Follow these 6 easy steps to make a perfect striped cake! In this striped cake tutorial I’ll share everything I’ve learned since making my first striped cake back in 2018.
The first step is to assemble a straight cake. Of course, you’re always going to try to make your cake straight, but this is especially important with striped cakes because when you eventually hold your striped cake comb against the side of the cake, you want the grooves to push through the frosting evenly all the way up and down the cake. If the cake leans to one side like in the photo below, the stripe grooves will dig through the crumb coat up here and you’ll get crumbs in your striped frosting.
To make sure your cake is straight, get down to eye level to check the sides after placing each layer. Spin the cake around the check it from all angles and if necessary, adjust the layer to center it.
Before you frost the cake with stripes, you need a crumb coat. This is this thin layer of frosting to cover the cake, and it traps any crumbs that come off the cake so that you don’t get any crumbs in your stripes. It doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth because you’re going to cover it up next, but focus on straight sides by pushing the base of your cake comb down on the cake board as you scrape, to line it up straight. Then put the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes to chill this frosting so it gets firm.
When you can touch the crumb coat without damaging it, it’s set, and you’re ready for step 3: The final layer of frosting! Spread it all over the top and sides of the cake, so that it sticks up around the top of the cake.
This frosting needs to be at least as thick as the grooves on your striped cake comb. A striped cake comb looks something like this, and it can be made of metal or acrylic or plastic and all of those will work!
But you'll need another cake comb before using this. First, use a straight edged cake comb to scrape around the cake a few times until the sides are smooth and straight, without any big gaps or indents.
Then switch to a striped cake comb and press the base down on your cake board before pressing it gently into the frosting as you spin the cake, imprinting the grooves of your comb into the cake.
You’ll need to scrape around the cake a few times to get these really neat. You’re looking for a smooth surface the frosting within the grooves, and also on the stripes that stick out.
If there are any indents or air pockets within the stripes, fill them in by piping or spreading more buttercream over them. Then scrape until they're smooth. If you continue without filling them in, you'll get dots of the next colour within those spaces.
When it’s neat, put the cake into the freezer for 20 minutes. Set a timer because 20 minutes is the perfect amount of time for this step! You want the frosting to be firm enough that it will hold its shape, but not completely frozen.
Next, fill the striped grooves with whatever colour or colours you choose. You could spread this on but it’s much quicker to pipe it into the grooves. Make sure this frosting fills the entire groove, so that there aren’t big gaps or air pockets within the stripes.
Then move straight onto step 6, which is to scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape! You might doubt the whole process because there will be frosting smudges all over your cake. But suddenly, after several scrapes, you'll take off the last of the excess frosting and leave behind impossibly neat stripes.
If you see any specks of colour within the stripes, it’s because there were air bubbles in the first colour of frosting, the one you used the striped cake comb on. You can dig those out with the corner of a cake comb and then spread or pipe the correct colour into that hole, then scrape to smooth it and tadaa!
And that’s it! Perfect buttercream stripes in 6 easy steps! Please subscribe to my channel for a new cake decorating tutorial every week and visit my cake school on BGB.com to learn hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs! Thanks for watching!
You can also watch a video of this striped cake tutorial:
In this tutorial I’ll solve the 10 most common cake struggles! Leaning cakes, food coloring stains on everything, never enough countertop space, air bubbles in your frosting, lack of cake decorating inspiration, sprinkles everywhere... Get ready for these practical solutions!
Most cake decorators have an impressive collection of piping tips that have been mauled by the garbage disposal or insinkerator.
Whenever you wash piping bags and piping tips, use a drain sieve in the sink. I find these annoying the rest of the time but with piping tips they’re so useful! Frosting from piping bags will go through the sieve but piping tips will wait patiently for you in it. As a bonus, as the hot water flows down the drain it will clean the piping tips for you!
Sprinkles are beautiful but they can travel fast and far. Whenever you’re using sprinkles, catch any runaways by decorating on a baking sheet or tray. Any sprinkles that roll and bounce off the cake will be trapped by the rim around the tray.
When you’ve finished decorating, tap the cake board to knock the final sprinkles onto the tray. Then tilt the tray and pour the sprinkles into their jar or packet.
To be even more careful, pour your sprinkles into a piping bag before you use them. Cut a small piece off the end of the bag and you'll have more control over where they go.
The worst of the cake struggles, I think, is food coloring stains. They’re so difficult to wash off! When bottles topple over they leak onto each other so whenever you pick up a bottle you’ll stain your hands.
There are two solutions for this. First, open your bottle using the spike on the inside of the lid. Unscrew the lid and press the spike into the lining that covers the bottle. You'll make a small hole, which is much less likely to leak than if you peel the lining off.
Secondly, store your bottle upright instead of letting them fall over. I use a storage caddy intended for nail polish, which is exactly the right size for gel colours! No more leaking and no more staining!
Countertop space is in high demand when you’re cake decorating and there is never enough! Here are my tips for making the most of what you have.
If you’re not next to a rubbish bin or garbage can, use a throw away tub. Throw cake scraps, cut off ends of piping bags, and any other rubbish into this tub or bowl or bucket. This saves you the time of walking back and forth to the rubbish bin and keeps rubbish off your countertops.
If you’re not working next to a sink, have a washing tub too. Use this for anything dirty like piping tips, spatulas or cake combs. Then carry it to the kitchen sink when you're finished!
Store appliances in cabinets rather than on the countertop to make more space. Even a mixer can fit into a cabinet, reducing countertop cake struggles.
Don't store tools and supplies on your countertops either, which brings me to my next solution below.
Free up space, reduce clutter and make it easier to find everything with my favourite baking organization hacks!
Tired of cake pans tumbling out of your cupboards? When you stack pans on the same size you'll build a leaning tower than topples over easily. Instead, put small pans inside big pans and they’ll balance the next layer of pans.
Your tower of pans will be stable and also much shorter, taking up less space!
Most cake decorators have several types of cake combs for smooth and textured frosting. Don’t stuff them into a drawer because it’s a pain to find the one you’re looking for. Racks intended for pan lids work excellently as a divider for different types of cake combs.
In a split second I can grab a smooth acrylic comb, a textured metal comb, or whichever one I want. I use the same rack for my cake boards to separate those by size and material.
