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Cake Stripes | 4 Secrets For Perfect Stripes On Cakes
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Sep 6, 2024
Step by step tutorial for cake stripes: 4 secrets for perfect stripes on cakes using buttercream frosting and a striped cake comb (I use this one: https://amzn.to/2LX6mAw). This tutorial is divided into: A breakdown of the technique - 0:24 Variations on striped patterns - 5:57 Troubleshooting cake stripes - 10:31 Here are the links for the tutorials mentioned in this video: How To Build A Cake - https://youtu.be/xtZCSM-dleM 4 Minute Buttercream Frosting - https://youtu.be/MFKfXbnU1Lw Perfectly Smooth Buttercream and Sharp Edges - https://youtu.be/s2kDZue0Tig My tutorial for the orange, green and purple striped cake is here: https://youtu.be/E8mEFzn5P5w and for the black and silver striped cakes is here: https://youtu.be/hsKUSg-k21I I will share the tutorials for the other cakes featured in this video soon! Subscribe to my channel to be notified when I do! To sign up for my FREE online course on 10 frosting techniques click here: https://www.britishgirlbakes.com/free-course If you buy any of the products I've linked out to, the price you pay won't change but I will make a small commission on anything you buy. Thank you for helping to keep the British Girl Bakes tutorials FREE!
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Emily and welcome to British Girl Bakes
0:04
I'm going to show you four secrets to get perfect stripes in your buttercream frosting
0:08
And then I'm going to show you a few variations to get different styles of stripes
0:14
I'm also going to do some troubleshooting to answer questions about why your stripes aren't turning out exactly the way you want them to
0:20
Okay, of course, we're going to have to start by building our cake
0:24
Make sure your layers are lined up evenly on top of each other to give your cake straight, even sides
0:30
Don't apply too much filling between the layers or it will bulge out when the cake gets to room temperature
0:36
You'll need to crumb coat your cake, which is a thin layer of frosting to trap any crumbs that come off the cake
0:42
so your final layer of frosting will be crumb-free. To get up to this step, watch my tutorial on how to build a cake
0:50
Now that your cake is ready, let's explore the striping technique. A striped cake comb looks like this
0:56
There are lots of different types. plastic, metal, acrylic, whatever you choose, just make sure the comb is at least as tall as your cake
1:04
Here's a quick diagram for how the striped cake comb works. Here's a cross section of a cake with a crumb coat and then a final coat of frosting
1:13
You use your cake comb to make these nice deep grooves in the frosting and then you chill it
1:19
You apply another colour of frosting to fill in the grooves and then you use a frosting scraper to scrape off the extra frosting
1:26
a few layers of it, leaving these beautifully neat stripes. Now let's see it in real life
1:33
When your crumb coat has set, apply the first colour of frosting to your cake
1:37
I'm using my four minute buttercream frosting, which is American buttercream made with butter and powdered sugar
1:43
If it's too thick to be able to spread it easily over your cake, add some cream or milk to thin it out a bit
1:50
The first secret to perfect stripes is to make sure the frosting is at least as thick as your cake
1:55
comb grooves all around the cake. This might seem like a lot of frosting, but you're going to
2:01
scrape a lot of it off by the time the cake is finished, and having this much frosting ensures
2:05
solid, neat stripes. Get your top and sides smooth. They don't have to be perfect, because you're
2:12
going to use your cake comb and then the frosting scraper again. The second secret to perfect
2:18
stripes is to make sure the sides of the cake are straight and even. When you look at the cake from every
2:24
angle. You want the sides to be straight, not slanting diagonally up or down, because when you
2:29
use the cake comb your grooves will end up being different thicknesses, and the stripes in the
2:33
shallower grooves will get swallowed as you smooth out your cake. I'll show you an example of this
2:38
with some troubleshooting later. Don't worry about this frosting sticking up over the sides of the
2:43
cake yet. Now take your frosting comb and place it against the side of the cake. Line it up so the
2:50
base is flat on the cakeboard, and make sure you're holding it straight up vertical, and
2:53
against the side of the cake. Spin your turntable and scrape a section of the cake at a time
2:59
indenting the grooves of the striped pattern. The bands sticking out are going to be the white stripes on the cake
3:04
and the indents are going to be filled with the next colour After passing the frosting comb around a few times you probably have air pockets in the parts sticking out which will be the white stripes
3:16
If your frosting comb grooves are deep enough, you'll be scraping off so much frosting that the
3:20
air pockets won't matter. But if you have shallow grooves, the next colour of frosting is going to get
3:25
into the air pockets and leave marks on the white stripes. So you can either go deep with your
3:30
frosting comb grooves, or you can fill in the air pockets with some extra frosting, spreading
3:35
a ton with an offset spatula and then passing the frosting comb over it again. Remember, the
3:40
frosting doesn't have to be perfectly smooth because you're going to use your frosting scraper
