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Stensils are a quick cake decorating technique for any occasion, but with this five-minute cake decorating technique
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you don't have to buy fancy new stencils for every cake you decorate. Instead, you can use what you already have to make homemade stencils for eye-catching unique designs
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Let's start by making a colour palette. This is my 4-minute buttercream, but you can use any kind of frosting for the stencil design
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And these are gel colors, which I love because they're so concentrated, you only need a drop to make a really bright colour
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You can just choose one color for your design, or if you want several colors, using a cupcake pan is a great trick to save yourself a lot of time when you clean up
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because it's much quicker to wash one of these than to wash ten little balls. You really don't need a lot of buttercream for a stencil, just a few spoonfuls
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If you're not going to use the buttercream straight away, cover it with cling film or saran wrap so the buttercream doesn't dry out and crust
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Now let's make the stencil. It's useful to do this after assembling and frosting your cake
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so you can choose the right size of your stencil. Cut a piece of parchment or wax paper or baking paper
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long enough to wrap all the way around your cake and trim it so that it's only as tall as your cake
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and then mark the edges of where you want your design to be. Now put the cake back in the fridge to keep the frosting chilled Draw a shape in the middle of the parchment or you can trace an image that you printed or a design you like from a notebook cover or wherever
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But simple shapes are the most successful for this technique. We're going to add more detail in a minute
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Cut the shape out, keeping the area around the shape intact. This next part is optional, but if you want to add more detail to your design
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choose any stencil you have and place it over the parchment stencil you just made, taping it to secure
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taping it to secure it if you like or you can do this in a moment. So now you have your homemade stencil and this is a great way to reuse the stencils you already have
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by creating new shapes on the parchment paper which you can overlay over your existing stencils
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so that none of the designs on your different cakes will look the same. Take your cake out of the fridge and wrap the parchment around it
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Partiment paper is intended to be non-stick so tape doesn't work very well on it but tape does stick to itself
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So cut a long piece and wrap it all the way around the parchment so that it overlaps and sticks to itself and do this around the top and the
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bottom of the parchment so that the parchment and the stencil are wrapped tightly around the cake
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Scoop up your first color with an offset spatula and spread it over the bottom of the stencil
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I love to work my way up so I can see what I'm doing. Switch between colors until you covered up the whole stencil The reason you can wrap the stencil around the cake without damaging the frosting is that buttercream crusts which means if you chill it in the fridge for at least an hour or ideally overnight
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the frosting gets really firm so you can touch it without leaving an indent or any texture on the cake
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The rainbow butter cream on the stencil looks quite messy and to flatten it
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you can use your offset spatula or a cake comb to scrape from one side of the stencil to the other
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taking off the excess frosting and leaving a flat, smooth layer of coloured buttercream behind
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When you can see most of the plastic parts of the stencil, you'll know you've scraped off most of the excess frosting and it's ready
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Cut the tape to release the parchment and peel the stencil off straight away because if you wait for the coloured buttercream to set
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you'll get jagged uneven texture along the outline of your shape. If you're enjoying this tutorial, you will love my mini courses
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where I teach fun and unique cake designs in easy-to-follow steps, with close-up video instruction and detailed but concise explanations
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If you sign up to my club, you'll get access to all of the mini courses on my cake school
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Or if you join my club plus, you'll get access to all of my mini courses and master courses and live workshops
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You'll find the link for my cake school in the top of the screen and in the video description with all of the different membership options
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If you have leftover coloured buttercream you can use it for a border on the cake And my favourite way to use lots of colours is to lay out a piece of cling film or saran wrap and then spread each colour onto it in a line and then roll it up into a log and cut off one end drop the cut end down into a piping bag with a star
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piping tip and you can pipe swells onto the top of the cake or if you don't have a lot of buttercream
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this is a great option pipe these waves around the cake by squeezing the bag and letting the buttercream bulge out
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forwards and then slowly pull the bag away to leave a tail on the wave
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Pipe the next one so that it overlaps and as you pipe these one after the other
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the colours at the end of the bag will push through the colours closer to the piping tip
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and you'll get a gradient of colours to match the colours on your stencil design
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So colourful and it's a totally unique design since the stencil is homemade
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Thank you so much for watching. A cake decorating technique... technique! Technique
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technique five minute take that use your existing stencils and you don't have to buy a brand new stencil for every
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you can the link in the top of the screen to visit my cake school
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Love, that, that, da, that