Sprinkles get mixed up in a box or drawer and it takes forever to find then one you’re looking for. Pour your most used mixes into jars and arrange them on a shelf. Now they’re easy to find and they’ll add a colourful decoration to your room!
Stencils are super thin but if you have several, they end up taking up a lot of space. A folder with plastic wallets is an easy storage solution for these. Put one stencil in each wallet and optionally, organizer them by material or theme. You can label the sections with tabs if you like. Now you can flick through the folder quickly, making it quick and easy to choose and remove your stencil.
Piping tips cause cake struggles when they fall into the insinkerator but also when it comes to storage. Piping tips love to hide inside each other and to lie sideways, so that they all look identical! This makes it difficult to find the one you’re looking for. Use a craft box and either place one tip in each section or group them together. For example, I keep star tips in one section, petal tips in another, and grass and leaf tips in another.
If cakes move around while you frost them, it's impossible to get smooth frosting! Why do they slide? Because they’re not attached to the cake board!
Before you start assembling your cake, pipe or spread some frosting onto the middle of the cake board. Then press your first layer of cake down onto that frosting. This will stick the cake to the cake board and as you layer your cake and filling, it won’t slide around.
But there’s one more step to this! Chill the cake for about 20 minutes before you frost it to set that frosting so that it glues the cake in place. Next, as you spread frosting onto the cake and then scrape around the cake, the cake will resist that pressure. The frosting on the cake board will hold the cake securely in place so that it doesn't move.
If it does move it's because your spatula or comb pushed the cake off the buttercream dot. To fix this you'll need to add some fresh buttercream 'glue'. Lift the cake up by sliding an
If the cake isn't cold, put it into the fridge or freezer for a few minutes to set that fresh frosting. Now the cake will be securely attached to that dot!
If your cake looks like it’s leaning sideways, your layers aren’t placed directly on top of each other. The good news is that even if you’ve already started frosting your cake, it’s not too late to fix this! Use more frosting to fill in the lean on the bottom of one side and the top of the other.
When you scrape around the cake again, press your comb down on the cake board to line it up straight. You’ll smooth this frosting you’ve spread on to create straight sides on the cake.
Add your final layer of frosting and you’ve got rid of the leaning or tilting effect!
Even if your buttercream looks smooth in the bowl, after frosting your cake it can be covered in air bubbles. These are usually caused by under-mixing or over-mixing your buttercream.
Luckily, like the other cake struggles in this tutorial, there's an easy solution. A metal cake comb and heat! You can use a blowtorch to heat the edge of your cake comb or hold the comb under hot running water.
The heat of the metal will melt the very outer layer of frosting, dragging it around the cake to fill in any air bubbles in the frosting. The result is perfectly smooth frosting!
If you have ugly gaps around the top edge of your cake, it’s because your frosting wasn’t high enough. It needs to stick up above the top edge before you level it with a spatula or knife.
To prevent this, push upwards with your
Losing cake inspiration is common, especially if you’re trying to think of cake designs daily for your instagram account! A quick decoration that will match your cake to any colour scheme is to make a sprinkle mix. Use different shapes and sizes and colours for unique combinations. Press the sprinkles into the bottom of the cake for a sprinkle border or sprinkle them on top of the cake.
You can also use sprinkles or coloured sugar to make a cake topper. Here's a tutorial on making your own cake toppers!
I hope you’ve seen some ideas you’d like to try! To learn hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs, visit my cake school where you'll find courses and also memberships for access to everything on the cake school - start your free 7 day trial!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 10 cake struggles solved:
Vintage cakes or Lambeth cakes have been trending for a while because the over the top piping is so eye-catching and unique to this style. In this tutorial I’ll share 10 secrets for success with vintage cakes!
Neat vintage cakes begin long before you even pick up a piping bag! When you do pipe onto the cake, you need the frosted cake to be firm. If the frosting is still soft, the pressure of your piping tip can damage the frosting. After you’ve smoothed the frosting on your cake, chill the cake for the neatest vintage piping. About an hour in the fridge is ideal but thirty minutes in the freezer will work instead. I use my 4 Minute Buttercream to frost all of my cakes because it gets firm when it's cold but softens as it warm up.
Draw your vintage cakes before you start piping onto them. This will help you visualize if there’s room for everything on the cake and that there are no big gaps. I like to write the piping tip numbers that I’m going to use along one side of the sketch. On the other side I list the colours I'm going to use for each part of the piping.
This way I can see which tips I’ll need to use multiple times and I'll put couplers into the piping bags filled with those colours. For example, on this cake I’m going to use a #104 tip for purple, blue, and turquoise so I’ll put couplers in those piping bags. Couplers allow you to switch the piping tip quickly and easily between different bags.
When the frosting on your cake has chilled and set, outline the main parts of your design. You can do this with toothpicks or cookies cutters or both. Start by cutting a circle of parchment paper or wax paper or baking paper that’s the same size as your cake. The easiest way to do this is to draw around the pan you baked the cake in. Fold it in half three or four times and then unfold it and place it on top of your cake.
Use the creases in the paper as guidelines to poke toothpicks into the side of the cake. You should have a toothpick below each crease and you’ll see how this is helpful in a minute.
For even more guidance as you’re piping, use a round cookie cutter to mark curves into the frosting. You’ll follow these curves with your piping tips later.
Use a variety of piping tips and colours for the most interesting design on vintage cakes. For this cake I’m using seven piping tips and 11 colours, which is the most I’ve ever used. For this vintage heart cake I used just three piping tips and two colours, which still creates some nice interest.
Once you have your piping bags and colours ready, it’s time to pipe! The fifth secret for vintage cakes is to use variety in your piping. Use different techniques for different styles of piping, even if those techniques use the same piping tip. For example, a petal tip can be used for ribbons by holding it horizontally and wiggling it up and down. You can see this in the pink piping in the photo below. The same piping tip can be used for ruffly swags by holding it vertically, with the narrow part of the teardrop shape pointing down. As you pipe, wiggle your wrist to allow the frosting to ruffle. The blue piping below is an example of this piping technique.
You can also create more variety by using the same technique with different tips. For example, these blue ruffles were piped with a petal tip but these orange ruffles are piped with a leaf tip:
Layering is my favourite part of vintage cake designs. Using different shapes and sizes and colours of piping side by side is a really unique technique that you don’t see in many other designs. Actually, I can’t think of any other styles that use this!
