It looks too good to eat…

Actually, is it even a cake or is it possibly actually a giant hibiscus flower pretending to be a cake? You leave the party smarting with envy and toting a handmade favors box that perfectly matches and compliments the slice of flawless and (completely edible) cake held within.

Cake decorating is for the really talented, right? All of that sugar sculpting and slaving is reserved only for the seriously practiced and endlessly creative?

Wrong.

Anyone can become a cake decorating extraordinaire – it really is THAT easy. All you need are a few tools, a bit of know-how, some tricks of the trade and a mixing bowl full of confidence!

The Cake Decorating Tools of the Pros

Don’t kid yourself for a second that those Stepford Wife cake decorators mold those little sugar plum fairies with their bare hands. No way – those ladies call in the heavy duty cake decorating artillery. Here’s a list for you so that you can stock up on your own:

• Frosting spatula – nope your old plastic variety for whacking some butter cream on the tea cake will not do here. Treat yourself to the real McCoy. They are used for mixing sugar icing colors in the most part.
• Toothpicks – perfect for applying itsy-bitsy bits of coloring (and chewing on while you’re concentrating – like The Godfather)
• Icing bags, and ties and even an icing bag holder will do nicely – yes there really IS a such thing.
• Icing tips – buy a whole kit, look out for varying sizes of – round tips, star tips, shell tips, leaf tips, v-shaped tips, rose tips, basket weave tips, drop flower tips and any other specialty tip you can find!

Design The Cake Decoration

Cake decorators are not necessarily bakers – don’t be fooled!
If you’re partial to baking you can put together a nice fruit cake or mud cake, but don’t bother making a “light as air” sponge for your trials.
To start with use durable and tough-shelled cakes that can withstand a little prodding and poking.
If you don’t want to slave over the oven, buy your cakes ready-made and wonderful from the store.

Dream the Theme

Before you begin to attack your cake with decorating gusto, decide upon a theme.
What are you trying to create?
A summer rose?
Superman?
A simple cake with a color theme and some pretty decorations atop?

Design your Decorations First

A true cake decorator has a plan.
A theme is chosen
The requirements are plotted.
The decorations are always made first.

The sugar flowers or shapes will be the focal point of your cake masterpiece, and will take up the most time.

Here are some steps to creating your perfect cake decorations from sugar icing!

Step 1

Mix up your sugar icing according to the recipe in a strict manner – close enough is not good enough here. You may need gum paste or other pliable substances – you can even buy sugar icing mixture pre-made in the store. A great idea!

Step 2

Choose the icing bag tip in the shape you need. Use each tip depending on what you’re trying to create:

• Round for writing
• Star for zigzags, shells, rosettes and stars of course
• Petal for flowers and bows
• Basket weave for gorgeous outlines

Step 3

On greaseproof paper, or foil, shape the decorations using your pre-prepared icing mixture and the correct icing bag tip to suit your shape requirements. Patience is a virtue here. The tips really do make your job easy – choose the tip that corresponds to the shape you’re trying to create. With a bit of practice you cannot go wrong!

Step 4

Once the sugar icing decorations dry, paint or dot any extra details you need on with small brushes or toothpicks – this may be simply some toothpick- sized black dots inside flower petals to depict seeds.

Tackle the Cake

While your delicate decorations (all edible and made of sugar!) are drying, apply your overall icing spread to the cake. You may choose to use any number of coverings including:

• Butter Cream Icing – easily made at home or bought at the store in a tin. Easily wiped onto the cooled cake with a regular spatula.
• Fondant – also available for purchase in a pre-made form – this is often also referred to as rolled icing or fondant icing. Fondant is malleable and made of gelatin and glycerine. Fondant can be bought or colored to suit your cake decorating theme. The fondant needs to be rolled out and covered onto the cake like a pie-crust. Trim the excess fondant from the edges so that the cake looks neatly covered with no lumps or bumps.

The Moment of Truth

Arrange your lovingly designed decorations onto your icing or fondant covered cake.

If the icing is made of butter cream the decorations should stick nicely. If the cake is covered in fondant you will need to slightly wet the patch of fondant with cold water wherever you want to apply a decoration. Stick the decoration firmly in place and leave to dry – the ingredients in the fondant can be re-wet and decorations can be re-stuck if need be.

Voila!

With a little bit of practice and lots of fun, you, your family and your taste buds will enjoy the cake decorating learning process. Be that enviable party host at your next gathering and go all out with some cake decorating genius!

The fondant comes in white, usually like this and then you buy some food colors. Now, you don’t want to use the liquid food kinds. You want to use either a paste or gel. You can get the colors from the cake decorating department of a craft or a specialty baking store.

I have a toothpick here and you take the color and you kind of rub it in to the fondant. Then you want to knead it in until it becomes nice and solid color.

