I started my cake career making fondant cakes and a few years later switched to exclusively buttercream cake decorating. Yes, you can make sculpted, realistic designs using fondant. But here are 10 buttercream cake decorating techniques that I think are better than fondant!
With buttercream you can create all kinds of texture with just a piping bag and a piping tip. Vintage or Lambeth cakes are really trendy at the moment:
Or try Russian tips to pipe every petals of each flower with a single squeeze of the piping bag. Piping buttercream is not only a quick technique, it's also a beautiful one. It takes both simple or intricate elaborate cakes to the next level.
Did you know that you can carve buttercream? When buttercream chills in the fridge it gets firm so you can layer different colours on top of each other. Then use a piping tip or carving tool dipped into warm water to slice through the outer layer of buttercream. You'll reveal the layers below, creating colourful and dimensional patterns and shapes.
Another surprising technique that works on buttercream is painting. Use gel colours and a paintbrush on buttercream that's been in the fridge for at least an hour to set. When it's cold and firm, it doesn't blend with the gel paints.
Or try your hand at the buttercream version of oil painting. Use a palette knife or a tapered
With fondant you can model figures to make 3D characters like Paw Patrol or the Ninja Turtles or Minions. But my favourite characters are cheaper and quicker and more recognizable! With just a few pieces of parchment or wax paper you can make your own stencils. Trace an image one colour at a time to make an identical version of the character. You'll layer these to make characters.
The trick here is to make sure each layer of buttercream sets. Chill the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes or the freezer for 15 minutes before applying the next stencil. With this technique you can make accurate and delicious buttercream representations of characters.
You can make fondant flowers with a stamp but make them even faster with buttercream and a piping tip. This is a 2D, which is a closed flower tip.
With just a squeeze and a twist of your wrist you'll make these gorgeous flowers. By layering different colours in your piping bag you can create all sorts of colourful effects!
Put the flowers in the freezer for 5 minutes to chill them and then press them onto your cake.
To make beaded borders with fondant you need to roll tens or hundreds or thousands of identically sized balls. And then attach each one individually to the cake. The buttercream equivalent is... you guessed it! Faster and easier. Put buttercream in a piping bag and squeeze the bag to push the buttercream out. After it bulges to form a ball, swipe the piping bag away, leaving a tail on the dot. Cover up the tail with the next dot.
With buttercream you can pipe bottom borders but also borders on top of the cake like this trendy rope border. Borders on top of the cake add height and colour and texture. They're such a pretty way to finish off a cake!
Buttercream cake decorating is unique because you can do it without tools. Fondant, on the other hand, requires specialist tools like silicon rolling pins and fondant smoothers and cutting tools. Decorate buttercream with household utensils like a spoon, a fork, a ruler, a spatula, a Ziploc bag and even bubble wrap for stunning results!
With a cake comb you can create perfectly smooth buttercream frosting. Or imprint any texture you like using a textured cake comb. This technique is not possible on fondant. It's the same technique as smoothing frosting, which means there are no new skills to learn. It adds detail to a cake in just one to two minutes!
Buttercream cakes can be wrapped with very detailed buttercream designs. Start by piping onto acetate or parchment paper, tracing a drawing or printed image if you like.
Then transfer it onto a cake covered with a thin layer of buttercream frosting. The design will sit flat against that frosting. Check out my details tutorial on how to use this technique to make a mosaic cake like this:
You can also do this with melted chocolate, which will attach to buttercream frosting on a cake. Both buttercream and chocolate wraps add delicious detail that will make everyone wonder how you achieved the attention-grabbing effect.
Sprinkles are great on buttercream because they're easy to attach. Just press them gently against soft buttercream or more firmly against buttercream that's set. You can use sprinkles to add colour, to match a colour scheme, to outline shapes or even to cover a cake completely. And they make for an insanely quick and easy but eye-catching border.
So, which buttercream technique is your favourite or is there a fondant technique you'd love to find a buttercream replacement for? Tell me in the comments and to learn hundreds more buttercream cake decorating techniques visit my cake school. Try out my All You Can Cake membership for access to everything on my cake school with a 7-Day free trial! See you there!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 5 buttercream cake decorating techniques that are better than fondant:
These 10 cake hacks to save time will make it less stressful and less time-consuming to make a cake, frost it, and decorate it!
Save time when you’re making several cakes by doing the same stage for every cake. Then move onto the next stage for all of the cakes.
The first step would be to bake all of your cake layers and make all of your fillings and frostings. I make almost every filling and frosting out of my 4 Minute Buttercream! It can be flavoured with all sorts of ingredients like cream cheese, melted marshmallow, or chocolate.
Then assemble every cake and then crumb coat every cake. This way you’ll work much faster because you take out and put away the tools for each stage only once. Also, when you're in the swing of frosting a cake you’ll frost the second cake much faster. And the third cake even faster!
While some cakes are in the fridge to set the crumb coat, frost another cake so there’s no waiting time. Finally, final coat every cake one after the other, before you do the decorations for every cake. You’ll save so much time this way!
To make different colours of frosting, start by spooning some buttercream into a separate bowl. Tint it the lightest colour you’ll need. Frost your cake and then add more gel to the leftovers to make the next colour.
In the photos below, I started with pale pink buttercream for a striped cake. Then I added more pink to frost the next cake. Finally, I divided the leftover dark pink buttercream between two bowls. I added purple to one and black to the other, to make ombre frosting.
By getting darker each time, you save time by not needing to wash bowls or spatulas.
Here's another tip for buttercream. Don't try to guess exactly how much you’ll need of each colour because leftovers are ok! So if in doubt, make a little bit more that you think you'll need. It’s difficult and time consuming to try to tint more buttercream to match a colour you’ve already used. On the other hand, having leftovers is actually a time saver!
Leftovers will save you time when you make your next cake in the future. Freeze leftover buttercream in a sealed bag like a ziplock bag for up to 2 months! To thaw it, take it out the night before and by the morning it will have come to room temperature. Cut a corner off the bag and squeeze the buttercream into a bowl. Add more colour if you want to re-tint it. Then stir it quite aggressively to knock out any air bubbles, which tend to appear when the buttercream changes temperature. Now this leftover buttercream is ready to use for your next cake!
Don’t rush any part of making a cake. You’ll have to scrape and start again! Save time by taking your time to do it carefully and neatly the first time.
For example, I didn’t chill this cake for long enough before adding the neon green stripes. The purple stripes didn’t set properly and they blended into the green stripes to make a mess. I had to scrape the cake and start again. I would have saved time by not rushing.
If you notice your buttercream is the wrong consistency, don’t try to frost the cake. You’ll spend a lot more time trying to get it neat! Instead, fix it now. If it’s too stiff, scoop up a third of the buttercream and microwave it for 10 seconds. The butter will start to melt, like this:
Stir this back into your main bowl of buttercream and after mixing, it will be smooth with no air bubbles. It will spread onto the cake like a dream!
Use the right tool for each step of making a cake. For example, a tiny offset spatula is great for mini cakes and stencils. But to frost a 6 inch cake, the same spatula will take forever!
Switch to a bigger offset spatula and finish in half of the time.
