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In this cake decorating tutorial I share 4 techniques to decorate cakes using cutlery: a fork, spoon, knife, and chopsticks! I used my 4 Minute Buttercream for all of these cakes and you can find the tutorial and recipe here: https://youtu.be/MFKfXbnU1Lw
For my online course on Buttercream Cake Carving and the double textured cake class on my online cake school click here: britishgirlbakes.teachable.com/courses
My tutorial on Buttercream Cut-Outs is coming soon!
SUBSCRIBE to my channel for new cake decorating tutorials every week!
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In this video I'm going to show you how to use a fork, a spoon, a knife and chopsticks to decorate cakes
0:07
I'll start with a fork. Apply a final coat of frosting over a crumb coat and smooth it out
0:12
and here I'm using my acrylic frosting smoother for the sides and the top of the cake
0:16
making sure it has straight sides and sharp edges at the top, before starting to decorate it with a fork
0:22
When you're happy with the frosting, take your fork, and I'm choosing to start at the top of the cake, and I'll tell you why in a minute
0:30
Press the tip of the prongs of the fork into the frosting and drag the fork sideways
0:34
to make grooves as wide as they are high to make a little square of lines
0:38
Wipe the fork off on a towel or paper towel and then do the same thing but going upwards
0:43
instead of sideways, stopping just before you get to the top edge of the cake
0:49
Continue around the cake, trying to leave the same amount of space between each sections of lines
0:54
and for each section of lines, whether it's a row of lines going sideways or a column of lines going up and down
1:01
try to make the section a square by dragging the fork the same distance as the width of the prongs on the fork
1:08
You'll see that the fork is causing a bulge over the top edge of the cake, pushing some of the frosting up
1:13
so when you finish your first row, just use your frosting smoother or offset spatula to tidy up that edge
1:19
Continue down the cake with another row of lines, leaving a little bit of space between the previous row
1:27
I'm leaving the distance of about one prong between my rows. I'm creating vertical lines underneath the horizontal lines and horizontal lines underneath the vertical lines
1:38
to make a check-ed or grid-like pattern. If you're enjoying this tutorial, please click the thumbs up button to like it
1:45
and subscribe to my channel for a new cake decorating tutorial every week. I'm using my full minute buttercream to decorate this cake, and the link for that recipe and the tutorial are in the top of the screen and also in the video description below
1:58
Remember to wipe your fork clean after every time you use it, because when you create the lines and the frosting on the cake
2:06
some of the buttercream will stick to the fork, and you don't want to drag that buttercream back onto the cake when you make the next section of lines
2:14
It's important to have a crumb coat on your cake so that if your fork pushes through the fork
2:19
the final coat of frosting, it touches the crumb coat of frosting instead of the naked cake
2:24
so that you don't drag cake crumbs back into your final coat of frosting. It's also important that
2:30
your cake isn too cold for this technique I chill my cake layers in the fridge before I frost them but for this design after applying and chilling the crumb coat to set it I left the cake out at room temperature for
2:42
about 15 minutes before I frosted it with the final coat of frosting, because if you frost the cake
2:47
while it's still very cold, the frosting sets quickly and then the fork doesn't glide through it
2:51
as easily, and it leaves dregs of buttercream on the edges of the lines in the frosting
2:57
That's starting to happen by the very end of this pattern down here, where the frosting has been
3:01
sitting on the cake for several minutes while I decorated it and the coldness of the cake has
3:05
started to set the frosting. If you're lucky the final row of fork lines will fit perfectly so
3:12
that they go all the way down to the bottom of the cake but if there's a gap at the bottom of the
3:16
cake that isn't quite big enough for another row, a sprinkle border is a nice way to fill that in
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and it's really easy to do. Just pour some sprinkles around the bottom of the cake so that they're
3:25
resting on the cakeboard and then use your offset spatula or the back of a spoon or your hand to press the
3:31
gently into the sides of the cake. It's a good idea to put the cake on a baking tray for this
3:36
so that you catch any sprinkles that fall off the cake board before they make a mess on your
3:40
counter or spill onto the floor. I'm chilling my cake for about 30 minutes to set this frosting
3:45
and then pouring some coloured sugar on top and spreading it around with a paintbrush. You can do
3:50
this straight away without chilling the cake, but you have to be careful when you spread it around
3:54
so that you don't indent the frosting while it's still soft and sticky. I'm leaving a gap around
3:59
the edge of the cake and then piping little dollops in a ring around the top using a round tip
4:04
a Wilton 1A tip, squeezing the buttercream out of the bag and then releasing the pressure on
4:09
the bag as I lift it up and away from the cake to leave nice neat peaks on the dollops
4:13
It's a good idea to chill the frosted cake before you add these dollops because otherwise the
4:18
weight of the dollops can cause a bulge in the frosting at the top of the sides of the cake
4:23
Tada! There are lots of fun ways to use a fork and I experimented with a few different techniques for this striped as text
4:29
textile cake. You can poke holes in the frosting to form dotted lines with even spacing between each hole created by the prongs on the fork, and you can use the holes as guidelines and fill them in with sprinkles if you like. Zigsags work well as well. Just remember to wipe your fork off after each section so that you don't drag buttercream around the cake as you go
4:51
You should imprint the design with your fork immediately after frosting the cake so that the butter cream is still soft and your fork glides through it easily
4:59
You can use a fork to create vertical and horizontal lines as well