The other trick that's really important for layering piping is coming up next!
Before layering piped details on top of each other, chill the first detail. It will set after about 20 minutes in the fridge so that it holds its shape even as you pipe on top of it. The weight of the next piped details won’t make it bulge or sag and the colours won't mix together. Also, you won't damage the old piping if you brush against it with this next piping tip. And if you have shaky hands like mine, you can rest the piping tip on the piping you’ve chilled to steady your hand and you won’t damage that chilled piping.
Repetition is key to vintage cakes! Use the same style of piping in different places on the cake, like the shell piping in purple at the bottom and again in orange at the top:
Even if you use lots of different colours and styles, repetition brings everything together by the end.
I love vintage cakes with all their piped details just as they are. But if you want to add even more glamour, add cherries dipped in edible glitter or piped flowers.
Finally, make sure your cake is as delicious as it looks by storing it properly! Vintages cakes should be refrigerated to preserve the heavy piping. Take them out a few hours before serving so that the cake and frosting warms up to room temperature. This takes about two hours for small cakes or four hours for large cakes. Buttercream cakes taste best at room temperature!
I hope this tutorial has been useful! I'd love it if you checked out my online cake school! You can take courses on baking and decorating cakes or choose the All You Can Cake membership for access to everything on my cake school to really take your cake decorating to the next level!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 10 secrets for vintage cakes:
In this tutorial I'll show you how to make a tie dye cake that's tie dye both inside and out!
For tie dye cake batter, divide your batter into four or five bowls add food coloring to each one. I’m using four bowls, making yellow, pink and blue and leaving one bowl plain.
You can spoon the coloured batter into pans or scoop it into piping bags and pipe it into cake pans. Switch back and forth between the different colours, squiggling the batter to make random patterns in the pans.
Tap the pans a few times to flatten and level the batter. Then drag a toothpick through the batter to mix the colours.
I like to using baking strips to help the cakes bake evenly and rise higher without domes. I soak them in a pan of water for five minutes and then squeeze the water out. Wrap tightly around the cake pans and bake as normal.
Divide the cakes in half if you want more layers. Then assemble your cake by alternating cake and filling.
To frost the cake, start with a crumb coat. This is a thin layer of frosting to trap any crumbs that come off the cake so that they don’t get into the final layer of frosting. I'm using my 4 minute buttercream.
Chill the cake for about 30 minutes in the fridge to set the crumb coat. Meanwhile, tint a few bowls of buttercream the same colours as the cake batter. Line them up on a piece of cling film or Saran Wrap. You can put the colours into piping bags and pipe them in lines, side by side. To save yourself washing those piping bags, spoon the colours onto the plastic instead, like I’m doing here.
Roll the plastic wrap up into a log around the buttercream and twist the ends. Cut off one end and drop that end down into a piping bag fitted with a star tip like a 1M.
Now pipe the multi-coloured buttercream onto the cake. I’m piping rosettes and filling in any gaps by squeezing out little stars. Different piping techniques will give you different results when you flatten it next, creating a cross section of your piping. Cover the sides and top of the cake and then put the cake into the freezer for 15 minutes.
I call this technique 'facelift frosting' because you're going to give your piping a facelift! To do this, use a hot cake comb to scrape around the cake. You can heat the edge with a blowtorch, which is my favourite method because it's the fastest. Other options are to hold the cake comb under hot running water from the tap or dip it into a bowl of boiling water. You’ll question yourself after the first few scrapes because it will look like you’re destroying your piping!
Keep scraping, re-heating your cake comb after every few scrapes. If you piped onto the top of the cake you’ll need to scrape that too. The frosting won't get perfectly smooth because you’ll have gaps in between parts of the piping. What you’re looking for is a smooth curve around the sides of the cake. The top surface should be level even though it will have lots of holes in it.
Tie dye has those white markings or creases and to recreate those, spread white frosting all over the cake. This is another part of this technique where it feels that you’re ruining the cake!
The point of this white frosting is to fill in the gaps, not to cover up the colours! So after spreading it all over, switch back to your cake comb and scrape around the cake again. You'll take off the excess white frosting and leave it only within the gaps in the piping.
The white frosting will set quickly because the coloured frosting is cold so using a hot cake comb will make this much easier. It will melt the outer layer of frosting instead of trying to scrape cold hard buttercream off the cake!
There are so many possibilities for this technique! Different piping tips and piping styles will give you very different results. There are also so many ways you can decorate it. I’m adding some neon yellow borders using a 4B star tip. It would be fun to add some peace signs or smiley faces or other hippy style decorations too!
I stopped at this point because I was impatient to cut into this to see whether the inside matched the outside. Here's the slice shot - I wasn't disappointed! Bright swirls of colour, my delicious very vanilla cake layers, my creamy 4 minute buttercream… absolute perfection!
Will you try this? What other design should I attempt with this technique? Tell me in the comments!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on how to make a tie dye cake:
Here are 7 easy Easter cake ideas and Easter cupcake ideas, too! You don’t need any decorating experience for these and you can even do them with kids!
You can do the first of these Easter cake ideas even if you don’t have any cake pans. Pour your batter into a baking dish or casserole dish. Add your favourite Easter treats like mini eggs, Easter coloured M&Ms, chopped up strawberries, and creme eggs.
Bake your cake and don’t worry if the treats look a bit funky when they come out of the oven! After the cake cools, spread or pipe frosting on top. I’m using a different colour for each section of the cake, piping different techniques with a 1M star tip.
The final result is colourful and textured and fun! Of course, the best part is cutting into the cake and tasting each of the ingredients. Which one would you choose first?
Turn a simple frosted cake into an Easter egg cake with this tehcnique. Mix a spoonful of cocoa powder and a few drops of water to make a chocolate liquid. You won't be able to splatter a paste so make sure you use enough water. Dip a paintbrush into it and then flick it all over your cake to make speckled frosting. I definitely recommend covering the countertop and the wall behind the cake while you do this!
You can use striking motions or tap the paintbrush against your other hand to create a spray.
Wipe any splatters off the cake board or cake stand and then add a border if you like. This is a 4B piping tip:
The cake looks stunning just like this but you can also add any of the other decorations in this tutorial. I’m piping a nest using a rope border technique with my Best Chocolate Buttercream.