This is a copper color and it’s specified to be used for a light skin tone. We’re making a cake that has a lot of people on it and this is the color you would use for a light skin-tone people. If you want to add more browns or change the color, you can add other colors.

As you knead it and stretch it you see that it becomes a little bit stripy and you want to continue that until it becomes solid.

As you knead it, you can see that it becomes stripy like this and you just continue kneading until you have a solid color. You may actually in some cases want to have this sort of marbleized stripy look and at that point you could stop and use it.

But for the skin tone, I want it to be a solid skin tone color.

What you want to look for is a pan that has a very straight side. Because then, when your ready to stack, especially if your using a square pan, they’re are going to be nice and straight. Where as when you stack two of these together your going to have a slat here and her because the edge here is going to be slightly larger than this side.

The same thing with a round pan. It also help to have a solid, good thick pan. As with most products be sure to read user reviews and check the manufactures warranty. A quality professional cake pan can last you several years and endure hours of baking. I’m sure you don’t want to be disappointed in your purchase when in six months the pan starts to rust or breaks. If you find a high quality professional cake pan with good reviews and it’s expensive, search the web for sales or coupons to help bring the price down.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Burger Cupcakes
Decorated to look just like a hamburger, these cupcakes are put together using un-iced vanilla cupcakes lightly sprinkled with sesame seeds for the buns, a chocolate cupcake layer for the meat, yellow fondant for the cheese and slather of red icing for the sauce.

Statement Cupcakes
Ask her to marry you in fondant. Spell out his name or age in fluffy sponge. Cupcakes are commonly used to make a statement or sell a product and each tiny cake can be decorated with a letter, number or picture to fit the overall statement.

Themed Cupcakes
Use fondant to ice your cupcakes as characters like the Cookie Monster, Batman and Garfield or to fit the theme of your special occasion.

Cupcake Shapes
Use your cupcakes to build a shape like a caterpillar, alligator, snake or choo choo train.

Cupcake Tree
Tier your cupcakes into a tree shape for an impressive edible monument. You can use cake pillars and a combination of larger cake tiers to complete your desired shape and size.

Holiday Cupcakes
Decorate your cupcakes depending on the holiday. Red and green for Christmas, black cats and pumpkins for Halloween, turkey designs for Thanksgiving and stars and stripes for Independence Day.

The sky is the limit when it comes to designing cupcake creations for your next special occasion.

Just remember, some quick cupcake tricks:

• Fill your cupcake wells no more than 1/2 full before baking.
• Spray your cupcake pan with non-stick oil first.
• Mix your cupcake batter only lightly to avoid chewy cupcakes.
• Use ingredients at room temperature only!
• Use a toothpick to ensure the center of your cooking cakes are done.
• Use a piping bag when icing.
• If you need a spatula, make sure its flimsy rubber only.

Cupcake Decoration Video

Cupcake decorating can be fun but sometimes we find ourselves doing the same cupcake decors over and over again. Especially when decorating cupcakes for children, our designs should exude fun, pizazz and creativity. Cupcakes are made to be admired and of course, eaten. Therefore it is best to decorate cupcake with decors that are not only appealing to the eyes but to the taste buds as well.

Most people use different flavored frosting such as chocolate, cream cheese, buttercream, meringue and even cotton candy. But to some people creating this kind of frosting flavors can be tiresome and stressful. The most basic frosting, vanilla flavored, is the most versatile and easy to use when decorating cupcakes. One doesn’t even need to use professional pastry bags and decorating tips to decorate cupcakes. Just simple vanilla frosting, basic food color and resealable freezer bags with imagination, your cupcakes will surely be a hit with kids and adults, too.

Here are some simple yet drool worthy cupcake decorating ideas using those basic materials mentioned above:

• Vanilla frosting can be made into any different color you would prefer. Use a few drops of basic food color and mix it in the vanilla frosting. I personally use McCormick food coloring.

• Freezer resealable bags can be used as pastry bags. They are very effective and cheap. To use, invert the resealable bag in your hand, make a cup-like space and put in a dollop of your tinted vanilla frosting. Afterwards, bring up the sides of the bag and close it while making sure to seal it properly and press out all the air. If you want to make thin lines with your makeshift pastry bag, snip a tiny piece, probably an 8th of an inch off the corner of the bag. To make fatter lines, snip a quarter inch or so off the bag. With this done, you can make crisscross, vertical, horizontal lines, dots and just about any shape using your pastry bag.

• Have you always wanted to do a star burst effect or spider web decoration? Here’s how – Take two different color of vanilla frosting and pipe a spiral unto the top of a cupcake. Take another color of frosting and do the same spiral but on the inside of the first spiral. When that is done, take a toothpick and drag it gently from the center to the outer edge of the cupcake. This blends the two different color frostings making a beautiful spider web or star burst effect.

• Creating a marbleized effect with your frosting is easy. Take a dark and light tinted frosting as well as a plain white frosting. Combine all three frostings and mix them in but not entirely. You want to retain that marbleized look.

• Cupcake decorating is fun and easy because you can also use other toppings for decorations such as M&Ms, gumdrops, peanuts, sugar or coconut. To make colored sugar or coconut, simple put them in a resealable bag, add a few drops of food coloring and shake it vigorously until the sugar or coconut is fully covered in color.

A neatly iced sponge with a sugar flower on top is hardly going to cut it for such extravagant occasions, no sir. To be crowned an advanced cake decorator, you’re going to have to pull out the big guns. Create the monster truck of decorated cakes. The Super Bowl of sugar-coated perfection.

Luckily for you there are a raft of tips and techniques that you can take on board to create an edible masterpiece.

How to Raise the Bar

There are certain extra details that turn a nicely decorated cake into an absolute monument. And for those who have perfected the basics of cake decorating, you will be surprised how little extra effort is actually required to produce the variety of cake that even a pastry chef would be proud of.

Fondant Flowers

Make unique fondant flowers to match the theme of your cake and you will graduate from icing amateur to sugar paste ace overnight.

Start out perfecting the basics of:

• Daffodils
• Sunflowers
• Mushrooms and
• Petal Dust

To mold these little marvels make sure your toolbox includes:

• Flower formers
• Petal cutters
• A fondant rolling pin
• Fondant shaping foam
• Several small artist brushes

Cake Tiers

Big really is best when it comes to building a cake that will be the pièce de résistance of a special occasion. The trick to building a strong tier cake is hinged upon some very basic foundations:

1. Ensure your cake is firm, not airy – this may take some serious baking practice, trial and error.
2. Cut the layers evenly – be very precise. The baked top and bottom of the cake should be trimmed off to remove any bowing that occurred in baking.
3. Don’t overfill – if using filling ensure it is thin and evenly spread. Otherwise you will notice a Leaning Tower of Pisa effect.
4. Always ice each layer on a flat surface and wait until entirely set before attempting to tier it.
5. Use pillars – when starting out it is often a good idea to use cake pillars to help you stack tiers.

Crumb Coat

And oldie but a goodie. Frost the first layer of your cake with a thin covering of butter cream icing to smooth off the crumbs and then refrigerate it for 1-2 hours. This will provide you with a great foundation for an advanced cake.

Decorating Turntable

When icing your cake, ensure you do so on a turntable, otherwise known as a “Lazy Susan”. This will allow you to spin your cake while icing and ensure that you do not lift your spatula off the cake and ice with upward motions.

Practice

Really does make perfect in the world of cake decoration:

• Practice baking a cake that can withstand tiering.
• Practice evening out your layering.
• Practice icing on a turntable.
• Practice using your spatula without lifting it off the cake while icing.
• Practice making fondant flowers until there is little difference between your designs and the real thing.

Cake Decorating Tips & Techniques Video

Today we’re going to be talking about cake decorating. Our theme is going to be, “How to make roses.” Now we’re going to make the rose. I have a rose nail in my hand and I want you to watch as I turn that carefully when I make the rose. One of the thing you want to do when you make the rose in have a place to build up on your pattern so that the rose stands up.

You do that with a pumping action, going up and down. And what your going to try to do is make you rose a little bit higher that the other flowers that you have. In order to make the rose it’s real simple. You pump frosting onto your rose nail. And once you get the icing pumped, then you begin to make little petals by making a circular motion back and forth.

Watch what I do. You start with the wide tip facing down and push the icing over and come down. Go back, come over and come down, back over and come down and back over and come down. And there is your rose.

Now you need to take this rose off, so if you have a spatula, just slide it under the rose very carefully and put it on the little mound that you made for it. So let’s take a look and do one more.

Remember, we’re going to pump, get the icing built up and then we’re going to go back and forth. Start back, pull it over and go around. Your spinning the wheel as your turning the rose.

To start I’ll show you how to make a pastry cone. You can make them out of cellophane, wax paper and parchment paper. I’ll show you how to make then out of parchment paper.

To start, roll your parchment paper out, you want to get a perfect square. We’re going to cut the square in half to make a triangle. One trick is to fold this edge to the top edge and the crease it, and the cut along this line. Then open it up, and your going to use that crease as a guide line to cut your triangle out.

Now it’s time to form the cone. I have one over here. I’ve drawn a line right in the middle of the longest side of the triangle and that’s where my point is going to form. To do this, take one corner and roll it in on itself so that the corner lines up down here. Wrap the other side around to the back. You’ll see that the two sides line up right down the middle.

Now you want tape to wrap it around the tip. This will prevent the bag from opening while your squeezing it. So there is your pastry cone. To fill it, hold it in your hand, take a spatula, put some frosting on it, place it slowly into the bag, then pinch your fingers down on it and slide the spatula out.

Now fold you edges down and you have you pastry cone. You can always cut a small hole or a large hole depending on what kind of piping your doing.

Now I’ll show you how to work with a pastry bag. You can use disposable bags or reusable ones. This one is a reusable one. Your going to need couplers and tips to go along with this one. Open the bag and place a coupler inside, this will allow you to change tips.

Choose the tip that you want to work with, place it on then take the ring and put it in top and screw it down. This will hold the tip in place.

Now we want to fill it. Turn the top edge over, cup your hand like a “C” and place the bag over it. Take your frosting and scoop it inside. You only want to fill about half way. This will give you more control. Now bring the side back up and twist. This will create a pressure inside the bag. Squeeze a little frosting back into the bowl to make sure there’s no air bubbles.

Now let’s practice piping. Twist the bag at the top.Your going to grasp it like this and this is where your going to squeeze. Guide with you other hand. I’m going to do some lines.

That’s a pretty straight line. If this happens to you, it means you squeezing too hard and not moving the bag fast enough. If this happens, where you get little breaks. It’s means your not squeezing hard enough and your moving too fast. So try to get a balance, just keep practicing going back and forth.

I’m using a round tip. Why don’t we try a different tip to see what it can do? The great thing about these pastry bags is that you can change the tips and get different effects. Let’s try a star tip. Let’s start with a shell border.

Your going to angle your bag at about 30 to 45 degrees, touch down to the paper and squeeze and hold in place until it starts to bulge. Then release the pressure, pull down and let’s repeat. The active release in pressure is called tailing off. Ideally it will come to a nice point overlap that point with next one and continue.

To make a rosette, you hold the bag perpendicular to the surface, squeeze, rotate the bag and then a quick motion of the wrist to tail off. So there you have some ideas about what a pastry tip can do. A pastry cone is good for lines or writing. I’ll show you how to write.

To do a letter, a great way for beginners, is what I call bubble letters. Start with a dot by squeezing a holding in place, pulling straight down and squeezing a holding in place again to tail off.

There are a lot of other piping techniques that can be done to make your cake even more beautiful. You can do basket weaves, petals and flowers depending on your preference. But make sure to practice first on a wax paper, to ensure that you are comfortable in doing the different cake decors.

If you want the line to be thicker, cut the hole bigger. Just remember to keep the scissors perpendicular to the bag. If you cut it at an angle the frosting will come out all messy.

So those are a few basic tips. Have fun decorating.

All you do is simply insert disposable bag, fill it with icing and attach the nozzle. Then select the tip you want to use. Select the flower tip to cover your cake with beautiful flowers like this. Use the star tip to make striking shell borders or ropes.

Or the petal tip to create elegant roses. Imagine being able to create gorgeous accents like this. It’s so easy you can make these accents with one hand. There is even a grass/hair tip to create unusual novelty cakes. The three profile icing knife can be used to sculpt, smooth or crest special effects.

Betty Crocker Cake Decorating Kit Video

Our complete decorating tip even includes letter stencils for that special message. And a set of stencils for heart felt designs. Imagine creating these one of a king, homemade cakes all by your self.

Order now and recipe the Betty Crocker 100 piece decorating kit with everything you see here. Plus an easy to use instruction guide and a handy storage case to hold everything all for just shipping and handling. Guaranteed to delight you or your money back. That’s right the offer from Betty Crocker turns ordinary baking into an extraordinary event.

The Betty Crocker decorating kit makes a great gift, so don’t delay, order now.

I’m going to take my spatula and slice it underneath the edge of the cardboard to lift it onto my fingers and move it over to the board. And now I’ve got my cake on the nice foil board.

This is a fairly nice smooth cake, but I like it even nicer than that. This is my favorite technique. This is just an ordinary paper towel with a little design in it, I like it best with a very small design.

How to Smooth Icing

Your icing should be dry to the touch so when you touch it, nothing comes off on your finger. If that was moist and fresh and I touched it I would have icing on my finger tips. Now I’m going to take my towel and lay it across the top of my cake and gently rub it.

As I do this my fingers are leveling out the surface and the cake will pick up the texture of the paper towel. I have another paper towel that I use that has a very smooth texture. Do you see that pretty little texture on the cake?

Now we’re going to continue around the side because I want the sides of the cake to look as pretty as the top of the cake. I am just rubbing my hands up and down and back and forth. hen I run out of paper towel I just pull it off and reposition it and continue.

Now I’ve come back full circle to where I started. And this is where I just come back to see if I missed any spots. Right here I got a wrinkle in the icing, I’ll just go back over that with my paper towel and smooth it again.

See her where I have just a few little dips and divots in the cake, I’m just going to smooth them out a little more with that paper towel. And that’s my preferred method to giving a nice smooth professional look to a cake.