3:44
to smooth it all out in the next step. Smooth the top of the cake by pulling any frosting
3:50
sticking up over the top of the side of the cake over into the middle of the top of the cake
3:55
You can see here that the top of my cake has the first parts of a groove, which would make
4:00
a teeny tiny skinny, skinny part of a stripe. Because I have a thick coating of frosting
4:04
a frosting on my cake, I can just smooth this groove out onto the top of my cake, taking that
4:09
stripe away completely so that the top stripe of my cake is a complete stripe. Here comes the
4:15
third secret to perfect stripes. When you're happy with the stripe grooves and the top frosting
4:20
chill your cake in the fridge while you prepare your next colour. 30 minutes in the fridge is ideal
4:25
or 15 minutes in the freezer. This lets the first colour's stripe set and hold their shape around
4:31
the grooves before you apply the next colour. It's also a very colour. It's also a colour. important for the top of the cake. You'll see why in a minute. Now, if you want all of your
4:39
stripes to be the same colour, use an offset spatula to spread on that second colour onto your chilled
4:44
cake. Make sure you get into all of the stripe grooves and work quickly so the first colour of
4:49
frosting stays cold and holds its shape. This will give you the most precise stripes. The final
4:55
secret for perfect stripes is to be really patient with your frosting scraper. The first few times
5:01
you go around the cake, you'll want to panic because the cake will be a messy disaster, with smeared frosting and smudged blurry stripes with absolutely no resemblance to
5:09
stripes. But don't worry, just keep going. You're wiping off the extra frosting of the second
5:14
colour. A few more scrapes around the cake, and you'll expose the first colour of stripes
5:20
and a few more scrapes and you'll start seeing neat as stripes. Keep going, and the stripes will
5:24
get more and more precise. Then just tidy up the top of the cake, scraping the sticking up
5:31
frosting onto the top of the cake. Because you've chilled your your cake, it's easy to wipe the second colour of frosting off with an offset spatula or your
5:38
frosting scraper without blending it into the first colour, because the surface of the first colour
5:43
is firm, so you can just scrape the second colour right off. These stripes look beautiful just as they
5:49
are, or you can jazz the cake up with some sprinkles and frosting rosettes on top, or whatever
5:54
decorations you like. Now I'm going to show you a few variations to liven up your stripes
6:00
I have tutorials for each of these cakes, and the links are in the description
6:04
box below. A fun way to make your stripes even more beautiful is to use an
6:09
ombre design. I've crumcoated my cake and now I'm applying all of my colours to
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the side of the cake with my offset spatula You could also use piping bags to pipe on the rosa frosting instead For this cake I want the top to be white I can apply white frosting to the top of the cake now at the same time as the rainbow frosting
6:29
before using the striped cake home. Or I can do it afterwards
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For this cake, I'll show you how to do it afterwards. So I'm leaving the top of my cake with just the crumb coat for now
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After chilling my cake, I'm applying white frosting to the sides of the cake to fill in the striped grooves
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and I'm also using white frosting for the cake for the crumb coat for now. top of the cake and then using my frosting scraper on the sides and the top. The result is this
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pretty rainbow effect with impossibly neat stripes. If you're enjoying this tutorial, please
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click the thumbs up button. If you want the top surface of your cake to be a different
7:02
colour to the stripes, apply that first. So here, when I crumb coat my cake, I'm also giving the
7:08
top of the cake its final coat of frosting, which is white. Then, after chilling it, I'm applying
7:15
yellow frosting, smoothing it and scraping it off the top to leave the top completely white
7:20
with just a ring of yellow around it, where it covers the sides of the cake. Now I'm using my cake
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comb, chilling the cake again, and then filling the stripes in with red frosting, scraping
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scraping, scraping to smooth out the frosting and make my perfect stripes, and you can see that
7:38
I'm leaving the overhanging frosting around the tops of the sides of the cake, and chilling the
7:43
the cake for about 30 minutes in the fridge until the frosting is firm. Now I'm using a sharp
7:49
knife to trim around the cake, taking off the excess frosting sticking up over the sides
7:53
This leaves a neat top edge to the cake, with the red and yellow frosting outlining
7:58
the white centre. If you get any smudges of the side frosting onto the top frosting
8:02
just use your knife to scrape it off. It's very important the cake is cold, so your knife
8:08
leaves the frosting smooth. You can alternate the colours of your stripes by
8:13
piping the frosting into the grooves made by the cake comb. I frosted this cake with pale blue
8:18