Cadbury's Mini Eggs are the perfect size for this and you can dust them with edible glitter to add sparkle!
There are two easy techniques on this next cake. The first is one bag frosting, where you layer different colours of frosting within a piping bag. You only need a small amount of each. Next, as you pipe, you'll create a gradient of colour on your cake.
The second technique is piping drop flowers, which you can do with any rounded star tip like a 2D tip.
Hold the bag vertically and rest the piping tip on a silicon mat or a piece of parchment paper. Squeeze the bag and twist it to let the petals fan out sideways. You’ll freeze these to set them and then place them on your cake later.
As you pipe flower after flower, you’ll see the different colours as they push down through the piping bag. You’ll see the previous colours on the outer edges of the petals and the new colours will come through in the center.
Put the piped flowers into the freezer for about 10 minutes to chill and harden. Then you can lift them up and press them onto a frosted cake.
They’ll only stay cold for about a minute and when they start to soften, they'll break when you move them. At this point, put them back into the freezer for a few minutes to chill and firm up again.
This design uses just one piping bag and piping tip but the result is gorgeous! You could cover a cake completely with these, or add a single row around the cake.
To incorporate Easter colours in your cake, use a striped cake comb. Scrape around a frosted cake a few times until the grooves are neat. Then put the cake into the freezer for 15 minutes.
Next, pipe coloured buttercream into the grooves. You can fill all of the grooves or only create a few stripes as an accent. To do this, pipe coloured buttercrema into a few grooves and the background colour into the rest of the grooves.
As you smooth the frosting, the colourful stripes will get neater and neater. Wherever you've filled grooves with the background colour, the piped frosting will blend into the background frosting. Those stripes will disappear to create a plain, smooth surface instead.
To use your leftover colours to pipe some swirls on top of the cake, lay out a piece of plastic wrap. Squeeze the leftover colours into rows along it and then roll it up into a log.
Cut off one end and drop that end down into a piping bag fitted with a star shaped piping tip. Twist the top of the bag and then pipe swirls onto the top of the cake. All of the colours will come through the piping tip, matching the colours of the stripes on the cake.
Now for some cupcake cake ideas. The easiest Easter cupcake to make is a simple bunny. Swirl buttercream or any other frosting onto a cupcake using a star tip like a 1M. Then cut a marshmallow in half diagonally for diamond shaped ears or cut straight across it for oval shaped ears. It’s important to use a freshly opened bag of marshmallows for this! They need to be soft with a sticky middle.
Pour some sugar into a bowl and add a drop of pink food coloruing. Stir it around until it’s the colour mixes into the sigar and makes it all pink.
Next, press the cut side of each piece of marshmallow into the bowl. The pink sugar will stick to it and it will look like the inside of the bunny's ear.
Then poke two pieces into the frosted cupcake to make an Easter bunny!
This is a fun Easter cupcake idea to do with kids and they'll love being able to do it all themselves! These are simple but adorable and delicious!
For a more sophisticated Easter bunny design, make a flat top cupcake. Pipe a blob of buttercream onto a cupcake, letting it bulge out to almost cover the cupcake.
Then flip it over onto a tray or cutting board lined with parchment paper or wax paper or baking paper.
Put it into the freezer for 30 minutes and then peel the cupcake away from the paper. You’ll have a beautifully flat, smooth surface to decorate!
Cut an Easter bunny out of another piece of parchment paper and as you cut, leave the surrounding paper intact. Press this down onto the cupcake and you have a homemade stencil! Spread some frosting over it and scrape off the excess to leave a thin layer behind.
Peel the stencil off and voila!
To make this a bit fancier you can pipe on a flower using any star shaped tip, like this 1M. Twist as you squeeze to make the petals fan out sideways.
Add some details to the face with a toothpick or paint them on with a very thin paintbrush. This design is almost too pretty to eat!
You can use this technique on cakes too! Chill the cake after frosting it for at least hour in the fridge and then press a homemade stencil against it. Spread buttercream over the top and peel it off!
You can add flowers and sprinkles to make it more colourful. See the step by step tutorial for this cake in my tutorial on 4 easy Easter cake ideas.
To pipe a nest, use a star shaped piping tip to pipe a ring or a tall swirl. Add some chocolate or candy Easter eggs in the middle. You don’t have to press hard to attach these if the buttercream is still soft and sticky.
The Easter coloured Mini Eggs were sold out so I’m using rainbow Mini Eggs instead. Brushing them with edible glitter makes the colours a bit lighter and more festive. I tapped the glitter paintbrush over the frosting nest, too.
I hope you’ve seen some ideas you’d like to try! Learn hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs on my cake school, where you can choose an online course or a membership for access to everything!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 7 Easter cake ideas and Easter cupcake ideas:
Cake toppers take your cakes to the next level by adding height and colour and detail. Here are 10 easy cake toppers to use for your cakes.
Make colourful cherries by dipping cherries into melted chocolate and then pressing into a bowl of sprinkles. Non pareils or hundreds and thousands are perfect for this because they’ll give you full coverage over the chocolate and not much texture when you bite into them.
For glittered cherries use glaced or candied cherries. They’re sticky so you can dip them into a jar of luster dust or edible glitter and it will stick to the cherry to cover it completely. This will make them colourful and also shimmery or metallic!
These look so pretty and showstopping when they’re nestled into piping on a cake.
Make custom cake toppers with chocolate and sprinkles. You can use white chocolate or dark chocolate or whatever kind you like. Melt chocolate in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time using 80% power so it doesn’t burn or seize. Stir until it’s smooth and then spoon the chocolate into a sandwich bag. Cut a tiny piece off one of the bottom corners of the bag to squeeze the chocolate through. Then draw a design or write a message onto a piece of baking paper, parchment paper or wax paper.
Make the lines as thick as you can, while still being legible. This way they’ll be strong and less likely to snap than if they’re thin. Push a toothpick into the bottom of each section and cover it up with some more chocolate. The lines don’t need to be neat or smooth because you'll cover them up in a minute.
Next, pour sprinkles or coloured sugar on top, pressing down gently to attach them to the melted chocolate. It’s good idea to do this on a cake board or a tray so that you can lift it up and put it into the freezer. The chocolate needs to set and it will be strongest when it’s cold. After about 5 minutes you can pick up the toothpicks to lift up the chocolate and it won’t break.