5:02
Just keep in mind that a fork is obviously not created with this technique in mind
5:07
so it doesn do a great job of whisking away the buttercream as it imprints the design into the buttercream A carving tool is much more effective and I have a whole course on carving buttercream cakes with clay modelling tools and I put that link in the top of the screen and in the video description
5:21
But if you don't have those tools, a fork is a fun way to get creative with a design
5:27
After imprinting the design, till the cake to set the frosting for about 30 minutes in the fridge
5:31
and then fill in the design with another colour of buttercream, or different colours like I'm doing here
5:37
and then scrape it off with a frosting smoother to leave only the pattern filled with these colours
5:42
Although the result of a fork isn't neat sharp lines, this vintage effect is quite striking
5:47
and as well as being fun to create, it works really well for certain styles of cakes
5:52
Now for spoons. Spoons are the perfect tool to add a curved texture to cakes
5:58
for both the frosting on the cake and the decorations on top
6:02
After applying different shades of buttercream to this cake, I'm smoothing it with a frosting smoother to get a nice
6:07
shape to the cake and then using the back of a spoon to imprint texture into the
6:10
frosting. I'm dipping the spoon into hot water and drying it off before doing
6:15
this, so that the metal on the spoon is hot and glides easily over the frosting
6:19
without dragging buttercream along with it. It's important to dry the spoon so that water doesn't drip onto the cake and cause the colour of the
6:27
buttercream to run and stain the cake and the cake board. This textured
6:32
cake is also decorated with a spoon and my online class for it is on my online
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cake school and I've put the link for it in the top of the screen and in the video description
6:40
Of course you can decorate the textured cake however you like, like I did with these
6:44
painted buttercream flowers. Okay, nice! I'll use a buttercream cutout technique for
6:49
this cake. Tape some parchment paper or wax paper onto a cutting board or a
6:53
baking tray and spread buttercream onto it, using as many colours as you like
6:58
and spreading them as smooth as you can, trying to get them all the same thickness
7:03
Put the tray or board in the fridge for about an hour or the free for 30 minutes and then use a sharp knife to cut shapes out of the buttercream. I'm cutting
7:12
random lines to get different shaped triangles. You can jazz these up by brushing on some
7:17
luster dust or disco dust or edible glitter and then put them back in the fridge while you
7:22
frost your cake. As soon as you've frosted your cake, take the buttercream cutouts out
7:27
of the fridge and pick them up, pressing them onto the frosting of the cake, which is still
7:31
soft and sticky, so that the shapes will attach easily. I'm arranging my triangles
7:36
to make a mosaic-style heart on the side of the cake. This buttercream cutout technique will
7:41
only work if the shapes you cut are very cold and hard otherwise they snap or collapse and lose their shape as you lift them up and you leave fingerprints on them when you press them onto the cake I have a very detailed tutorial on buttercream cutouts and I put the link for that in the top of the screen and in the video description
7:58
The last tool we're going to use is a chopstick. Start by creating a simple stencil with parchment paper or you can use wax paper
8:05
drawing on your shape or design with an edible marker and cutting it out and then pinning it onto the chilled cake to hold it in place
8:13
Now use the smaller end of a chopstick to create little holes within the stencil shape
8:18
pressing just far enough to create a hole, but not going all the way through the frosting to dig into the cake inside
8:25
I'm lining my holes up so that they're in rows and columns, trying to make each hole the same distance above and beside the surrounding holes to create a neat pattern
8:34
Don't worry about any dregs of buttercream around the holes because this is only the first step of the pattern, and we're going to fill in all of this in a minute
8:42
It's important that the cake is cold for this so that the stencil doesn't stick to the frosting and damage it
8:48
And the chopstick wouldn't be able to create these holes on a freshly coated cake with soft sticky frosting
8:54
If your cake warms up while you're doing this and the frosting starts to soften, put it back in the fridge for about 15 minutes before continuing
9:01
Meanwhile, tints and buttercream. I've used gel colors to make leaf green and sky blue, and I'm mixing a bit of each of these together to make a color in the middle
9:10
so that I can blend the colours together within the heart design on my cake
9:16
Spread the buttercream onto your stencil, spreading from the outside towards the inside of the shape
9:21
so that you don't push buttercream underneath the stencil. I'm starting with blue at the top, then the bluish-greenish colour, and green at the bottom
9:30
and as you spread the buttercream on, it'll go into the holes you made with your chopstick
9:34
which won't be very noticeable yet, but they will be in a minute. Use a frosting smoother to scrape off the buttercream, and you can scrape as many times as you like
9:42
but I'm just doing once to leave a light covering of these colours with a bit of the purple frosting underneath showing through in places
9:48
And the chopstick holes are very noticeable because the greens and blues of those dots are very strong and bright
9:54
compared to the thinner colouring of those colours around the holes. Take the pins out and peel off the parchment paper stencil
10:01
and you can tidy up any smudges of frosting underneath the parchment with a toothpick or the side of the blade of your offset's pencil
10:07
and decorate the rest of the cake however you like. I'm piping these swells on with a
10:12
Wilton 1M star tip and I'm using the same tip to pipe this shell border around the bottom of the cake
10:19
Thanks for watching! If you enjoyed this tutorial, please click the thumbs up button and
10:23
subscribe to my channel for a new cake decorating tutorial every week
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