frosting, used my cake comb, and now I'm piping on white and blue stripes. You can use almost any
8:24
frosting tip for this, or even a piping bag with a hole cut in the end without a tip. I'm using a round
8:30
tip and a petal tip for this cake because it's what I had on hand. You scrape off quite a lot of
8:35
frosting with this method, but don't waste it. You can mix the colours together and use the new
8:39
colour to decorate another cake, or you can put the blended colours into a piping bag with a
8:44
star tip and pipe on these pretty frosting rosettes on top of the cake as a finishing touch
8:49
For this cake I want one bright green stripe and the rest to be purple. So after applying
8:56
my orange frosting, using a cake comb and chilling the cake, I'm piping on the bright green
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stripe into one of the stripe grooves, and then using my offset spatula to spread purple
9:07
frosting over the rest of the cake to fill in all the other grooves for the rest of the stripes
9:12
When I use my frosting scraper I'm taking off all of the extra green and purple frosting
9:18
smearing it across the cake, and then taking it off layer by layer to expose these perfect
9:23
orange green and purple stripes You can play around with the symmetry of the stripes because you don have to add a colour into every groove If you don want your stripes to be regular and close together you can space them out randomly around your cake adding fewer stripes
9:41
To do this, once you've frosted your cake and used the cake comb and chilled it, use your second color to fill in the grooves where you want the stripes
9:49
and then use the original color of frosting to fill in the other grooves. So here I'm piping in two black stripes and then filling in the rest of the grooves with my original color, white
9:58
And when I smooth it out, those white stripes blend with the original white frosting and the white stripes disappear
10:04
So the only stripes left on my cake are the two black ones. I love this. It's so classy
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Striped cakes are really, really easy once you get the hang of using this cake comb technique
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I timed this cake from start to finish, including building the layers, crumb coat, frosting, using the comb, filling in the stripes, smoothing the frosting, and piping the rosettes on top
10:27
and it took me just 32 minutes. Let's do some troubleshooting to work out why your stripes don't look like you want them to
10:36
Why are some of your stripes disappearing when you smooth your cake? Here's an example of that happening
10:43
You can see that the sides of this cake aren't perfectly straight. Over here the frosting is slanting diagonally up on the cake
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So when I use my cake comb, the grooves aren't going in as deep at the top of the cake as they are at the bottom
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Now after filling in the grooves and smoothing the cake with a frosting scraper
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the shallow groove at the top of the cake gets swallowed by the cake comb, scraping off the very thin layer of the stripe colour, which was white
11:08
and exposing the pale blue base frosting below. Why are there smudges of other colours in the middle of your stripes
11:15
Here's a quick diagram explanation, and then I'll show you a real-life example
11:19
Here we have a cake with a crumb coat and a final coat of frosting. When you use your cake comb, you might get indents or air pockets
11:26
like this one here. You chill your cake and apply a darker blue frosting for the stripes
11:30
and that colour goes into the indent. When you start scraping the frosting, you see the smudges
11:36
of dark blue in that indent, but as you keep scraping, you get past the indent and you see your
11:41
nice smooth stripes. Here's the real-life example. These thin dark blue lines on the light blue
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stripes are where there were indents in the base colour of my frosting, but the indents were shallow
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and the grooves from my cake comb were deep, so as I keep smoothing with my frosting
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scraper, I'm taking off the outer layer of frosting and going deeper than the indents, so eventually
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those lines go away. I love this striped cake comb technique, and I'll probably never go back to any
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other way of doing stripes. But if you don't have a cake comb, you can use piping bags to pipe
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rows of coloured frosting onto your cake, alternating colours, and making sure there are no gaps in between
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the rows of piped frosting. Then just use your frosting scraper to smooth the frosting
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touching up any areas where there are air pockets in the frosting. This method is quick and easy and makes more rustic looking stripes
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Thanks for watching! I can't wait to see the different stripes that you create
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If you enjoyed this tutorial, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel
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