Then push the chocolate into the cake. The toothpicks will secure the chocolate so that it stands up straight. This is such an easy way to make fun, colourful cake toppers!
Create cake toppers using ingredients that match your cake flavour. For example, I'm using fresh berries to match the filling and frosting on this cake.
If the frosting on the cake has already set, it won't be sticky anymore and the toppers won't stick to it. You’ll need to spread fresh frosting wherever you want to place the toppers to act as glue to attach them.
If the frosting hasn’t set yet, you can press the toppers straight onto it. These are cookie dough balls on my cookie dough cake, which has cookie dough filling and brown sugar frosting. Yum!
When the frosting is still soft, notice that the weight of cake topper can make the frosting bulge. Instead, it's best to chill the cake before adding any cake toppers.
Fresh flowers make stunning cake toppers almost effortlessly! First, do a quick Google search to make sure the flowers you want to use aren't toxic. Wash and dry the flowers and cut the stems an inch of two below the flowers. Group them together to make small clusters. Wrap the stems with cling film or Saran Wrap so that no liquids seep out into your cake.
Now push the wrapped stems into a straw and cut the straw so it’s barely longer than the stems. Then push these into your cake, using scissor blades to push them all the way in. Or you can push just the straw in first and then poke the stems into it next. Fresh flowers are simple but stunning!
Another option is to use artificial flowers. They won’t wilt so you can arrange them on a cake in advance and they'll still look perfect the next day. Also, you don’t have to worry about any floral juices oozing into your cake. It's still a good idea to wrap the stems so they're food safe before pushing them into the cake.
You can skip the straws if you don’t have any but they make it easier to push the flowers in and to remove them later.
Use macarons or candies to add height and detail to the tops of your cakes. This is a great way to match a colour scheme! You can make the macarons or buy them from a bakery or even from a supermarket or grocery store.
If you’ve just frosted your cake, the frosting will still be soft so decorations will stick to the frosted cake. If the frosting on the cake has already set, attach toppers by spreading or piping a dot of buttercream first. This will act as glue to secure them so they don’t fall over when you move the cake.
Make your own delicious donuts to use as cake toppers! Pipe extra cake batter into a silicon donut mold and bake for the same time as you would bake cupcakes, 14-17 minutes.
After cooling, dip them into ganache. Ganache is easy to make with three times as much white chocolate as cream. You can tint this with oil based colours or buy coloured candy melts to use instead of white chocolate.
Add any decorations like sprinkles straight away, while the ganache is still soft and sticky. Push a toothpick or two toothpicks into the donut and then push the toothpicks into the cake. The toothpicks will support to donut so that it stays upright and in place.
Use toy figures like cars or cartoon characters as cake toppers on themed cakes. It's much less time consuming than making the figures out of buttercream or chocolate or fondant. Also, for children’s characters, figures are more easily recognizable than your own version.
Just like with other toppers, they won’t stick to frosting that’s already set. If a buttercream cake has been in the fridge you’ll need to use fresh buttercream as glue on the cake topper.
Use cookies like Oreos as cake toppers by arranging them around the top of a cake. Push them gently down into the frosting or into a drip on top of the cake. Space them evenly and then pipe swirls in between them.
The cookies will keep the swirls the same width and, if you keep an eye on the top of the cookies, you can pipe every swirl to be the same height, too!
You can buy cake toppers for any occasion like birthdays or baby showers. The message will be more visible than if you pipe it because it stands upright. Push it into the cake after transporting because the vibrations of a car will wiggle it and make the hole in the cake bigger and visible around the stick of the cake topper.
Which cake topper are you going to try next? Tell me in the comments! And visit my cake school to learn hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs with individual courses or a membership for access to everything, which you can try out with a FREE 7 day trial!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 10 easy cake toppers:
Use these 10 rainbow cake hacks for techniques and designs to make your rainbow cakes quick, easy, and better!
Let's start with how to mix rainbow colors in just one bowl. Start with yellow and then continue in this order:
This is not the order of the colours in the rainbow! The reason for this order is that the leftovers of each colour in the bowl can blend together with the next colour without muddying or dulling that colour. For example, leftover orange mixes into red and then leftover red mixes into purple. You can add more plain white buttercream to the bowl as needed but you won't have to clean the bowl.
Even without washing the bowl in between, you'll end up with gorgeous, bright rainbow colours.
To mix small amounts of rainbow colours (which I'll show you how to use later) use a cupcake pan. It's more convenient than using lots of little bowls because it's quicker to wash up afterwards.
Also, you can tint the colours in advance and cover the whole cupcake pan with cling film or Saran Wrap. This keeps the buttercream soft until you use it so that it doesn't dry out and crust.
To pipe rainbows onto your cake, line up your coloured frosting on a piece of cling film or Saran Wrap. Then roll it tightly into a log.
Cut off one end and drop that end down into a piping bag. Use a star tip to pipe arcs onto your cake and all of the colours of the rainbow will come through.
Add clouds by piping white buttercream at each end. If you're using a small round piping tip like this #4, squeeze each dot for a few seconds. This allows it to bulge out to make these fluffy clouds.
For the quickest rainbows, squeeze blobs of rainbow colours along the straight edge of a cake comb. Rest it against a frosted cake and curve it around to spread the frosting onto the cake into a rainbow.
You might need to scrape a few times to get the frosting really smooth. You can carve shapes or letters into the rainbow using a petal piping tip.
To create a stencilled rainbow you only need tiny amounts of rainbow frosting. Attach your stencil to a chilled cake by taping it tightly or pinning it into the cake. Spread your rainbow frosting over the stencil one colour after another.
When you scrape over this with a cake comb or spatula you'll take off the excess and blend the colours together naturally. Peel the stencil off to leave a stunning rainbow design on your cake!
Another quick way to add rainbow colours to a cake is with this layered technique. Frost and chill your cake first so that the frosting is very firm. Then pipe or spread your first colour around the cake. Since the frosted cake is cold and firm, this colour won't blend into it. Scrape around the cake with a cake comb to flatten and smooth this colour.
Now pipe or spread your next colour above or below the first colour. If your cake isn't very cold you'll need to chill it in the freezer for about 2 minutes in between each colour.
These layers of rainbow colours are simple but the result is beautiful!