Using the right tool will also make your cakes neater. For example, this little
When you’re working on a cake, set a timer and challenge yourself to finish a step within that time. You’ll find yourself focusing all of your attention on the cake while that timer is running. Without the timer you might check your phone messages, email, water the plant, start the laundry, and so on.
I find a timer most effective when there are several stages to a decoration. For example, to frost a cake, re-tint the leftover buttercream, make stencils, and add edible glitter. With multiple steps like these, the timer pushes you on to the next step without pausing for a distraction. I don’t recommend timing a single step, like piping. The timer will make you rush and the decorations won’t be as neat.
These cake hacks to save time are useful if you make cakes far away from the sink and rubbish bin or garbage. Use a “dirty” and “throw away” tub or bowl to tidy up as you go. This will avoid a huge mess to clean up at the end of the cake decorating process. Throw piping tips, spatulas, bowls, and anything else dirty into one tub to later carry to the sink. Into the other tub, toss anything that you'll throw away later. With a clean workspace you'll make cakes faster and also reduce clean-up time.
For baking, my mum taught me to take out all of the ingredients before you start. This way you know that you have everything you need. But I don’t do this for cake decorating because there are so many “waiting periods”. While the buttercream is mixing, while the frosting is setting in the fridge or freezer, while an ingredient like melted chocolate or a drip is cooling before you can use it… These are perfect windows to find whatever you need for the next stage of your decorating process. Here's an example of what this might look like:
I think the most efficient way is to plan your strategy ahead of time. Make a list of the steps for your cake and include any pauses or waiting periods. Also include what to do in those pauses. This way you'll be as productive as possible and decorate your cake as efficiently and as possible.
There are several options for character cakes and some take longer than others. You can sculpt a cake, which is the most time consuming option. Or you can use layered stencils to make a flat image of the character. This also takes a long time because you have to chill to cake in between each colour. Check out this tutorial on how to make character cakes with layered stencils, like on the cake below:
Another time consuming option is to make fondant figures. The process is fun but tedious and will almost always take longer than you expect!
To save time, use toy figures as cake toppers. Spread buttercream or melted chocolate as glue to attach figures to buttercream frosting. This is the quickest option and honestly, the toy topper will probably have the best resemblance to the character!
Save time in the days before a cake is due by preparing part or of the cake in advance!
You can bake cake layers up to two months in advance. After they cool, wrap them in two layers of plastic wrap like cling film or Saran Wrap. Then freeze them for up to two months. Move them to the fridge the night before you’re ready to assemble and frost and decorate your cake.
Or make and frost and even decorate your cake and then freeze it. Put it unwrapped into the freezer for an hour to chill and set the frosting and decorations. Then wrap it in two layers of plastic wrap and then put it back into the freezer. Move it to the fridge to thaw gradually the night before you serve it. Then two hours before you serve it, take it out and unwrap it straight away. It's important to unwrap it while the frosting is still cold and firm so you don’t damage it.
When a previously frozen cake comes to room temperature it will taste just as good as if you’d baked it that day. Let’s do a blind taste test! One of these forks has a piece of cake that I baked and frosted this morning. The other has a piece from a cake that’s been in the freezer for a few weeks. I put it into the fridge last night and it's been sitting on the counter for about two hours. Both cakes are now at room temperature. Which tastes better?
My sons volunteered to help me with the taste test. They fed me (blindfolded) each piece of cake. I honestly couldn't taste the difference between the two pieces!
I hope these 10 cake hacks to save time will help speed up your cake decorating. For more tips and tricks, visit my cake school where you’ll learn hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs.
You can watch a video of this tutorial on 10 cake hacks to save time below:
Here are 10 easy ideas for Halloween cake decorations. You don’t need any cake decorating experience for these and you can even do some of them with kids!
All you need is parchment paper or wax paper for these first Halloween cake decorations. Start by making an eery purple sky with your frosting. Tinting buttercream purple and then put half into another bowl and add a few drops of black to make grey. Spread the grey buttercream onto the top of the cake and smooth it. Then spread it around the top of the sides of the cake, too. Spread purple around the bottom of the cake, leaving the middle empty for now. Then mix the leftover purple and grey buttercream together and spread that over the middle.
Press your spatula lightly into the frosting and drag it up and down as you spin the cake. You'll leave zig zag textured imprinted into the frosting. These blend the colours together so that you don’t end up with stripes of colour around the cake. Smooth the frosting with a cake comb to make ombre frosting.
You can leave the top edge uneven, which is trendy at the moment, or flatten it. To flatten it, swipe sideways with your spatula to lift off the excess frosting. Now put the cake in the fridge for about an hour to chill and set the frosting. Meanwhile, I'll show you how to make stencils using parchment paper or wax paper.
Draw a bat silhouette onto a strip of paper and fold the paper a few times before you cut it out. Now you'll have a few identical bats. You don’t need the surrounding paper for this.
For the next stencils you’ll do the opposite. Draw the outline of a haunted house, cutting along the bottom edge so that the house sits at the base of the cake. Then cut the house out and throw that away but keep the surrounding paper. This will be your stencil.
I drew a few windows and cut those out of another piece of paper. This is an extra step that you can skip if you’re in a rush. The house will still look haunted without them! Trace around something round like a bottle to make a circle for a moon stencil, too.
Now you’re going to apply these in 3 stages. Start with the bats, pressing them onto the cake on the darkest grey frosting, towards the top, and they’ll stick because the warmth of your fingers will soften the cold buttercream to make it lightly sticky as you push against the bats.
They press the moon stencil on, so that it overlaps one of the bats. Pipe or spread white buttercream over the stencil, scraping over it a few times to flatten and smooth the frosting, and then peel the moon stencil off.
Next, use edible glitter and a wide powder brush to gently dab the frosting over the bats so that there’s quite a lot all around them.
Then slide your spatula or a toothpick under each bat to peel it off and it will look like the bats are flying in the moonlight!
Now wrap the haunted house stencil around the cake, and you want this to wrap really tightly since the bottom edge is cut so use pins to attach both sides to the cake. Add a drop of black to your leftover grey buttercream and spread this colour over the haunted house stencil and then scrape over it once or twice so that the black buttercream is smooth.
Pull the pins out of the cake and peel the stencil off and voila! If you’re adding windows, put the cake into the fridge for 15 minutes to set the ouse and then press the final stencil onto the house, lining it up so that the windows are in the right places, and then peel then spread white buttercream over the windows. Scrape off the excess.
Peel the stencil off, and scrape off any smudges using a toothpick and since the black frosting of the haunted house has chills dead set, you won’t damage that when you scrape off any white smudges. This cake design is so simple to make but with the glitter it looks so fancy!
For this next cake I’m using non-traditional Halloween colours, with pale pink and orange, which I LOVE but for this design you can use any colour or colours - plain orange, orange and black stripes, whatever!
The two important things are to use buttercream that isn’t very stiff, so add a splash of milk to thin it out until you can stir it easily like this, and spoon it into a piping bag. The second important thing is to chill the cake in the fridge for at least an hour before you pipe onto it.
Squeeze a blob of white buttercream onto the cake and then use a spatula to gently spread it in any direction. You’re making floating ghosts on the cake. They don’t all need to be identical so pipe different sized blobs before you spread them, and go in different direction so the ghosts are flying to the left, right, up, down…
When you finish making the bodies, melt some chocolate chips and put them into a sandwich bag like a ziplock bag and cut a tiny piece off one corner. Squeeze the bag to pipe two eyes and a mouth onto each ghost. If the chocolate pulls away with the bag, use a toothpick to nudge it flat against the cake.
You could add black oil based gel to the chocolate to make it black instead of brown, but with semi sweet or dark chocolate like this, against the lighter colours - pink and orange and white - the dark brown looks almost black.
The trick to melting chocolate without it seizing and becoming grainy or getting that white.. haze when it sets, is to heat it slowly and gently, so if you use the microwave choose 50% power for 30 seconds at a time, stirring before repeating, until the chocolate is smooth.
If you're looking for more ideas for ghost Halloween cake decorations, move on to the next cake!
For more detailed ghosts or any other figures, use the pointillist technique. You'll outline a shape on your cake using a cookie cutter, or draw it with a toothpick.
Then fill it in with tiny dots by using a small round piping tip like a #3. Your dots will look the neatest if you pipe in rows.
This dotted effect is so unique and easy to make look neat even if it’s your first time doing it! This technique is a bit time consuming but I love the result!
The consistency of your buttercream is really important for this. If it’s too stiff you’ll have to squeeze the bag really hard to pipe the dots and your wrist will start aching almost immediately.
Switch colours to add more details, for a simple design like this or a more elaborate one like this:
This is one of the cakes from my Layer Up program, which has 14 hours of video module teaching hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs! Start a FREE 7 day trial of my cake school to try it out risk free!
So, which ghosts do you prefer - swooshed or pointillist? Tell me in the comment!
Make easy Halloween cake toppers with melted chocolate in a sandwich bag with the corner cut off. Write whatever word you like, keeping in mind that the thicker the letters, the better. Press a toothpick into each letter so that it sticks out at the bottom.
Then pour sprinkles on top. The sprinkles will stick to the melted chocolate but when they set, after about 30 minutes in the fridge, you can lift the letters up and poke the toothpicks into a cake to make a delicious cake topper!
To write a longer Halloween message, use buttercream that’s thinned out with a bit of milk so that you can pipe it with a small round tip and the lines won’t break apart.
If you struggle to pipe letters with lines, which does take a bit of practice, use the pointillist technique. This is the same techniques I used for the second style of ghosts. You'll pipe dots to form your letters, which gives you more time to form the letters.
It's best to chill your cake before you start piping your message. This way, if you pipe anything you don’t like you can scrape it off with your
To make cute little monsters, layer a cake or I’ll show you how to do this with cupcakes in a second. Pop it into the freezer for 10 minutes or the fridge for 30 minutes and then use a serrated knife like a bread knife to trim around the top to make a dome.
Spread a thin layer of frosting to cover the cake, to stop it from drying out. You can use plain white buttercream or a flavour like chocolate or the same colour as the monster’s fur is going to be. By chilling the cake before this it will stay firm instead of leaning or toppling over as you trim it and frost it, and it will also be a lot less crumbly.
Now put buttercream for the fur into a piping bag with any star shaped tip, like this 4B or a 1M, or a grass tip like this:
Start at the bottom of the cake, squeezing to push out the fur. Then release your pressure on the piping bag as you pull away so that the buttercream pulls away neatly.
Work your way up to the top of the cake. Piping from the bottom to the top is a good idea for two reasons. Firstly, so that you can see what you’re doing, because if you start at the top, by the time you get to the bottom you’ll have to crouch down to see where you’re piping. And secondly, for fur piped with a grass tip, each row of fur will overlap the row below, so by starting at the very bottom you’ll create this shaggy effect.
Straight after piping the fur, while the frosting is still soft and sticky, cut mini marshmallows in half and press a toothpick through the middle of each half.
Push a mini chocolate chip into that hole and you have an eyeball! Press the eyeballs into the monster’s fur to complete the monster.
You can do this with cupcakes instead, which is a fun activity with kids. To make it easier, use an elastic band or a strong clip to pinch the piping bag at the top. This makes it easier to squeeze the buttercream out through the piping tip.
With a few drops of colour and some mini marshmallows and mini chocolate chips, you can make these fun Halloween cupcakes in just a few minutes!
Another easy monster option is to use a donut or mini bundt cake mold. Use a cupcake recipe and spoon or pipe cake batter into it. Bake for the same time as cupcakes.
After they cool, make a drip by measuring 1 cup of white chocolate chips. Heat 1/3 of a cup of heavy cream or double cream until it starts to bubble and pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Push all of the chocolate underneath the cream and let it sit for the minute and then stir it until it’s smooth. Then add oil-based colour. I used yellow and blue to make green.
Don’t use water based colours that you’d use for buttercream because it can make the chocolate seize.
When it cools to room temperature, do a test drip on the side of the bowl and you’re looking for a thick, slow drip. Spoon this over the cakes.
It’s best to chill the cakes first for a few minutes int he fridge or freezer. Cold cake will help the drip stop dripping. Push in some candy eyes balls and it’s done! Another fun one to make with kids.
Now let’s make some pumpkins! Use a star shaped piping tip like this #32 tip or a medium round tip like a #8. Start on the edges and work your way in, to make the pumpkins look more rounded and realistic.
Now for the fun part that will grab everyone’s attention. Pipe a few pumpkins onto parchment paper or wax paper and freeze for 10 minutes to chill and harden. Then brush them with edible gold paint, getting into all of the grooves to cover them completely or just painting some accents.
Lift them up and press them onto your cake to make gold buttercream pumpkins!
Pipe stems using brown buttercream or chocolate buttercream and a small star shaped tip or round tip. This makes such a cozy fall or autumn themed cake!
To make a pumpkin that’s a jack-o-lantern, frost your cake and put it into the fridge for at least an hour. Draw a face onto parchment or wax paper and cut out the features, leaving the rest of the paper intact. Press it down onto the cold cake.
Spread black frosting over the top, scraping a few times to leave a thin, flat layer.
Then peel off the stencil and you have a jack-o-lantern cake that took you two minutes to decorate!
Which cake would you choose to eat? Which one would you make? Tell me in the comments and visit my cake school to learn hundreds of other cake designs and cake decorating techniques!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 10 easy ideas for Halloween cake decorations:
From the moment I got engaged I started thinking about how to make a wedding cake for my own wedding. It turns out there’s a lot more to making wedding cakes than you might expect! So here are 10 tips to help you successfully make a wedding cake.
Of course wedding cakes need to be beautiful but they also need to taste delicious! So before the big day it’s important that the couple taste different options of cakes, fillings and flavors.
When I had a cake shop I offered cupcake versions of my cake menu for customers to try. For wedding cakes I made mini cakes of each flavour. They're more time consuming to make than cupcakes but I Leo them because they're more formal. They’re also a more accurate representation of the cake to filling to frosting ratio.
