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Here are 10 ways to improve your cakes in 2024
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Let's start with a 2-1 hack, using a microwave for silky smooth and bright and bold buttercream
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After tinting your buttercream, scoop out about a third and microwave it for 10 seconds
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It will melt and the colour will get much darker. Pour this into your main bowl of buttercream and stir it to mix it in
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Within a few minutes, as it cools it, back to room temperature, the consistency will be perfect. The colour will be much deeper. And bonus
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any air bubbles will have disappeared. This hack will help you get really smooth frosting
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but it's also amazing for textured frosting, like wave frosting or using a textured cake comb
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This is such a game changer. Here's another one for super smooth frosting
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Now, although the point of my channel is to share techniques that anyone can achieve without needing to
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lots of expensive cake decorating tools. I do recommend buying a metal cake comb for this hack
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especially if you struggle with air bubbles or gaps or indents on smooth frosting. Heat the straight
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edge of your cake comb by running it under hot water or using a blowtorch, and then scrape around
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your cake You heat up the very outer layer of the frosting pulling it around the cake to fill in any imperfections and leaving an impossibly smooth surface behind Note that you want the metal to be warm not really hot
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because that will melt the frosting and can cause changes in the color of the frosting
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This hack works particularly well with striped frosting by taking off all of the messy layers
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of color and revealing the perfectly neat buttercream stripes underneath. For the top of a cake
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you can use your offset spatula to swipe sideways to flatten and level the frosting that's sticking up
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after smoothing the sides of the cake. But for an even better result, with much sharper edges around the cake
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use a knife instead. Any sharp knife is fine. It's easiest if you put the cake in the fridge for 15 minutes
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before you do this. Start by slicing off chunks of frosting, which by the way you can reuse once the
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the buttercream warms up and softens. Then skim around the cake to level the final bumps
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gently swiping any buttercream crumbs with an offset spatula, and your edges will be razor sharp
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When you're piping lots of details, like flowers or swells or rosettes or borders
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you'll probably find that the piping gets sloppy by the end, with less defined details
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like blobby petals and thicker shapeless ruffles Your hands are warming the buttercream in the piping bag making it softer so it doesn hold its shape as well when you piping Put the piping bag in the freezer set a timer for one minute
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and that short time in the cold will chill and stiffen the buttercream so it's the right consistency
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to finish your piping. You'll notice that with the right consistency, petals will ruffle around
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the edges now, and even Russian tips are easy to use. Instead of sticking to the same old flavours for your cake
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Try something new this year. Instead of developing new cake recipes, which is really complicated and time consuming
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it's much easier to develop recipes for fillings and frostings by mixing ingredients into buttercream
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like blended Oreo cookies or freeze-dried strawberries, which will add lots of flavor to your fillings and frostings
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without changing the consistency of the buttercream. So it will be just as easy to work with
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as your normal plain vanilla buttercream. This next thing feels like a small detail
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a small detail, but it makes a huge difference to the presentation of your cake. Make sure cakes are
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centred on their cakeboards. Sometimes they start off in the middle, but as you spread the frosting on and
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then smooth it, you nudge it over on the cakeboard, and it ends up off centre. You can reposition
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the cake by chilling it in the fridge for at least an hour and then sliding an offset spatula
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underneath to separate it from the cake board and then lift it up and spread some buttercream onto the cake board to act as glue to attach the cake in its new centered position And every cake design will look better now that it
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centered. Give yourself more time to decorate your cakes by making them in advance and then freezing
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them properly. To maintain their freshness and then instead of baking and assembling and frosting
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and decorating your cake all in one day, you can spend all of that time just decorating
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I have a full tutorial on how to make cakes in advance by freezing them properly
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Take your cake decorating skills from beginner to professional by progressing through three layers in my Layer Up program
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where you'll learn hundreds of skills and techniques and ways to improve your cake business
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like scheduling and taking custom cake orders, making cakes in bulk, transporting and serving cakes, and making cake videos for social media
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Instead of learning everything in 12 years like I, you can learn it all in three to six months with this program
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Find out more on British Girlbakes.com or click the link in the top of the screen and in the video description
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A few weeks ago, I shared a tutorial on 10 ways to make your cake photos better
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showing how to adjust the lighting, how to make the background out of focus on a camera and a phone
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setting up props and more. Watch that video to improve your photos to make your cakes really look their best
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Thanks for watching. Thank you