To make a cake in the shape of a rainbow is super easy. Cut round cakes in half and layer them with filling.
Then flip the cake onto its side and you have a semicircle or a rainbow shape.
Frost the cake to seal in the moisture so it doesn't dry out. Then cover it with rainbow piping or however else you want to decorate it. You can read or watch my detailed tutorial on how to make this rainbow cake.
To pipe with rainbow colours using just one piping tip for all of your colours, use this hack. Prepare your colours in piping bags with the ends cut off each one, but without piping tips in the bags. Choose your piping tip and drop it into a different piping bag. I'm using an open star tip #32.
Drop your first bag of coloured buttercream into the piping bag with the piping tip. You'll squeeze this colour out through the piping tip of the other bag. When you finish, pull this piping bag of coloured frosting out of the piping bag with the piping tip.
Drop the next colour in and squeeze out the last of the previous colour into a bowl until you see the new colour come out.
Pipe with this colour and repeat for the rest of your colours. Always squeeze the bag into a bowl in between colours. With this hack you can pipe colourful designs without needing a piping tip for each piping bag of coloured frosting. The cake in the photo below was made using my facelift frosting technique:
For rainbow coloured cake layers inside the cake, try this. Divide your batter and tint each bowl and then spoon each colour into a piping bag. Squeeze the bags into cake pans, making random colourful designs.
Tap the pans to level the cake layers and bake as normal. When you cut into the cake everyone will be surprised by the fun colours!
To cover a cake with rainbow sprinkles choose tiny non pareils or hundreds and thousands. Smooth the frosting on your cake but it doesn't have to be perfect for this design. Scoop up handfuls of sprinkles and press them against the cake while the frosting is still soft and sticky and they'll attach easily. It's best to put your cake on a tray to catch the sprinkles that bounce off.
This is a popular choice for a cakeover or a cake makeover, where you buy your favourite flavour of cake and redecorate it. You might do this to personalize it or just to save yourself the time of baking.
These tiny sprinkles create an instant rainbow effect without needing to master any cake decorating techniques. Since they're so tiny, they really don't add much texture to the cake when you bite into it.
Which rainbow cake hack will you use? Tell me in the comments! Visit my cake school to learn hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs with my online courses and memberships. See you there!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 10 rainbow cake hacks:
Use these 10 cake decorating shortcuts to skip the
Using a cake comb to scrape around a cake doesn't guarantee you smooth frosting. If your buttercream is too stiff or has air bubbles, even 100 scrapes won’t smooth it. Here’s a shortcut: scoop up a third of the buttercream and microwave it for 10 seconds.
When you stir the melted buttercream back into the main bowl of frosting, it will thin out the consistency. As a bonus, you'll get rid of any air bubbles in the process!
This microwaved frosting will glide effortlessly as you spread it onto your cake. Your cake comb will whisk away the excess to leave a silly smooth surface behind.
Cake combs come in all sorts of patterns that can be used to texture the frosting on a cake. But do you really need to buy a new one every time you want a different texture? Nope! Just grab your
Or pull straight up to make vertical swooshes, or use arc motions to create this rustic texture instead:
It’s quicker, easier and cheaper than mastering cake comb texture! Learn more ways to decorate cakes with no tools in this tutorial.
If you don’t have a
Run out of piping bags? Don’t panic! Spoon your frosting into a ziplock or sandwich bag and push it down into one of the bottom corners. Then cut the tip off the corner and twist the bag tightly where you grip it. When you squeeze, you’ll push the frosting out through that hole just like you would with a piping bag. Now you can pipe dots, beaded borders and lines without a piping bag!
If you have piping bags but no tips, cut the end off the piping bag to leave a small hole. Now you can create dotted or pointillist designs by piping hundreds of dots! The longer you squeeze the piping bag while holding it still, the bigger the dots will spread out the be.
You can even use a piping bag with no piping tip to write pretty messages, like this!
A coupler allows you to switch a piping tip between different piping bags. If you don’t have a coupler, use this cake decorating shortcut! Drop the piping tip into a piping bag and prepare different piping bags, without piping tips, filled with coloured frosting. Lower the first coloured bag into the bag with the piping tip.
As you squeeze the bag you’ll push the coloured buttercream through the piping tip that’s in the other bag. Pipe all the details you want with that colour first. Then lift the coloured bag out and drop the next one in. Squeeze the last of the previous colour out into a bowl until you see the next colour come through.
Pipe the details with this colour and repeat for as many colours as you want to use. Remember each time to squeeze out the remainder of the previous colour into a bowl before piping onto the cake. With this shortcut you can switch quickly between several colours, all using just one piping tip. You'll save time by not having to wash and dry anything in between colours and no coupler is necessary!
To pipe intricate flowers you don’t need a flower nail and parchment squares and several different piping tips. Skip all of that by using Russian Tips as a shortcut! Combine multiple colours by stirring them together slightly for a marbled effect. For more control, pipe colours onto a piece of plastic wrap using a different colour for the middle.
Roll the plastic up tightly around the frosting to make a log. Then twist both ends of the log and cut one end off.
Drop the cut end down into a piping bag with any flower shaped Russian Tip inside. These are my favourites:
Squeeze and release to pipe detailed, colorful flowers with individual petals in seconds!
Add more with a leaf tip, conveniently filling in any gaps in between the flowers!
Stenciled cakes are stunning but stencils are expensive to buy for every cake you decorate. Instead, grab a roll of parchment paper. Cut a piece out a few inches bigger than your design and draw or trace your design onto it.
If you’re using different colours, use a different piece of parchment paper for the details of each colour. If your design has 4 colours, you’ll have 4 stencils.
Cut the design out, keeping the surrounding paper intact.
You’ll need a cold cake for stenciling, so that the buttercream frosting chills and sets and gets really firm. I leave my cakes in the fridge for at least an hour before using stnecils. This way you won’t damage the frosting when you press the stencils against it.
When you take the cake out of the fridge, tiny beads of condensation will form after a few minutes. Wrap your homemade stencil around the cake and it will stick to the condensation! Spread frosting over the design you cut out, being careful not to spread it over the edges of the parchment and onto the frosted cake. Scrape off the excess with an offset spatula or cake to leave a thin, smooth layer behind.
Peel the paper off and voila! Use a toothpick to tidy up any smudges or texture on the buttercream
Repeat with the rest of the stencils, if you’re using more than one colour. Put the cake in the freezer for about 5 minutes in between each stencil to set the previous colour. If you don't, the parchment paper will smudge the details you’ve already stenciled onto the cake.
Tadaa! Easy homemade stencils to make neat designs that are completely customizable!
For even, level layers you could trim the tops off with a serrated knife to get rid of the domes. Save time by using baking strips instead. To use these, soak in water for 5 minutes and then squeeze so they're not dripping wet. Place the strip around a cake pan and tighten until it's snug.
Your cake layers will bake evenly without burnt edges and they’ll rise higher for taller cakes. Also, amazingly, they’ll be perfectly flat without needing to trim them! When you cut into the cake, the slices look beautiful with straight, even layers of cake and filling.
Get more tool recommendations in my tutorial on which cake decorating tools really work.
Instead of buying bigger cake boxes for tall cakes, tier cakes or cakes with cake toppers, use this shortcut! Cut one side of the lid with two diagonal slits. The shorter you cut the slits, the higher up you'll raise the lid. Do the same on the opposite side of the box. This will make a flap in the middle on those two sides.
Then slide the flaps into the inside of the box. Now the lid won’t touch the top of the cake and damage it. You’ll be able to safely transport your cakes without needing to buy new packaging!
I hope this tutorial has been useful! Tell me in the comments: which are your favourite cake decorating shortcuts?
For more cake decorating shortcuts, tips and tricks visit my cake school, where you'll learn hundreds of techniques and designs in my online courses!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 10 cake decorating shortcuts:
Buttercream is my favourite frosting for cake decorating but to be successful with it you need to know these five things about it.
I use my 4 Minute Buttercream for all of my cakes!
Let's start with the right temperature to work with buttercream. Since it's made with butter, just like butter it melts in the heat and gets hard when it's cold. If it's hot in the room you'll struggle with cake sweat, which are droplets of condensation on the frosting. You might even see colours running down the cake.
For many techniques, the frosting needs to set before decorating it. For example, for stenciling the cake needs to be in the fridge for at least an hour first. When you take the cake out of the fridge, the buttercream won't stay firm for long in a warm room. When you press the stencil against the cake your fingers will melt the frosting and leave unwanted indents behind.
Cold temperatures have their own set of problems. I attempted to frost this cake when there was a freeze where I live and look what happens! The cake isn't cold and the buttercream was at room temperature when I made it the day before. But the cold weather has chilled the buttercream as I smooth it so much that it's started to set. You can see the stiff texture on the cake on the left compared to the softness on the cake on the right.
So, what's the right temperature? Room temperature is around 72°F or 22°C and that's ideal.
There are three things to watch out for when you tint buttercream. First, the consistency of the buttercream. The more colour you add, the runnier it will become especially if you're using liquid colours rather than gel colours.
If you know you're going to add a lot of colour, consider leaving out the milk or cream in the buttercream recipe. Wait until after you've added the colour so that you can add less than normal if necessary.
The second thing to keep in mind is that colours develop and darken with time. If you're aiming for a certain shade, mix the colour a little bit lighter than you want it to be. After a few hours it will be significantly darker.
The third thing to beware of is the flavour of food colours. The more you add, the more you'll notice it, typically a bitter taste. To prevent it don't add more than a small squirt of gel to a bowl of buttercream. Then darken it with this method: scoop out a third of the buttercream microwave it for 10 seconds. Mix the runny, melted buttercream back into the main bowl.
The colour of the buttercream will get darker in the microwave. As you mix it back in it will make the whole batch darker. As a bonus side effect, the consistency will transform into absolute perfection!
Let's talk about how to smooth buttercream frosting on a cake. Here are my best tips:
1. Make sure the buttercream is a nice loose consistency that's easy to stir and leaves soft peaks:
2. Spread it diagonally upwards onto the cake to make a lip or wall around the top of the cake. This will give you sharp edges later instead of drooping or domed tops.
3. Before scraping around the cake with a cake comb, push the base of the comb down on the cake board. This lines the edge up straight against the cake to make straight sides on your cake.
4. Pull long spins on the
5. For the top edge swipe sideways with your
For piping with buttercream the consistency should be fairly stiff so that the details will hold their shape. However, you don't want the buttercream to be too stiff or it will split around the edge of the piping. Also, stiff buttercream is difficult to push out through the piping tip so it will strain your wrist as you pipe. That strain won't give you smooth piping because the buttercream won't come out evenly.
Top tip: if the buttercream gets runnier as you pipe, it's warming up from the warmth of your hands. Put the bag in the freezer for 1 minute and it will stiffen up for neater piping.
Buttercream should always be covered so it's airtight and doesn't dry out and crust. You can keep it in a bowl covered with plastic wrap or a lid or put it in a tupperware or in a Ziploc or sandwich bag.
How long can you store buttercream? At room temperature for 2 to 3 days because the high ratio of sugar to dairy preserves the dairy. It can be refrigerated for 2 weeks or stored in the freezer for 2 months. Take it out of the fridge or freezer the night before you're going to use it so it has time to warm up to room temperature.
I hope these tips have been useful and that you're excited to decorate your next cake! For hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs visit my cake school. You'll find online courses and also memberships to take your cake decorating to the next level!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 5 things you must know about buttercream:
Let's decorate a half stripe cake with rainbow colours and optional gold and green shamrocks! This is a unique, eye-catching cake perfect for St Patrick’s day or any other rainbow themed celebration.
You can use any flavour for the cake layers but rainbow colours makes them more fun to cut into! To do that, I divided my Very Vanilla cake batter between five bowls. Add a drop of gel color to four of them, leaving the last bowl plain. Cut the ends off 5 piping bags and spoon the batter into them.
Then you can pipe the batter in squiggles to make a random, colourful pattern. Tap the pans so that the cakes are level before putting them in the oven. As they bake, the edges will darken like they always do but the insides will be bright and beautiful!
I like to chill my cake layers after they cool so that they’re less crumbly. This makes the next few steps much easier and neater. Thirty minutes in the freezer is enough time for them to firm up but they’ll come back to room temperature and get nice and soft again before you eat the cake.