If you make lots of wedding cakes and do lots of tastings, you might choose to offer slices instead. To do this, bake a full cake of each flavour and slice those. You can give couples a slice of each flavour and then freeze the rest for the next tasting. To do this, wrap each slice in two layers of cling film or plastic wrap to protect them in the freezer. Move slices to the fridge 24 hours before serving and to room temperature an hour before.
Once you know the date of the wedding and the details of the cake, you’ll need to establish a timeline. Wedding cakes can take days to make depending on the flavours, size, and decorations!
You’ll need to shop for all of your ingredients to make your cakes, fillings and frostings. Then a few days before the wedding you might make your fillings and frostings. My 4 Minute Buttercream can be refrigerated for 2 weeks so you can make it earlier if you prefer.
Baking a tier cake can take several hours so you might set aside a full day for that. Assembling, frosting and stacking a tier cake might take a full day, too!
Include any cake decorating steps in your timeline as well. Some decorations can be added in advance, like stencil details or piping. Others are best added the day of the wedding, for example fresh flowers. More on decorations and fresh flowers later!
For tier cakes you’ll typically want every tier to be the same height. This is easiest to get right before you assemble the cakes. Stack the layers for each tier side by side to check they’re all the same height.
Of any of the tiers are taller than the others, trim those layers using a serrated knife. Then line them up again to check that they're all the same height.
Wedding cakes are usually made several days before an event, since they take so long to make. For cakes served more than a day after baking I really recommend using simple syrup. This keeps cakes moist - it doesn’t make them soggy, and it also won’t make a dry cake moist! It just prolongs the fresh texture of a cake.
To make simple syrup you'll need equal parts of water and sugar. For a tier cake one or two cups of each should be enough. Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium heat to dissolve the sugar and then let it cool. That’s it! You can drizzle the syrup over your cake layers with a squeeze bottle or use a pastry brush. Pay special attention to the edges of the cakes because those will dry out the quickest.
Wedding cakes are traditionally white, which can be problematic for buttercream made with butter, which is yellow! You have a few options to make buttercream white. Firstly, you can add violet gel, which will cancel out the yellow tint with just a tiny amount. Dipping a toothpick into the bottle is the safest choice and then drag the toothpick through your buttercream. I don't recommend trying to squeeze a small drop from a bottle of gel or liquid colour. If the drop is too big it can turn your whole batch of buttercream purple!
If the cake is going to be on a white tablecloth you'll need your buttercream to be even whiter. Even slightly off-white buttercream will look yellow compared to a bright white background:
For even whiter buttercream, use vegetable shortening like Crisco or Trex. You can substitute the butter with exactly the same amount of shortening.
As a bonus, using shortening in your buttercream will make it more stable than butter. This is helpful if the wedding is outside in warm weather and you don’t want your cake to melt.
A third option is to use half butter for its flavour and half shortening for its whiteness.
It’s definitely a good idea to practice any decorations before making the actual wedding cake. This doesn't mean you have to make an exact replica as a trial run. That would be a massive waste of time and ingredients. Instead, you can practice each element on different cakes, assuming you have months to prepare for the wedding cake!
Practice stacking another tier cake or ideally several until you feel really confident. Practice using cake stencils or any other techniques you'll use on your wedding cake. Piped details should be practiced too. You’ll learn the amount of pressure you need to use when you squeeze the piping bag, the wrist motion, the position that’s most comfortable for you, and so on. You don't want to try figuring these things out on the day you decorate your wedding cake!
My very first wedding cake was for one of my best friends and I had never made a tier cake before. I practiced stacking on a tea party cake for another friend and this snowman cake:
Here's a solution for cakes that are too big. Sometimes people want a multiple tier cake for their very small wedding. In these situations cake dummies are really useful to prevent huge amounts of uneaten cake, and also to save money! Use these fake cakes for extra tiers, decorating them as if they were really cake. No one will ever know what’s really inside!
For fresh flowers, wait until the day of the wedding if possible so that the flowers don’t wilt. Trim the stems so they're one to two inches long for each flower. Group flowers together in little bunches and wrap the straws in plastic wrap or cling film. This will prevent floral juices leaking out into your cake.
Poke them into straws like wide boba straws and then push them into the cake. Using scissors at the end will help you push them all the way into the cake. You can buy these flower cake spikes instead, for a shortcut!
Refrigerate cakes until you transport them to the wedding venue. This keeps the frosting firm and the tiers stable enough for the journey. When you transport the cake, choose a flat surface like the boot or trunk of the car. The footwell in front of the passenger seat is also a good option. Don't place the cake on any of the seats in the car because those are sloped at an incline. For tier cakes it’s especially important to be on a flat surface to avoid leaning or toppling over!
As you can see, making a wedding cake is a lot of work. If this isn’t a gift, make sure you price your wedding cakes to make a profit instead of losing money! I have a very detailed FREE tutorial on how to price your cakes with all of the information you’ll need. I also have a free cost calculator to help you set your prices to make a profit.
I’ve helped over 20,000 people improve their cake decorating skills on my cake school and lots of them have made wedding cakes for themselves, their friends and family members, or for customers. If you would like to improve your cake decorating skills, join my All You Can Cake membership to access all of my online courses and to ask me any questions you have, directly.
If you’re interested in seeing how I made this video, watch the behind the scenes footage in the video version of this tutorial, below. And if you want to create content yourself, join the waitlist for my content creator course!
Use these smart cake decorating hacks for smooth frosting and neat decorations. Colour theory for white buttercream, pi for wrapped designs, multiplications to convert recipes and more!
Conversions are useful if you want to bake a cake that's bigger or smaller than your recipe. Did you know that you can halve an 8 inch cake recipe to make a 6 inch cake? And if you divide a 6 inch recipe by three to make a third of the batter you can make a mini cake with 4 inch pans.
Now for some colour theory. The colours opposite each other on a colour wheel are complimentary colours and they cancel each other out. This means that yellow buttercream can be made whiter by adding violet!
Only add a a tiny amount, which is easiest to do by dipping a toothpick into violet gel and then dragging the toothpick through your buttercream.
Look at the difference in this buttercream before and after adding violet:
Another use for toothpicks is to make yourself a guide for piping. Trace around your cake pan onto a piece of paper and cut out that circle.
Fold it in half and in half again and again and then unfold it. Place it on top of a frosted cake after chilling the cake so that the frosting is cold and firm. Poke a toothpick into the frosting below each crease.
Use this to guide you as you pipe so that the decorations are evenly spaced around the cake.
Decorations that wrap around a cake sometimes need to fit perfectly. These could be stencil patterns, chocolate collars or cages, or buttercream wraps. To measure these, save time by using pi to find the length that will wrap around the cake. Measure the width of the cake (the diameter) and multiply by pi, which is 3.14.
Cut a piece of parchment or wax paper so it's that length, which will wrap snugly around the cake.
This is perfect for stencils, so that a pattern lines up neatly.
If you're going to pipe or spread buttercream onto the paper and then wrap it around the cake, add about an inch to make room for that layer of buttercream.
Keep your pencil case out because a ruler can also be used to frost a cake. Start by spreading buttercream or any other frosting onto your cake to cover the top and sides.
Then press the base of a clean ruler down on the cake board to line it up straight. Push the edge very gently into the frosting as you spin the
You'll need to do this two or three times to smooth any air pockets and imperfections. You'd never know it was a ruler (not a cake comb) that made this frosting so smooth!
Here's another tool you can use for cake decorating. You probably didn't expect to need your toolbox to make a cake! But a spirit level is an excellent tool to make sure your cakes are level on top. This is especially important for tier cakes.
If the little bubble isn't in the center, push down on one side of the cake before you frost it. That side of the cake layers will push down into the filling to straighten and level the cake. Then chill to set the cake before you frost it.
Check the top again with a spirit level and now it's ready to decorate to make a neat, straight cake.
As well as straight cake layers, you'll also want them to be the same height as each other. This will give you the most beautiful slices. To make the most even cake layers, weigh the batter.
First, weigh your mixing bowl alone before you prepare your cake batter. Then weigh it again with the batter inside. Subtract the weight of the bowl and divide by the number of pans.
Now put a pan on your scale and zero the scale. Scoop the batter in until you get to that number you just calculated. Repeat for the rest of your pans.
This way you'll have exactly the same amount of batter in each pan. Cake slices look extra pretty with even layers, don't they?
I did a geeky experiment on the fastest way to make a cake, testing which methods will save you the most time when you assemble and frost a cake. Spoiler alert! Piping the filling and frosting is much faster than spreading it straight onto the cake. Also, using cold cake layers will make the process much quicker, too. I like to put layers in the fridge for 30 minutes or the freezer for 15 before assembling and frosting.
Are there smart cake decorating hacks to tackle condensation? Absolutely! Avoid these moisture droplets and running colours on your cakes by paying attention to temperatures.
Condensation happens when a cake goes through a big difference in temperature, fast. For example, from a freezer of 0° Fahrenheit moving to room temperature of about 72°. The difference between the warm room outside of the cake to the cold inside of the cake is a big difference. This will cause condensation or cake sweat.
Instead, if your cake is frozen move it to the fridge for 24 hours to thaw. Then move it room temperature. By changing the temperature gradually you'll minimize condensation. Even if you don't use a freezer, if the room is hot your cake might sweat while you're decorating it. If you can't lower the temperature of the room, dab the cake with a paper towel. It will absorb the moisture droplets, which will disappear once the cake warms up to the temperature of the room.
For great cake photos I think the best trick is to make the background blurry or out of focus. This will really draw attention to your cake. You can do this on a camera or a phone by adjusting the F stop or F number. For the best results move your cake as far away from the background as possible.
I like to use F2 or F3, which makes the background really blurry or out of focus. On an iPhone choose Portrait mode and tap the F at the top of the screen, which will display a sliding bar to choose the F number.
Look at the difference between these two photos. The first is taken with F11 for an in-focus background. The lines on the wall look obnoxious. The second photo is taken with F2.8 and the blurry lines in the background look more interesting than distracting.
So even though cake decorating seems creative, using your brain and these smart cake decorating hacks can help you make more practical and beautiful cakes. To learn more cake decorating techniques visit my cake school.
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 10 Smart Cake Decorating Hacks:
Which cake comb is best? From a secret tool to get your frosting super smooth, to cake combs that make gorgeous texture and patterns on cakes, you’ll definitely want to try these 4 trending cake combs!
This first cake comb has become trendy as people find out about the hack that will completely transform their frosting. Go from air bubbly, uneven frosting to smooth perfection with a warm metal cake comb.
Hold the edge under hot water or run a blowtorch flame along it a few times to warm it up. If your tap water takes forever to warm up and how don't have a blowtorch, use a hair dryer!
Once the metal is warm, use the comb or scraper as normal on any kind of buttercream or ganache frosting. I'm using my 4 Minute Buttercream. The warm metal will glide over the frosting, filling in any air bubbles and shallow imperfections along the way. It will leave the surface of the frosting impossibly smooth. This is my favourite metal cake comb and you can use the code BGB10 for 10% off! Look at the difference in the frosting after being scraped with warm metal:
Once you can use a cake comb to smooth frosting, you can use any comb with a patterned edge because the process is exactly the same.
Before starting, smooth the frosting on the top of the cake. The sides need to be straight but not smooth, so scrape around them a few times.
Then press the bottom of a textured cake comb down on the cakeboard to line it up straight. Scrape around the cake with it but don't panic! It will leave the textured pattern in the frosting but it won't be neat… yet. Scrape the frosting off your comb to clean it before using it again.
Then scrape again two or three times with your textured car cob. Spread the frosting you've scraped off to cover any gaps or indents and then use the comb again. You'll see the textured pattern get neater and neater until it's perfect. Then just tidy up the top edge and voila!
This cake is from my free course on 10 Frosting Techniques. To dive deeper, my Layer Up program takes your cake decorating skills from beginner to professional with 14 and a half hours of easy to follow video modules!
Use the short end of any cake comb to make this gorgeous wavy frosting. After covering the cake with frosting, smooth it just once or twice. Then, instead of holding the cake comb normally, flip it sideways. The short end should be facing the sides of the cake.
Push the bottom corner slightly closer to the frosting as you spin the
By pointing the bottom corner closer, you'll keep the sides straight instead of digging deeper and deeper into the frosting as you work your way upwards. Add mermaid or ocean decorations and you have a simple but stunning design.
If you've seen perfectly neat striped buttercream and wondered how it's done, here's the trendy tool. It's this strangely shaped cake comb:
But before using this, use a straight edged cake comb to get the sides of your cake really straight. Then use the striped comb to imprint grooves like this:
Press the base of the comb down on the cakeboard so the stripes are in the same position every scrape. Repeat again and again, scraping the comb clean after each time you use it. As the grooves get neater, use a towel or paper towel to wipe off any buttercream left on the comb. You want the texture to be really clean when you press it against the cake again.
Tidy up the top edge and then put the cake into the freezer for exactly 15 minutes. You need to set these stripe grooves so that they firm up and hold their shape. Then pipe another colour into the gaps and smooth again straight away using your straight edged cake comb.
You'll smear the second colour of buttercream all over the cake! But keep scraping and the stripes will appear.
The stripes will get neater and neater as you take off all of the excess buttercream. For more in-depth instructions, check out this striped cake tutorial.
What's your favourite cake comb? Tell me in the comments and to learn more cake decorating techniques visit my cake school!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 4 trending cake combs to try:
How to price cakes is a tricky topic. It's difficult to choose a number that we feel represents our time and effort. But it’s important to take the time to price cakes accurately to make sure you’re not losing money! In this tutorial I’ll walk you through 4 steps to calculate your cake prices.
The first step when you think about how to price cakes is to calculate your direct costs.
These are the costs of whatever you’re selling. The ingredients of your cake, filling, frosting, and any garnishes, and also any packaging materials.
For the ingredients, refer to your recipes and take out each ingredient. You’ll also need receipts showing the cost of each ingredient. If your supermarket or grocery store has their prices online, you can use their websites instead. This is a bit time consuming for your first recipe but gets much quicker after that!
There are three ways to work out the cost of each ingredient. I’ll show you how to do it for ingredients measured in grams, and also in cups or teaspoons, and in units, for example 2 eggs.
First, in units or items, for example eggs. Find the cost of the carton of eggs that you buy. Then divide that cost by the number of eggs in that carton. That’s the cost of one egg. If your recipe says 2 eggs, just multiply the cost of 1 egg, by two! Write down that cost on a piece of paper.
I’ll show you how to use my free recipe cost calculator spreadsheet in a minute, which makes this process really fast for all of your other recipes!
For any ingredients in your recipe that are measured in grams, check the packaging. Find out how many grams are in the package and write that down. Then look at your recipe and see how many grams you need and write that down.
Divide the total weight by the weight that you need and write down that number too and circle it. Now write the cost of the whole package and divide that by the number you circled. This is the cost of the amount of ingredient you need for your recipe:
For any ingredient measured in cups or tablespoons or teaspoons, look at the nutritional label. Look at what the serving size is, and how many servings are in the package.
If the serving size is 1/4 of a cup and there are 75 servings in the bag, that means the bag has 75 1/4 cups in it. Multiply by 4 to get the full cups and you'll see there are 18 3/4 cups of flour in this bag. If the bag of flour costs $5, each cup of flour is going to cost 5/18.75 = 0.26 (26 cents). If your recipe uses 2 cups of flour, that will cost you 26 x 2 which is 52 cents.
Use these methods to calculate the cost of all of the ingredients in your recipe.
You might be shocked to see how much your ingredients cost per cake. Perhaps they add up to more than the price of a huge sheet cake at a grocery store or supermarket! We’ll talk about why that’s important in a minute.
If you use my free recipe cost calculator spreadsheet instead of just writing these numbers down, you can calculate the cost of all of your recipes in minutes.
The other direct costs to include are the costs or packaging. This includes the cake board, the cake box, and any ribbons or stickers. I’ll share more details for custom cakes and deliveries in a moment.
You might be thinking there are a lot more costs to making a cake, and you’re right! Those are coming up next, starting with your indirect costs.
Indirect costs are the things that aren’t going to be boxed up and given to your customer but still play a part in making it possible to make your cake. For example:
We’ll come back to the mixer and any other investments you make to be able to make cakes.
Make a list of all of the other indirect costs that are necessary to make your cakes. Include how much each one costs per month or per year. Then work out how many cakes you sell each month. This could be an average of how many cakes you sold in the last six months.
Now it’s time to spread out your indirect costs between your cakes so that you include them in your prices. For example, maybe you need to drive to Costco once a month to buy your baking supplies. If you estimate that the fuel for your car is going to cost $5 and you make 5 cakes a month, that’s a $1 cost added to each cake you make.
Maybe your gas or electricity or water costs are $20 higher on the months you make cakes. Again, let’s say you make 5 cakes a month so that’s $20/5 = a $4 cost added to each cake. This sounds trivial because the numbers are small but everything adds up!
For investments like a bigger mixer, first think about how long you’re planning on using it for. If it’s 5 years, divide the cost of the mixer by 5 years. Then divide that number by 12 to calculate the cost of one month. Divide that by however many cakes you sell in a month. Now you’ve spread out the cost of that mixer between every cake you sell for the next 5 years. Approximately at least!
The next thing to include when you price you cakes is the cost of your time. You might think you don’t have to charge for your time because you enjoy making cakes. Or because you’re at home anyway. But if you weren’t making a cake for someone else you could be doing anything else that day! When you dedicate time to make a cake you need to include that as a cost of that cake.
You might start by charging the minimum wage in your area, say $10 an hour. If you spend 4 hours baking and frosting and decorating you’ll add $40 to the price of your cake. But as your skills improve you might increase your hourly rate and increase the price of your cakes.
Before moving onto the final part of the price (profit!) let’s talk about how to price custom cakes.
For custom cakes you have to consider the additional cost and time of any custom details of that cake. If someone wants a particular cake topper, the topper and shipping are a direct cost. These should be included in your price. If someone wants a time-consuming design like layered stencil character, estimate how much time that custom design will take. Then multiply that by your hourly rate.
When I had a cake shop I had set prices for simple, more elaborate and very elaborate decorations. The prices were based on how much time I thought the decorations would take me to make. This saved me a lot of time pricing out the decorations individually for each cake order. I would add on the cost of any special materials like an icing sheet, for example. It was a quick and simple way of pricing custom cakes.
I’ve also worked at bakeries where they have set prices for every single detail. For example they charged for each colour and for the percentage of the cake that would be covered with decorations. Charging for each detail added to a cake will give you the most consistent and accurate pricing. But it’s also very time consuming to prepare a cake quote with that method. Especially if the customer wants quotes for a few different designs!
Now, back to my comment earlier about cakes from supermarkets or grocery stores. A custom cake is obviously very different because the ingredients are better quality and the style of decorations is very different. So don’t panic when you see that your costs are going way beyond the price of one of those cakes. You’re making and selling something completely different and the price will reflect that. People know (or should know!) that prices will be higher for cakes that are homemade or from a small business or high-end bakery.
For deliveries you’ll also need to incorporate your costs. These are your gas or petrol and the wear and tear on your car. If you’re in the US there’s an IRS standard mileage cost for employees to cover both of these. Then you’ll need to include your time. This is your hourly rate multiplied by your estimate of how long the delivery will take, including setup if necessary.
The final thing to add to your price is profit! Your price so far covers the costs of making a cake: the direct costs, indirect costs, and labor. But adding on a percentage of profit is essential to be able to grow your cake business. Then you can invest in new tools, cake decorating courses, marketing like social media posts or hiring help. You might also want to save up to rent a commercial kitchen or a storefront.
It sounds like a great idea, but how do you know how much profit you should make on each cake? This might be somewhere between 20% and 40%, depending on your experience and your location. And this is where your competition comes in to play. Look around and see what your competitors are charging for similar cakes in your area. Obviously, a supermarket or grocery store cake isn’t going to be the same price as a custom cake. And a buttercream cake probably isn’t going to be the same price as a fondant cake. And a cake in New York City is going to be more expensive than the same cake in a small town because costs in those cities are so much higher. So look around to find local cakes that really are similar to yours and compare your prices to those. Then see what percentage you can add to your prices to be similar to those.
You can find your current profit margin is by using the costs you’ve calculated and the prices you’ve set. Your profit is the price you sell your cake for minus your cakes to make it, divided by the price. Multiply this number by 100 to make it a percentage. If your cake price is $50 and it costs you $40 to make, your profit is 50-40 = 10 divided by your price ($50) = 0.2. Multiply this by 100 to make a percentage: 20% profit.
You can do this the other way around by choosing your profit margin first. If you know your costs are $40 and you want to make a 20% profit, flip the formula around:
Start with your desired profit and divide by 100: 20% / 100 = 0.2. Take that away from 1, which here is 0.8. Then take your costs, $40 for this example, and divide by 0.8. This gives you the price you should charge ($50) to get a 20% profit.
I really hope this is helpful! I think the key points to remember when you’re pricing your cakes are:
Please use the comments section to ask me any questions you have about this! Or tell me about your cake business - a success, a struggle, or what stage you’re at!
And if you want to improve your cake decorating skills, visit my cake school to learn hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on How to Price Cakes:
Make this adorable and easy jungle theme cake with just buttercream and parchment paper!
I’m using my Very Vanilla cake to make four 6 inch layers for this jungle theme cake. I prefer a tall cake for this design so there’s lots of room on the sides for decorations. You could do the decorations on the top instead if you make a larger, shorter cake.
Make one batch of my 4 Minute Buttercream for a four-layer 6 inch cake or a two-layer 8 inch cake. Scoop out about 2 cups to use for the jungle animals later, covering that bowl so it doesn't crust. To the rest of the buttercream add green gel to tint the filling and frosting. You can use any buttercream recipe as long as it crusts when it sets, which is necessary for the jungle theme cake design.
Layer your cake and filling to assemble your cake. Then chill it before giving it a crumb coat and then a final coat of frosting. If you need step by step instructions for this part, read my tutorial on 10 Steps to Make a Cake. Put the cake in the fridge for at least an hour before you decorate it to set the frosting.
For the jungle decorations, make your own cake stencils with just parchment paper or wax paper, a pencil, and scissors.
Draw jungle leaves and jungle animals or print ones you like or use my free template. Choose line drawings rather than more detailed designs.
Cut out several pieces of of parchment paper or wax paper. If the paper comes from a roll it will curve, which makes it easer to use for stencils. You’ll need a separate piece for each leaf and animal with at least an inch of paper around the outline. Trace the outline of each leaf and animal onto its own piece of paper. Use a pencil, which works better than a pen on the surface of parchment or wax paper.
You'll need multiple stencils for each leaf you've drawn or printed so that you can cover your cake with leaves. For the animals, you’ll need a separate stencil for each colour of every animal. For example, for this rhino I’m making one stencil for the grey head and then another for the white tusk. You’ll see why in a minute!
Cut out the leaves and animals, leaving the paper around them intact, to make your own stencils.
To make buttercream leaves on your jungle theme cake, start by tinting some green buttercream. Since I used light green for the frosting of the cake, I started with that. Add different amounts of green to make some darker than others and play around with other colours, too. Adding yellow will make the green brighter whereas adding pink or orange or brown will make the green duller.
You only need a small amount of buttercream for each of your shades of green. This is plenty for my tall, 6 inch cake. I’d say 1/4 of a cup of each colour would be fine.
To use your stencils, let the curve of the parchment or wax paper stencil wrap around the cake. Then spread buttercream over the leaf shape. You’ll need to press the stencil against the cake on both sides to hold it in place as you spread. Try not to pull your spatula straight away from the cake because that will pull up the buttercream and stencil. Instead, swipe it away diagonally and that way you won’t move the stencil.
Scrape over the buttercream a few times to take off the excess to leave a thin, smooth layer behind. The thinner the buttercream, the neater the edges of the leaf will be. Peel the stencil off carefully, from one side to the other. If the stencil has moved during the process it will smudge the outline of your shape. That’s easy to fix by scraping off the smudge with a toothpick or other small, sharp edged object. It works because the stencil buttercream is still soft so easily removed. In contrast, the frosting on the cake is cold and hard so you won’t damage that.
Switch between colours for your leaves as you work your way around the cake. Be careful that each stencil doesn't touch any the leaves already on the cake because the paper will damage the buttercream of those leaves.
When you run out of space for leaves, put the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes or the freezer for 5 minutes. This will set the leaves and meanwhile, you can scrape the buttercream off your stencils to re-use those stencils.
When the first round of leaves have set in the fridge or freezer, add more leaves in the spaces between them. Now that the first leaves have set, it’s fine to layer the stencils on top of them because the paper won’t damage the cold, firm buttercream of the first leaves.
Then put the cake back in the fridge or freezer while you prepare to make your jungle theme cake animals!
Tint the colours you’ll need for your animals. For small amounts of colours I like to use a cupcake pan to mix them so that I only have one pan to wash at the end instead of lots of little bowls!
When the leaves on the cake have chilled and set, use the animal stencils on the cake. Start with the largest stencil for each animal. For my cake, that's the mane for the lion, the neck and head for the giraffe, and so on.
Just like with the leaves, make sure each stencil doesn’t touch any animal already on the cake. Since all of the animals are still soft, the paper of a stencil will damage them. Keep your toothpick handy to scrape off any smudges straight away. It's best to do these touch-ups as soon as you peeled off a stencil, while the buttercream of the animal is still soft and easy to scrape off.
Put the cake back into the freezer for 5 minutes or the fridge for 20 minutes. The first part of each animal needs to chill and set, so it's firm and not sticky. Then add the next detail to each animal. These are the stencils you made for the different colours of each animal: the top part of the face for the lion, the tusk for the rhino, the teeth for the crocodile etc.
Start with the largest section of each animal and then add the details one colour at a time. Chill the cake after each round of details, so after adding one detail to each animal. By doing this in stages, your stencils won’t damage any of the details that are already on the cake.
I mentioned that a thin layer of buttercream is best for stencils so that the edges will be neat when you pull the stencil off. But if there’s a dark colour underneath your stencil, like the dark brown mane of this lion underneath the light brown muzzle, you’ll need a thicker layer to cover up the dark colour underneath.
For the eyes, I’m using my dark brown buttercream in a piping bag. I've chosen a #3 piping tip, which has a small round shape. I'm piping little lines or dots for each eye.
Then I’m using a toothpick to draw facial expressions like the crocodile's smile.
To add some texture to the cake, use a leaf tip like a # 352. Mix together your remaining green buttercream from the leaves and spoon it into the piping bag. To make the buttercream ruffle, wiggle your wrist up and down slightly as you squeeze the piping bag to push the buttercream out.
A grass tip is the quickest way to fill in the gaps around the bottom edge, instead of piping each blade of grass individually with a small round tip. Rest the tip on the cake board and squeeze the bag to push the buttercream out. Then pull upwards as you keep squeezing, to pipe long blades of grass.
Isn’t this cute? And so easy and affordable to make by using homemade stencils.
You can keep this in the fridge for three days after you make it. Take it out two hours before you serve it, to let the cake and buttercream warm up to room temperature. That’s when it will taste the best!
You can watch a video of my tutorial on this jungle theme cake below. Ask me any questions in the comments section below and visit my cake school to learn hundreds more cake decorating techniques and designs!
Make a cake that's delicious and beautiful by following these 10 steps! If you struggle with leaning cakes, uneven frosting, dry cakes or air bubbles or bulges in your frosting, these tips will be really useful for you too.
Before you start baking all of your ingredients should be at room temperature. Take refrigerated ingredients like eggs, butter and milk out of the fridge at least 2 hours before.
If you forget, put eggs in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes to take off the chill. Microwave ingredients like milk or butter for 10 seconds to warm them up slightly. Room temperature ingredients mix together the best and this will result in a light, moist cake.
Dry cakes are the worst and to avoid that happening, check your cakes 5 minutes before the recipe's baking time. Poke them gently with your finger and if you leave a fingerprint behind, bake them for a few more minutes.
If cakes spring back up like in the photo below, they're done.
Leave the cakes in their pans for about 10 minutes to cool slightly. Then turn them out onto a wire rack and leave them to cool, which takes an hour or two. Meanwhile make your filling and frosting. This is my 4 Minute Buttercream and I love it because it's easy to make, it's delicious and you can use it as a filling and frosting.
Now, back to how to make a cake. For the neatest slices and to avoid leaning cakes, level each layer after it cools. Use little sawing motions with a serrated knife like a bread knife.
Optionally you can trim the bottom off too. This is the part that was touching the baking pan so it's caramelized and has a darker colour.
If you're not going to eat cakes on the same day, keep them moist with simple syrup. This is just equal parts of water and sugar. Half a cup of each is enough for most cakes. Cook in a pan on the stove top over medium heat or microwave for 30 seconds at a time. As soon as you see bubbles, turn the heat off or take out of the microwave. Let the syrup cool and then drizzle over cakes with a squeezy bottle or brush with a pastry brush. Pay special attention to the edges, which dry out the fastest.
To make a cake stable, the layers need to be level but so does the filling. Spread your filling flat in between each layer, ideally using an
Instead of piping you can scoop your filling with a spatula or spoon and spread it straight onto the layers.
Get down to eye level with your cake and check that each layer is centered on the one below. This will make a straight cake instead on one that leans to one side.
Buttercream is the easiest filling to use because it gets firm when it sets. This will help hold your layers in place when you move or frost cakes. For other fillings, use a buttercream dam for stability.
If your filling is sticking out, spread it flat with a spatula. If you don't, it will set like this and can get in the way when you frost the cake.
Chilling cakes at this point is essential. You can do this in the fridge for 30 minutes or in the freezer for 15 minutes. Filling sets and the cake layers don't slide around when you frost them next.
A crumb coat is the first layer of frosting. Don't skip it when you make a cake! It traps any crumbs that come off so that they don't get into your final layer of frosting. This way you won't see any crumbs on the finished cake.
The goal is to cover the cake completely with frosting. Spread it all the way down to the board so you can't see the cake underneath anywhere. The frosting doesn't need to be perfectly smooth because you're going to cover it up soon. But first, the crumb coat needs to set. Put the cake back into the fridge for 30 minutes or the freezer for 15 minutes. When you take it out, the frosting should be cold and firm.
There are two tricks for smooth frosting and the first is to have the right consistency of buttercream. Add milk a spoonful at a time to thin out your buttercream. It needs to be smooth but also just stiff enough to hold its position on the cake. If it's not stiff enough, it will slide down the sides of the cake. If it's too stiff it will be difficult to spread. You're looking for a peak that droops over slightly, like in the photo below. For more details, check out my tutorial on the perfect buttercream consistency.
The second trick for smooth frosting is the technique you use. Spread buttercream up above the top edge of the cake to get sharp edges there later.
Push your cake comb down on the cake board to line it up straight against the side of the cake. Scrape around the cake a few times to start to smooth the frosting.
Then fill in any indents or air pockets by spreading on more frosting and then scrape again.
If you have air bubbles in your frosting like in the photo below, here's a trick! A plastic cake comb won't get rid of them no matter how many times you scrape. Switch to a metal cake comb instead. Heat the edge of the blade with hot water or a blow torch and then scrape again and tadaa! No more air bubbles!
For the top edge, swipe sideways without pushing down at all to prevent bulges in the sides of the cake. Wipe your spatula clean after every swipe! If you don't, any frosting on the spatula will transfer back onto the top edge. It will leave texture behind instead of a smooth edge.
I recommend chilling cakes in the fridge before decorating. If you decorate it before the frosting sets you'll damage it. When frosting gets cold it sets, meaning it loses its stickiness and gets firm. Now it can support the weight or pressure of any decorations like stencils or piping.
Cake and frosting taste best at room temperature. If you’ve stored your cake in the fridge, take it out two hours before you slice it. This way, the cake and filling and frosting will warm up to room temperature. Cold cake tastes dry and cold buttercream is rock hard! It will be easier to cut into a cake at room temperature and it will also taste much better!
To learn all about how to decorate cakes with buttercream check out my online courses and my free course on 10 frosting techniques. See you there!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 10 steps to make a cake:
With the right buttercream consistency you can achieve smooth frosting and neat piping on cakes and cupcakes. The perfect buttercream consistency really is the key to cake decorating so here are all of the dos and don'ts!
You'll need butter to be at room temperature before you start making buttercream. For the best results, take it out of the fridge at least two hours before you use it. If you forget you can unwrap the butter and microwave it for 10 seconds to take the chill off. Flip it over and microwave another 5 to 10 seconds until it's soft. Beat it for a few minutes until it's smooth, to check that it's not still cold in the middle. Starting with smooth butter can help prevent lumps.
You'll need a paddle or beater attachment to make buttercream, not a whisk. Either a stand mixer or a hand mixer is fine. You can use just a bowl and a spatula if you're very strong and very patient!
Follow your buttercream recipe - I'm using my 4 Minute Buttercream. Add the icing sugar or powdered sugar, sifted to prevent lumps and graininess. If it feels like it's taking forever to sift and your arm gets tired, try this! Use the handle of a spatula or wooden spoon to stir the sugar around in the sieve.
I add only half of the sugar to the mixer so it doesn't explode out of my mixer when I turn it on. Also, I cover my bowl with a towel to prevent a big cloud of sugary dust. Once the first half of the sugar is mixed in, add the rest and mix again.
Always mix at the lowest speed because using a low speed prevents air bubbles in the buttercream. If you use a whisk or a high speed you'll aerate the buttercream, creating lots of air bubbles.
After adding salt and vanilla for flavour, add a few tablespoons of milk or cream. This will make the buttercream richer and thin it out slightly. Add milk or cream one spoonful at a time, checking the consistency after mixing in each spoonful. If you add too much, to thicken the buttercream you'll need to add more sugar.
The buttercream in the photo below has stiff peaks that stand up when you pull a spatula out of the bowl. You'll notice very distinct texture in the buttercream wherever you've pulled a spatula through it. This buttercream has a stiff consistency. A stiff consistency is great for piping that needs to hold its shape, like petals on a flower.
To ice or frost a cake you need the buttercream to have a looser consistency. This means it is less stiff, with peaks that droop over. You'll notice your spatula leaving behind less texture in the buttercream as you stir it. To make the buttercream consistency less stiff, like in the photo below, simply add more milk or cream.
If you see any grains of sugar or tiny lumps in your buttercream, don't throw it away and start again! Instead, use an immersion blender to blitz it to remove any icing sugar lumps.
Any liquid you add to the buttercream will affect the consistency. Add liquid colours and flavours before doing a final buttercream consistency check. Stir the buttercream quite aggressively to knock out any air bubbles.
If the buttercream is still too stiff or has air bubbles, use this microwave hack. Scoop a third of the buttercream into a microwave safe bowl and microwave it for 10 seconds. Then pour this back into the main bowl of frosting and stir it all together.
Your buttercream will be silky smooth, the perfect consistency for frosting a cake and with no air bubbles. Look at this buttercream consistency and number of air bubbles before and after using the microwave hack:
Ask me any questions you have about buttercream consistency in the comments! To learn hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs visit my cake school.
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 6 tricks for the perfect buttercream consistency:
