bag but still incorporating the previous colours in parts of the piping. With this technique the colours don’t pipe out individually, like they would if you used different piping bags for each color. Instead, each colour pipes through the previous colours, so they blend together gradually.

I’ve run out of buttercream some I’m folding the bag over a glass again and you can either add more of the last colour, which for me would be that pale orange, or a new colour, and I’m choosing to do a pale coral for my last colour.

Squeeze the buttercream all the way down and because the rest of the colours are still lining the bag, when you squeeze the bag to pipe out this new colour of buttercream it’s pushing out past all of those other colours so they’ll also be incorporated in the piping of this new colour, continuing this pretty blending effect throughout the cake.

Here’s an example of when colours don’t blend as prettily together. When you line up colours in the bag that are contrasting, like blue and orange, as the orange pushes through the blue buttercream in the piping bag the colours will blend to make a sludgy shade of brown.

You can use this technique for other buttercream details, not just frosting a cake, like piped flowers. I’m layering my colours in the bag and since I’m not using a glass to open the bag and I’m not pushing each colour down to the bottom of the bag, the colours will blend together randomly.

As I pipe, the first flowers are pink and the more orange and yellow comes through in the later flowers, so I could arrange these on a cake to make a cascade of ombré coloured flowers going down the side of the cake.

I love this technique because it’s so versatile so as well as being easy to do and easy to clean up, there are endless possibilities for cake designs with it! I’d love to see what you create so if you share any pictures on Instagram please tag me, @britishgirlbakes.

Here’s the video version of this tutorial:

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to create camouflage buttercream and how to make camouflage cake toppers with chocolate!

To tint buttercream for camouflage, you’ll need more than just green food colouring because that will make only bright shades of green. To create duller shades of green, add a tiny bit or orange or red or brown with a toothpick.

You can see how this changes the color from grass or leaf green to more of an olive or khaki colour.

Frost your cake with any of the colours you’re going to use for the camouflage design, but I recommend choosing one of the lighter colours because if you use a darker colour, you’ll need very thick frosting for the lighter colours to cover up that dark base colour of frosting. I have a detailed tutorial on how to get perfectly smooth buttercream with sharp edges.

You’re going to cover all of this base frosting with patches of different shades of green and brown, so it’s okay if you have a few irregularities in it, but this coat of frosting gives the cake its final shape so you want the sides to be straight and the top edge to be sharp. When you’re happy with the frosting, put the cake in the fridge to chill the frosting so that it hardens for the next step.

Meanwhile, prepare the rest of your colours. To make brown I’m using melted chocolate, which I’ve let cool for a few minutes before mixing it into my buttercream so that it doesn’t melt the buttercream.

The more chocolate you add, the darker the colour, and if you find that the chocolate makes the buttercream too stiff, just add a bit of milk or cream to thin out the consistency. You could of course use brown colouring instead for this.

For my greens, I’m setting aside some of the frosting that I used for my base frosting on the cake, and adding more leaf green and orange gel colours to the rest to make another two shades of darker green.

Put your buttercream colours into piping bags with the ends snipped off so there’s a small hole for the buttercream to come out of. If you only have one piping bag you can do this one colour at a time, emptying and washing and drying the bag between colours.

Once your cake is cold and the frosting is firm, create the first patch of colour on your cake. You’ll need an offset spatula and a frosting smoother for this. If you’re using a piping bag, it’s easiest to pipe the outline first and then fill in the middle. If you don’t have a piping bag or don’t want to use one, you can spread the coloured buttercream straight onto the cake. You’ll have a bit less control over the shape of your patches of colour and they’ll be more rugged and uneven around the edges, which might be what you’re looking for anyway.

After covering the area you want with buttercream, use your offset spatula to scrape off any excess so that it’s not too thick.

Then use your frosting smoother to scrape over it a few times to smooth it out and also make the frosting thinner so that it doesn’t stick out so much from the frosting on the cake.

If you alternate the direction you scrape, pulling the frosting smoother towards you once and then pushing it away from you the next time, you’ll keep the patch of buttercream closer to the original shape you piped or spread. If you pull the frosting smoother towards you every time, you’ll drag the buttercream closer to you and make the patch wider.

You can pipe or spread several patches at a time and then switch to your frosting smoother to scrape them all, but keep in mind that the longer you leave the piped or spread buttercream sitting on top of the frosting, the colder it will get as it starts to stick to the cold frosting on the cake, and then it won’t spread as easily when you use your frosting smoother.

This means that if you pipe several patches at once, your patches will end up very similar to the original shape you piped or spread.

For example, look at how intentional the patch of colour above is, which I scraped after piping several patches at once, compared to this patch, which I piped and then scraped immediately.

If you scrape too much buttercream off, revealing the frosting underneath, just spread or pipe a bit more on and scrape over it again with your frosting smoother.

You don’t have to stick to the sides of your cake, you can do the top as well. Wipe your frosting smoother off after each time you use it so that you don’t drag buttercream back onto the cake, which will mess up any smoothing you’ve already done.

To make a patch go over the top of the cake and down onto the sides, follow exactly the same technique, starting by spreading or piping on the buttercream.

Scrape off any excess with your offset spatula and then smooth it with your frosting smoother on both the sides and top of the cake, and by alternating smoothing the side and the top you’ll get a nice sharp edge at the top.

Chill the cake when you finish the first colour and when the frosting has set you can do the next colour. Repeat the process: pipe, spread, and scrape to smooth.

I’m doing my lightest colour next, which is the buttercream leftover from frosting my cake. You could just leave some areas without frosting to leave the base coat exposed, but I want the frosting to be smooth so I’m covering up the base coat with a bit of that colour of frosting so that it’s sitting level with the rest of the patches of frosting on the cake.

Finally, my darkest colour of buttercream. You can imagine that if I’d chosen this colour for the base frosting on the cake, since it’s such a dark colour, when I spread the lightest colour of buttercream over it to make light green patches I’d have to spread it really thickly to cover up this dark colour. That’s why it’s best to use the lightest colour or even which for the base frosting.

You don’t have to do this one colour at a time – you can switch back and forth between colours if you like – but you should space the patches out around the cake so that they don’t touch each other until you’ve chilled the cake to set the patches, because if you make two patches of different colours right next to each other, the buttercream will blend together where it meets as you scrape to smooth one colour, instead of being distinct coloured patches.

When you’ve covered the whole cake with buttercream patches, put it back in the fridge to set the frosting and meanwhile, make some camouflage decorations!

Melt chocolate or candy melts in the microwave at 50% power for a minute at a time so that they don’t burn and seize.

This is parchment paper or you can use wax paper, and I’m spooning the melted chocolate onto the paper and then using the back of the spoon to swipe it upwards to make some chocolate foliage for the cake.

Put them in the fridge to set when you finish, which will take about 30 minutes, or you can leave them at room temperature for about an hour. Since the cake has been chilled in between colours of patches to set the buttercream, these won’t stick onto the frosting on the cake but I’ll show you how to attach them in a minute.

You can use melted chocolate to decorate anything you want to use on top of the cake, like these macarons. I’m shaking my spoonful of melted chocolate back and forth over them to drizzle them with two shades of green.

Candy melts are easy to use because they’re already coloured and they melt easily but if you prefer you can use white chocolate and after melting it, add a drop of gel color.

Use your leftover buttercream to attach your camouflage decorations to the cake. I’m using a piping bag fitted with a 1M star tip and I’ve filled it with all of my leftover buttercream colours to make blended coloured buttercream.

Once your chocolate foliage has set, pipe swirls of buttercream onto the top of the cake.

Immediately after piping, while the buttercream is still soft and sticky, lift the pieces of chocolate foliage up from the paper and push them into the buttercream swirls.

If you chill the cake again when you’ve finished, that will set the buttercream swirls and hold the foliage securely in place.

For the sides of the cake, pipe or spread little dots of buttercream wherever you want the chocolate foliage to go.

Then push the foliage into them to attach them to the side of the cake.

If you want to overlap them, pipe buttercream onto the chocolate and then press another piece firmly against it.

I’m piping some more swirls on top to attach the macarons but you could use lollipops or candy in different shades of green and brown for this, or macarons in those colours instead of drizzling them with green and brown chocolate.

I added some more foliage to the side of the cake to finish it and here’s the finished result!

Here’s the video version of this tutorial:

Number cakes are very popular for birthdays but instead of the original version made with sugar cookies I’m going to show you how to use cake! If you prefer to watch this tutorial, scroll down to the bottom of the page.

I started with a batch of my Perfect Chocolate cake batter. For two layers of a quarter sheet cake, which makes two numbers of three layers each, I used enough batter for a six inch cake.

Line your baking pans with parchment paper and leave them on the parchment to give your numbers more support later in the process. After the cakes cool, chill them for thirty minutes in the freezer (still on the parchment) to make them easier to carve into numbers later.

While the cakes are chilling, prepare your buttercream. For two numbers for three layers each you’ll need about half a batch of my 4 Minute Buttercream. I used peanut butter buttercream by mixing a quarter of a cup of peanut butter into my buttercream. Add milk or cream until your frosting is smooth and easy to stir but still holds its shape.

Fill a piping bag with frosting. I’m using a round tip but you can play around with different star or open star tips for a different look.

Now sketch out your numbers. Use a piece of paper the size of your cake pan and fold it into three parts or however many numbers you’re going to cut out of your sheet cake. Then when you sketch your numbers within the folds of the paper, you know they’ll fit onto your cake.

Cut out your numbers and place them on a chilled cake, cutting around them with a serrated knife. Cold cakes are much less crumbly than room temperature cakes so they’re easier to cut neatly.

Don’t worry about how the top surface of your cake looks because it’s going to be covered with frosting soon.

For my cake, I baked 2 sheets cakes and I cut three numbers out of each sheet cake, so I had 6 numbers in total – three 2s and three 1s.

Arrange your first layer of each number on a cake board using a few dollops of frosting to secure them to the board.

Now use your piping bag to pipe little dollops of frosting on each number. It looks best if you align your dollops and rows but of course if your numbers curve like the top of my 2, you’ll need more dollops on the outer edge of the curve.

If your dollops aren’t forming nice clean peaks because the frosting is breaking off before the tip of the dollop, you’ll need to add more liquid to your frosting.

After piping your first layer of dollops, place the second layer of each number on top. I like to do this straight away, while the frosting is still fresh and sticky, but you have to be careful as you lower the cakes because if you have to adjust the position after lowering it, you’ll damage the dollops underneath.

Now pipe on another layer of dollops. Try to keep them all the same size. These dollops are going to be covered by cake so it won’t be very noticeable if they aren’t perfectly neat and even but it’s good practice for the final layer of dollops, which will be visible on top of the cake.

Place your final layers of cake on top. At this point you can tidy up your cake board by brushing away any crumbs using a pastry brush or wiping them off with a towel or paper towel.

Pipe on your final layer of dollops and then comes the fun part: decorating!

Straight after piping the final dollops, I sprinkled on some gold glitter and pressed every type of peanut butter chocolate I could find into the dollops, adding a few fresh flowers to make the cake more celebratory. It’s important to decorate immediately after piping the dollops, while the frosting is still sticky so the decorations are easy to place and they stick to the frosting.

Store your cake in an airtight container like a cake caddy. If you’re transporting it I recommend putting it in the freezer for about an hour first so it’s firm for the drive.

This cake is obviously perfect for a 21st birthday but also as a whimsical idea for someone older who would love to be 21 again! If you follow this tutorial to make a number cake or letter cake please tag @britishgirlbakes on social media so I can see your creation!

To watch the video version of this tutorial, click the play button below:

Ganache can be used to fill, frost and decorate a cake and in this tutorial I’ll show you how to make it, how to use it to frost a cake, and how to adjust the ingredient ratios for different results, like using it for a drip or to make truffles or a glaze for donuts.

Making ganache is incredibly simple. There are only 2 ingredients: heavy whipping cream, called double cream in the UK, and semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate. Weigh the ingredients, and I’ll give you the quantities in a moment, and then heat the cream in the microwave or in a pan on the stove.

I like to heat the cream on the stove so I can see what’s happening, because you don’t want to overheat the cream. Remove the pan from the heat as soon as bubbles start forming around the edges of the pan.

Immediately add the chocolate to the pan. You can use chocolate chips or a bar of chocolate but you should chop up a bar of chocolate into approximately equal sized pieces, so that it all melts at the same speed. Use a spatula to push all of the chocolate underneath the cream and then leave it for 5 minutes, still sitting on the counter, not over heat.

Stir the ganache until it’s smooth. If you still have lumps of chocolate even after stirring for a minute or so, you can put the pan back on the stove over a low heat and stir until the lumps melt.

To make ganache to fill and frost a cake, use equal amounts of chocolate and cream, so the ratio is 1:1. So if you use 200g of chocolate, use 200g of cream, too. After making the ganache, leave it to set, which will take about 3 hours at room temperature. You can put it in the fridge to speed up the process but stir it every 15 minutes to keep it smooth. Then use a whisk or a whisk attachment of a mixer to whisk the ganache for a few minutes, until it lightens in colour and has a consistency similar to whipped cream.

Then fill and frost your cake as normal. You’ll probably need a crumb coat, which is a very thin layer of frosting to trap any crumbs that come off the cake, and then you should let that set for about an hour at room temperature or 30 minutes in the fridge before applying your final coat of frosting. You can make smooth frosting with a frosting smoother or textured frosting with a textured cake comb, which is what I’m doing here.

Don’t be intimidated by ganache – frosting a cake with ganache is almost exactly the same as using my 4 Minute Buttercream frosting, so if you’ve used one you’ll be able to use the other. To get rid of any smudges of ganache on the cake board, let the ganache set first and then you can try scraping the smudges with an offset spatula or it’s more effective to wipe them off with a paper towel wrapped around your finger.

To make a drip, use 3 parts of chocolate and 2 parts of cream, so for example if you use 150g of chocolate, use 100g of cream. Let the ganache come to room temperature before you use it and it will thicken as it cools. Your cake should be chilled in the fridge before you apply the drip. Always do a test drip on the back of the cake to see how the ganache will behave, and then you can adjust the consistency of your drip if you need to.

If the drip is too runny, even if it’s at room temperature, you can add more chocolate, heat over a low heat on the stove, stirring until it’s smooth, and then let it cool to room temperature again. If it’s too thick, you can add more cream to loosen it.

Use a spoon or a condiment bottle to drizzle the ganache around the top edge of the cake, pausing wherever you want there to be a drip. Having a cold cake helps to stop the drip on its way down the cake, instead of running all the way down the cake and pooling at the bottom, on the cake board. You can go back and add more drips if you want to, but you should do that immediately after doin got first drips, so that those don’t set first because then there would be a seam where the new drips join the old drips.

If you’re going to cover the top of the cake you should do that now too, immediately after doing the drips around the edge of the cake. Spoon the ganache on or drizzle it with a bottle and then use an offset spatula to smooth it over the top of the cake.

If you like you can spin the cake while slowly dragging the tip of your offset spatula towards the center of the cake to create a spiral pattern on top of the cake.

To make truffles with ganache, make the ganache with 2 parts of chocolate and 1 part of cream. Put the ganache in the fridge until it firms up, about 2 hours, and then scoop it up with a spoon and roll it between your palms into a ball.

You can drop the truffles into a bowl of cocoa powder or powdered sugar or sprinkles and then move them around to coat them completely. I’m putting these around the top of the cake before the ganache drip sets, so that they stick to the ganache, but if the drip has set you could use a tiny dot of leftover ganache frosting or drip to make them stick.

To use ganache to glaze donuts, which is also a 2:1 ratio of chocolate to cream, as soon as you’ve made the ganache and stirred It until it’s smooth, lower a donut into it and twist the donut to coat it in ganache. Lift it up, flip it over, and place it on a wire rack. If there’s ganache in the hole of the doughnut, tap the rack on the counter a few times so that the ganache settles. I cover this in a lot more detail in my tutorial on how to make doughnuts with cake batter.

You can add sprinkles or crushed nuts or candies or whatever you like to garnish or decorate the doughnuts.

If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, click the play button below:

I love frosting cakes with chocolate ganache – it’s rich and delicious, spreads smoothly onto a cake, and is ridiculously easy to make! When it sets it’s firm so it’s a good option to apply before covering a cake with fondant.

To use ganache as frosting, the quantities of chocolate and cream are equal but you can change with the consistency of the ganache to get different results, for example to decorate a cake with a drip, make chocolate truffles, or even glaze doughnuts! I have a detailed tutorial on different ways to make and use ganache here.

You can use any kind of chocolate for your ganache but you might have to adjust the recipe – the recipe below is for dark or semi-sweet chocolate, which has a ratio of 1 part chocolate to 1 part cream. For white chocolate you’ll need a ratio of 3 parts chocolate to 1 part cream, for example 300g white chocolate and 100g cream.

Chocolate Ganache
Makes enough ganache to frost an 8″ cake

Ingredients
500ml of heavy cream (about 2 cups)
500g (about 3 cups) of semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips or in bar form

Method

1. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, heat cream until bubbles form around the sides of the pan. Do not let cream simmer or boil.

2. Meanwhile, if you’re using a bar of chocolate rather than chocolate chips, chop chocolate into equal sized pieces no bigger than 1 inch.

3. Remove cream from heat and add chocolate, using a spoon or spatula to move it around so that it is completely covered by the cream. Leave for 5 minutes.

4. Stir the cream until all of the chocolate has melted and the mixture is thick and smooth.

5. Leave to cool for 2-3 hours at room temperature or speed up the process by putting it in the fridge, stirring every 15 minutes to prevent hard lumps of chocolate forming.

6. To make frosting, whisk room temperature ganache for about 2 minutes until it lightens in colour and has a consistency slightly thicker than whipped cream.

To store, refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 1 month.

In this tutorial I’m going to show you 6 ways to use parchment paper or wax paper to decorate cakes! To watch the video version of this tutorial, scroll down to the bottom of the page.

1. Perfectly neat sprinkle borders

Place a frosted cake on a baking tray, which will catch any falling sprinkles. The frosting needs to have set for this so that it’s firm and no longer sticky. I like to chill my cakes in the fridge for an hour to set the frosting.

Wrap a piece of parchment paper around the cake so that it blocks off the area above where you want the sprinkles to stop. You can pin the parchment in place or if there’s any condensation on the outside of the cake, if you’ve moved it from the fridge to room temperature, the condensation might be enough to make the parchment stick in place. Pour your sprinkles around the base of the cake.

Use an offset spatula or spoon or your hand to press the sprinkles into the cake. I used my 4 Minute Buttercream for this cake and I chilled the cake in the fridge for about an hour to set the frosting before doing this. You’ll need to use a bit of pressure the push the sprinkles into the frosting so that they stick, since the frosting won’t be sticky after it’s set.

Peel the parchment paper off to reveal a neat sprinkle border!

Click here for the full tutorial on this cake and 9 other epic rainbow cakes!

2. Make shapes on the sides of cakes

Draw a shape onto parchment paper and cut it out to make a homemade stencil.

Press the shape against a chilled cake (smooth frosting rather than textured frosting works best for this) and you can pin it into place to hold it still. The frosting on the cake must have set before you do this, otherwise the parchment wills stick to it and pull the frosting off when you remove the parchment.

Spread buttercream over the shape, spreading from the outside towards the middle of the shape to make sure you don’t accidentally push buttercream underneath the edges of the shape, which would smudge the outline of the shape.

I’ve made a pattern within this heart using a chopstick and I cover the details in my tutorial on cake decorating with cutlery. Smooth the buttercream with a frosting smoother, scraping until the buttercream is as thick as you want it to be. Here, for example, I’ve scraped until I can see the purple frosting through the colours of the buttercream shape.

Peel the parchment off to reveal a neat shape underneath!

If any buttercream got underneath your stencil you can gently scrape it off with a toothpick. Because the frosting of the cake is cold and hard, you won’t damage it with the toothpick.

Parchment stencils aren’t the best quality but they’re cheap and easy to make and create beautiful results!

A variation of this technique is to make a sprinkled shape. After spreading buttercream over the stencil and scraping off any excess to leave just a thin layer, press sprinkles into the frosting to fill the shape. Do this on a baking tray to catch any falling sprinkles.

When you peel the parchment stencil off, the shape on the cake will be completely filled with sprinkles!

For more Valentine’s Day cake decorating ideas click here!

3. Make flowers to decorate cakes or cupcakes

For these flowers you’ll need a petal tip, which can be straight (e.g. #125) or curved (e.g. #61), like either of these tips in the photo.

You’ll need a flower nail and little squares of parchment paper, which you can buy pre-cut or just cut out yourself from a roll of parchment paper. Squeeze or spread a little dot of buttercream onto your flower nail and press a parchment square on to secure it.

Hold your piping bag with the narrow end of the piping tip facing outwards and the wide end in the middle of the flower nail.

Squeeze some buttercream out as you twist the flower nail between your fingers and move the piping tip outwards and then pull it back inwards, to pipe a petal.

Continue all the way around the parchment to pipe a flower, starting and finishing each petal in the middle of the flower nail.

Use a small round tip to pipe a dot or a few dots in the middle of the flower to finish it.

Pull the parchment carefully off the nail and put it on a baking tray or a cutting board and place that in the fridge or freezer to chill and set the flower.

Frost your cake or cupcake and then immediately, while the frosting is still sticky, take the flower out of the fridge or freezer. Slide an offset spatula underneath the flower to separate it from the parchment paper.

Press the flower onto the frosting to attach it. To attach the flower to a cake, if the frosting on the cake has already set you can spread or pipe a dot of fresh frosting onto the cake to act as glue to attach the flower.

If you’re interested in more ways to pipe flowers with frosting, click here for my tutorial on 8 buttercream flowers.

4. Buttercream cut-outs

This is one of my favourite techniques! Spread buttercream onto parchment paper, which you can tape onto a cutting board or you can just hold it in place. Spread the buttercream as smooth as you can, and then put the cutting board with the parchment paper and buttercream into the freezer for 30 minutes or the fridge for an hour.

When the buttercream is cold and hard, cut the buttercream out with cookie cutters or a knife. If the shapes lift up with the cookie cutters, gently push them out to release them.

If the shapes stay attached to the parchment paper, use a knife or offset spatula to remove the surrounding buttercream to leave the shapes intact on the parchment.

If the buttercream has started to warm up and soften since you took it out of the fridge or freezer, put it back to chill it again so that the shapes harden. Then lift the shapes up with an offset spatula.

Press the shapes into the frosting on a cake. The frosting on the cake needs to be fresh and sticky for this, so that the shapes attach. If the frosting has already set you can spread some fresh buttercream onto the cake where the shape is going to go to attach it.

I have a very detailed tutorial on this technique with several variations like stripes and mosaic designs and rainbow or ombre patterns and you can watch it here.

5. Chocolate sails

For chocolate sails, melt some chocolate or candy melts at 50% power in the microwave so that they don’t burn and seize. Pour them onto a piece of parchment paper that’s at least as big as the sail you want to make.

Spread the chocolate around with an offset spatula to smooth it out. Aim for an even thickness all over. The thinner you spread the chocolate, the more fragile the sail will be.

Arrange the parchment inside a bowl, letting it buckle and wave to give the sail some movement. To create an open, bowl-shaped sail, don’t let different sides of the sail touch each other.

Another way to set the sail is to drape it over something like a bottle, arranging the parchment to give the sail the shape you want it to have. Let it set at room temperature for about an hour or if you’re impatient like I am, you can put it in the fridge to speed up the process!

When the chocolate has set, peel it from the parchment paper and arrange it on your cake!

Click here for my detailed, step by step tutorial on Chocolate Sails 5 Ways.

6. Chocolate cake wraps

To wrap a cake in chocolate, measure a piece of parchment so that it’s at least as high and as the cake or taller if you want it to be, and long enough to wrap around it with a bit of overlap, maybe half an inch.

Melt some chocolate and my favourite way to do this is in the microwave for a minute at a time at 50% power, stirring after each time, so that the chocolate doesn’t burn and seize. Pour the melted chocolate over the parchment paper.

Spread it all over the paper, going right up over the edges, and don’t worry about getting it smooth because this side is going to be pressed against the cake so you won’t see it. The thicker the chocolate is, the less fragile for the next step, so don’t spread it too thin.

Now you’ll need a crumb coated cake. The frosting on the cake doesn’t need to be perfect for this since you’ll be covering it with chocolate, but the cake does need to have straight sides and the shape you want it to have because the chocolate will mold onto that shape. Lift the parchment paper with chocolate up, sliding your hands underneath it.

Rest the bottom of the paper down on the cake board to line it up and lift upwards to press it against the side of the cake. The comb coat needs to have set for this, so I put my cake in the fridge for an hour before this step.

Wrap the chocolate all the way around the cake, making sure the bottom of the parchment rests on the cake board so that there isn’t any cake exposed at the bottom. You can do this with any shape of cake and I’m doing heart for this one. For a circle this is simple – just press it all the way around the cake, but for a shape with angles like this heart you can pinch the parchment at the point at the bottom of the heart so that the chocolate doesn’t curve around it instead of forming that sharp point.

Put the cake in the fridge to chill and set the chocolate for about an hour and then carefully peel the paper off, starting with a corner at the top because that’s the easiest to pinch, and as the parchment peels off you’ll leave a smooth chocolate wall around your cake!

You can decorate this however you like, like with a ribbon tied around it and using cake toppers is fun – I put a variety of chocolates on top of this one.

Store the cake in the fridge until about 2 hours before serving it so that the chocolate doesn’t melt.

To cut into it neatly, dip a sharp knife into hot water before each slice.

If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, click the play button below:

In this cookie dough cake, cookie dough is sandwiched between super soft vanilla cake layers and covered with silky smooth brown sugar frosting. It’s a rich cake but not overly sweet. Everyone who has tried it loves it!

There are quite a few parts to this cake but I’ll show you the quickest way to make and assemble it all.

Make the cake layers

I use my Very Vanilla cake layers for this cake but my Perfect Chocolate Cake tastes delicious with the cookie dough filling and brown sugar frosting, too! You'll find the ingredients and step by step instructions for the cake layers at the bottom of this page.

Prepare the base for the brown sugar frosting and cookie dough filling

Start by preparing the brown sugar frosting, which begins by cooking flour, milk and salt over a medium low heat for about 5 minutes. Whisk it constantly until it simmers to prevent any lumps forming.

The mixture will thicken suddenly so don't stop whisking for a moment! As soon as it starts to thicken, switch to a spatula. Scraping along the bottom and sides of the pan, stirring for about two minutes until the mixture thicken enough to leave ribbons when you lift the whisk:

It needs to be thick enough to holds its texture when you stir it. It will feel somewhere in between being liquid and solid.

Remove the pan from the heat and add vanilla. Mix that in and then transfer the mixture into a bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to cool to room temperature. It will thicken to a pudding-like consistency.

Now for the cookie dough, bake flour for 5 minutes at 350F or 175C. This kills any bacteria so that it’s safe to eat the cookie dough raw. Let the flour cool and then sift it to get rid of any lumps.

Make the cookie dough filling

In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix butter and brown sugar together at medium speed until it’s light and creamy. It will take about 5 minutes. This is going to the base of the cookie dough AND the brown sugar frosting. Take a third of this out now to use for the cookie dough. If you want to weigh a third, it will weigh 193g.

Add vanilla, mix it in, and then add the cooled flour and mix that in. The dough will get crumbly so add milk to pull everything together. It will become the consistency of cookie dough. Add mini chocolate chips and fold them into the dough. I like using semi-sweet chips since it balances the sweetness of the cookie dough. Mini chips are the perfect size because I think full size chips are too big and hard to bite into within a cake.

Divide this cookie dough into three equal parts: two for the filling between cake layers and one for cookie dough balls for the top of the cake.

For the filling, you'll need two pans that you baked your cakes in. Line the pans with plastic wrap. Then put one part of cookie dough in each and push it down to the bottom of the cake and up to the edges, to make a flat layer. Fold the plastic wrap over the dough to wrap it up within the pans and then put the pans in the freezer while you prepare the rest of the cake.

For the final part of cookie dough, use a teaspoon to scoop it up and then roll it between your hands to make 10 cookie dough balls. Put them on plate in the fridge until you’ve frosted your cake.

Make the brown sugar frosting

To finish off the brown sugar frosting, take the cooked flour and milk mixture out of the fridge. Add it to the rest of the butter and brown sugar in the mixer. Mix it at medium speed for 5 minutes, until it’s smooth and lighter in colour. Look how silky and decadent this frosting is! I can’t wait for you to taste it!

This brown sugar frosting has a LOT less sugar in it than buttercream so it’s not very sweet at all, which pairs perfectly with the sweet cookie dough filling.

If your frosting doesn’t thicken it could be for two reasons. First, if you don't cook the milk and flour mixture for long enough, until it thickens, your frosting won't thicken. Second, if you add the cooked milk and flour mixture to the butter and sugar before it cools to room temperature it will melt the butter and also won't thicken.

Assemble the cookie dough cake

Take the pans of cookie dough out of the freezer and unwrap them from the plastic wrap. You’ll have two identical cookie dough discs. They'll be cold enough to hold their shape so you can move them around easily as you assemble your cake.

Spread a dot of brown sugar frosting onto the middle of a cake board and press your first layer of vanilla cake onto it. Spread a very thin layer of brown sugar frosting over the cake. This will act as glue to attach the first cookie dough disc.

Spread another thin layer of frosting over the cookie dough to attach your next cake layer and repeat.

If you trimmed the sides of your cake layers, the cookie dough discs will stick out. Use some sharp kitchen scissors to cut off the excess cookie dough so that the sides of the cake are straight. This will make frosting the cake easier.

Spoon the frosting onto the cake and cover the top and sides of the cake with a thin layer of frosting. This is called a crumb coat and it traps any crumbs that come off the cake. Then spread another layer of frosting on top, which won’t have any crumbs in it since those are all stuck in the first layer of frosting. This brown sugar frosting spreads onto the cake like a dream and it’s easy to smooth it, too. 

Take your cookie dough balls out of the fridge. They’ll be cold and firm enough to place around the top of the cake without losing their shape. Press them gently into the frosting to attach them. 

How to store and serve this cookie dough cake

Wait about 30 minutes before serving the cake so that the cookie dough discs warm up and soften, which will make it much easier to cut through them. 

Look at the gorgeous cross section of these slices! I really can’t wait for you to make this cake and tell me in the comments if you’re as obsessed with it as I am!

The cake and frosting taste best at room temperature. If you make the cake in advance, store it in the fridge for up to 2 days but take it out of the fridge 2-4 hours before you serve it. This gives it time to come to room temperature and everything softens up.

This recipe makes a three layer 6″ cake. Double the recipe below by clicking "X2" to make a three-layer 8" cake.

You can watch a video tutorial for how to make and decorate this cake at the bottom of the page!

2. Add egg and vanilla, mixing on the lowest speed until incorporated, about 1 minute seconds.

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You can also watch a video version of this Cookie Dough Cake recipe!