Assemble your cake by alternating the cake layers with whatever filling you choose. Next, cover the cake in a crumb coat, which traps any crumbs that come off the cake. This is my 4 Minute Buttercream.
Piping the frosting onto the cake is quicker than spreading it straight on. Then spread the piped frosting around the cake and you’ll pull off fewer crumbs this way. Chill the crumb coated cake in the fridge for 30 minutes or the freezer for 15 minutes. This will set the crumb coat before adding your next layer of frosting.
Spread another layer of frosting generously onto your cake. Scrape around the cake a few times with a cake comb so that the sides are straight and fairly smooth. Then switch to a striped cake comb. You need quite a thick layer of frosting for stripes, at least as thick as the grooves of your striped cake comb. If your frosting is too thin, the grooves on the comb will dig through this frosting and into the crumb coat.
Keep scraping until your stripe grooves are very neat, with smooth edges. Don’t worry about the top edge of the frosting yet. Put the cake in the freezer for 15 minutes to set these stripes and meanwhile, prepare the colours for the rest of the stripes.
Here’s a hack for rainbow colours that you can mix in just one bowl without washing the bowl in between colours. Start with yellow and after scooping that out and into a piping bag you’ll continue in this order:
This obviously isn’t the order of the colours in the rainbow. The reason for this order is that the leftovers of each colour in the bowl can blend together with the next colour without muddying that colour. For example, leftover orange mixed into red is fine and leftover red mixed into purple is fine. You'll end up with bright colours even though they’ve all been prepare in the same dirty bowl! (Well, not dirty, just not washed and dried in between colours!) To make half-stripes you’ll need a piping bag with plain white buttercream in it, too.
Take your cake out of the freezer and use your cake comb to score a diagonal line into the cake. Spin the cake around and score another one on the other side of the cake. These lines will divide the cake in half.
Pipe the white buttercream into the striped grooves on one half, between the two scored lines.
Then scrape around the cake with a straight edged cake comb. You'll push this buttercream all the way into the grooves to fill them. You'll also take off the excess with your comb. Scrape in both directions so that the ends of the stripes don’t drag into the other half the cake. If there are any indents or air pockets, spread more buttercream over those areas and scrape again. Scrape until you’ve left a smooth surface behind. The stripes will blend into each other to make a solid white half of the cake.
Now use your rainbow colours on the other half. Follow the same technique of piping and then scraping, scraping, scraping, in both directions.
When the stripes are smooth they'll lie flat against the white stripes, as if they're painted onto the cake.
Put the cake back into the freezer for 2 minutes while you fill a glass with hot water. Dip a sharp knife into the hot water and take your cake out of the freezer. Cut around the top edge to take off the buttercream that’s sticking up, leaving a smooth, straight, sharp edge.
My top stripe is too thin. I should have made my filling thicker to add some height to the cake or baked another cake layer. Oh well!
To cover up the join of the two halves of the cake, spread out a piece of cling film on the counter. Pipe the leftovers of your coloured buttercream onto it in rainbow order.
Roll the colours tightly to make a log and cut one end off so that the colours are right up against the edge.
If you want to use several piping tips, you’ll need a coupler in your piping bag. If not, drop your chosen piping tip down into the piping bag. Now lower the cut side of the log of rainbow buttercream down into the piping bag.
If you’re using a coupler you can use various piping tips to add different textures. I’m starting with these swirls or spirals which I’m piping with a 1M star tip:
Then unscrew the coupler ring and switch to another piping tip and screw that on. I’m piping these ruffly ribbons next, with a #125 petal tip:
Rosettes are great to add last to fill in any gaps. This is a 4B open star tip. They can also be used to widen the band of piping anywhere you think it needs it.
Stop at this point for a rainbow cake or for St Patrick's Day, add these fun shamrocks! Put the cake in the fridge and pipe a few shamrocks onto a piece of parchment paper or wax paper. Pipe a dot using a small round tip like a #4 and drag with your piping tip to make a teardrop shape. You can spread the dot gently with an
Squeeze the dot out for a few moments to make it bulge. This will give you more frosting to drag out next. Add a stem with the same piping tip.
After finishing the cake I googled shamrocks and clovers to find out the difference and wouldn’t you know, shamrocks are only supposed to have three leaves! If you make three-leaf shamrocks yours will be even quicker to pipe, with one less leaf on each!
Piping onto paper is great practice before piping onto the side of the cake, which is a bit trickier! And you’ll turn these into gold shamrocks in a few minutes.
Put these into the freezer while you make some gold paint. You can do this by mixing gold luster dust with a few drops of any clear alcohol like vodka, or a clear flavor extract like clear vanilla. You can also buy edible gold paint in bottles instead.
Take the frozen shamrocks out of the freezer and paint each one. Use little dabbing motions for the thickest coverage which will give you the strongest, most metallic gold colour. Put these back into the freezer for a few minutes to set the colour.
Measure a piece of parchment paper or wax paper so it will wrap around the white half of the cake. Marking the diagonal onto it will make it easier, so that your piping won’t get in the way. Cut those diagonal ends off now.
Fold the paper in half and in half again and again and again. Then unfold it and do the same in the other direction to make a grid.
Take your cake out of the fridge and the piping should have set, so you won’t damage it. Wrap your paper grid around the cake and pin it in place.
Then use another pin to poke through every other join in the grid along one row. For the next row, poke through every OTHER other join or crease, so that the places you’re poking are not one above the other. These dots you’re poking will guide you as you pipe your shamrocks.
Unpin the paper grid and peel it off the cake. You should be able to see the holes you poked into the frosting. Next, pipe pipe green shamrocks onto the cake using the same technique as you did onto paper earlier. Cover all of the dots you poked into the cake except for one diagonal, which you'll cover with gold shamrocks next.
Pipe a tiny white dot of frosting onto those poked dots along the empty diagonal. Then pick up a gold shamrock by sliding an
Press the frozen gold shamrock gently into the buttercream dot you've just piped. Continue along that diagonal to fill it with the gold shamrocks. Work quickly because as the buttercream shamrocks thaw, they'll get soft and you won't be able to pick them up.
I love adding edible gold to cakes because it’s so expected!
This is such a fun cake and the diagonal divide is so eye-catching! I teach hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs like this one on my cake school. You can take individual courses or choose a membership for access to all of my courses, live sessions, and more!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on how to make a rainbow half stripe cake:
