City and State: Legana, Tasmania

This was a rectangle buttercake, decorated with fondant in a Spongebob theme for my son’s birthday.

I covered the cake in a thin layer of soft butter icing first, so the fondant woud stick, and to smooth out any bumps in the cake. I used a wooden spoon handle to press in the edges to give the wavy effect.

The rest of the decoration fondant, coloured and shaped appropriately, and then I piped on the centre of the eyes and the eyelashes with black decorater gel.

Obviously your going to need an apron and icing. Decorating cakes is a very messy job so I always keep an apron around. I also find having towels is very handy. Whether I’m washing or cleaning things and keeping things dry.

A pair of scissors, we’ll discuss a few uses for them. Obviously your going to need a frosting spatula. Something to scrape out the bowls when your working, when you’re baking a cake you want to scrape out that batter before you put it into your pans.

How to Decorate a Cake Techniques

Scotch tape, yes we’ll be using scotch tape. Toothpicks are a great thing for using your food colors. Skewers, many bakers use a toothpick to test if a cake is done or not, I use a skewer. Air tight containers also work great.

Now, let me show you a few things that you may not have in your home. There are many types of cake decorating tips, starting with some rounds ones. Tips are numbered to help you identify the size. For example a #3 tip is different than a #12. As you can see when the number is smaller, so is the tip. Those round tips are used for writing and for figure piping.

And then we have star tips. Star tips are used for stars, shells and many other techniques. The one in my left hand is a #16 and this one is a #22. They also range in sizes.

And we have some other specialty tips. These are leaf tips, this is a #67 and one of my favorites, a #349. A little “V” shaped works very well. We also have rose tips. Everyone is always interested in making arose. They come very tiny, a #104 is the most commonly used and this one is even larger.

We have other specialty tips. This one is called a basket weave and that is it’s main purpose. And this one is called a drop flower and they come in sizes, too.

This little tool is the greatest for helping you work with cake decorating. Your going to put this in your cake decorating bag and this fits on the outside with a tip in between. So when you cake decorating and your writing a message and all the sudden you want to do some flowers.

You want to use the same color and the icing is the right consistency.You take off that tip and put on your rose tip and keep working with the same color without having to change or fill up another bag.

Speaking of bags, you have different ones available to you on the market. These are called feather weight bags. They’re a light, plastic material that will work fairly well and last a long time, they’re very durable.

We also have plastic disposable bags. And we have parchment triangles. You can make a parchment triangle into a nice cone so you can work with that.

You also will want to invest in a few spatulas. This one is my favorite because of the angle design. While I’m working on a cake I’m not going to get icing on my knuckles because that allows for some extra room that a straight spatula doesn’t.

The small spatula I use for mixing up my colored icing as well as other small techniques. You may want to invest in this. I keep it in plastic because it is very sharp. But this is a wonderful tool for trimming off your edges and leveling cakes.

Another thing you may not be familiar with are cardboard circles. When I’m working with an eight inch cake I will use one that is the same size as the cake. And I will use two for my base and cover it with a nice decorative foil so that it will look nice once I set my cake on top of it.

Speaking of that foil, here is a nice roll of it. You can use regular aluminum foil, but this has a pretty pattern in it and is great. Another thing that you might not happen to have are little paste food colors. They come in half and one ounce sizes and they last you a very long time.

An extremely helpful tool with cake decorating is a turn table. You find similar ones to this at a department store, they are normally around 14 inches round. Another thing I use often is wax paper. Many of the things I’ve discussed you can buy or be bought at any candy supply and cake decorating store.

Due to the positive response to the first contest, a second contest is beginning immediately. We already have several good entries to review, however not all them will be posted. In the past 95% of entries were posted on the site. This contest will have more stringent judging before a submission is posted.

Besides general quality and creativity, here are the two primary criteria for which all entries will be judged before posting and entry. The same criteria will also be applied when choosing the winners.

1) Picture Quality – Use good lighting. Crop out, remove or use a solid background. Get a close up in clear focus.

2) Description – The description is very important. Descriptive and detailed information about the cake, the decorating techniques you used and any other related information should be included. Descriptions should be a minimum of 100 words, however more is generally better. Proper spelling and grammar is also taken into consideration.

Here are some questions you can answer to help create a better description. These are optional and examples of the type of information we would like to see.

1) What common techniques did I use to decorate this cake? What tools did I use to make it? Even if they seem common knowledge to you, it might be a revelation for a beginner!

2) What did I learn from this cake decoration?

3) What was my inspiration for choosing this decoration?

4) Why do I like to decorate cakes and what experience have I had in cake decorating?

ect…

Thank you all!

Please submit your best entry to our cake decorating contest now.

Contest Winner

Congratulations to Luann of Raleigh, NC for her Mrs. Claus Christmas Cake.

Luann is the winner of the contest and the $50.00 Amazon gift certificate.

Here are some other notable entries:

Winner of “Best Description” and “Best Use of Advanced Techniques”
Turkey Cake by Geri

Winner of “Best Birthday Cake” and “Runner Up”
Clown Cake by Milly

Winner of “Best Wedding Cake” and “Honorable Mention”
Eight Tier Wedding Cake by Cris

Winner of “Most Original Idea” and “Special Mention”
Sushi Cake by Alice

City and State: Melbourne, Australia

I used Willow’s sugar glass in yellow and dyed the soft sugar icing a darker shade of yellow (using a little orange) so that the ‘glass’ would contrast.

To get the water effect I used three techniques: 1. used light green dye to get consistent base colour, then created marble effect by putting dots of blue throughout and briefly mixing together; 2. created a ripple effect by puckering the sugar as I laid it on the cake; 3. used a wetting gel to coat entire water to give it a wet look.

To cement the fish in place, I used fetuccini sticks to anchor them in.

City and State: Burt, Mi

I made this wall-e cake for my sons 9th birthday party. It is a three layer Chocolate cake with a peanut butter filling. I used 10 in square pan (3 layers) to create the body and then I used two layers of a 8 inch to sculp and carve the eyes.

I used marshmallow fondant in multiple colors to design the decorations. I prepared his body with yellow fondant. then I car creases in to the body and smeared choc. frosting on to give it a rusted appearance.

The eyes were layered with grey fondant then white then place and then a pin strip to give the three-d appearance. Every thing on the cake was edible except the structure, which was made with pvc pipe and wood, and the greenery that wall-e is holding.

City and State: Dingmans Ferry

A classic Yellow cake w/chocolate pudding filling covered in Black Fondant & royal icing JACK DANIELS logo which I copied from a print from my computer. This was my first time trying fondant, I am 17 years old and new to cake decorating but would like to make it my career.

City and State: Cleburne, TX

This is “CLOWN CAKE” and this was actually my project

On this cake I used 8 x3″ round pan, for the Clowns I used tips 21, 3. and for the dots I used tip 3 and 5 and for the star border I used star tip 21 and star tip 14 for the flowers. You can buy the clown heads at Michaels .

You can use what ever size of round pan you want when making the clown cake and for the colors it’s up to you what colors you want as well. I did mine with the different colors because I like it and I want my clowns to look happy with their colors.

When making the clowns, make the body and use tip 21 in upright position and the basic icing build-up technique to pipe body. Squeeze hard to build up a generous base, then slowly fill out the body by drawing the tip straight up until you reach the desired height. Pipe the legs, insert tip 21 into the front base of the body and draw the icing straight out. You may vary the position of the legs, draw the legs straight up at the knee and back down again to the foot, or cross the legs back down again to the foot ( bend crossing leg at the knee for a natural look ). Pipe the arms and insert tip 21 into the body at the shoulder, then squeeze as you draw the tip straight down. Add two small tip 3 balls for the buttons, add a small tip 3 ball for each hand, add small tip 3 oval for each foot. Insert a derby clown head into the top of the body.

City and State: Joshua, TX

The things you will need are as follows, 1 cake baked in the large Wilton Egg shaped pan, 2 small cake baked in the small Wilton egg shaped pan, 2 ice cream cones with the pointed bottom, a couple skewers, fondant in green, oange, and white. and a roasting pan.

Step one take the 3 egg shaped cakes, take the largest one and place it in the middle of the tin, and then place the smaller two on either side for the legs and secure with the skewers. Remeber to carve out an opening at the bottom part of the turkey where you would place the stuffing. (Save all of your cake scraps, you will be making something out of them later)

Step two, take the ice cream cones and secure them to the smaller egg shapes, so that they look like a drumstick.

Step three, ice the whole cake, (cones as well) with a white buttercream (use white if you are going to use an airbrush to finish coloring the cake) or a brownish buttercream for the color of the roasted turkey. To get a pattern on your cake, take a piece of netting with large holes and press it into your buttercream, you may also use a clean fabric netted laundry bag. Just cut a piece off and press it into the buttercream, this will give it a good effect.

Step Four, take some fondant and shape it into a wing for each side of the turkey (2 wings), (again, if you have an airbrush, make them white, if you don’t then you’ll need to color them before shaping them into wings to match the buttercream on the cake). When these are done, you’ll need to attach them to each side of the cake with skewers.

Once this is done, take your green and orange fondant and mold it into little carrots and peas. Place these to the side.

If you’re happy with the color of your turkey great, if you’re not, and you don’t have an airbrush, then you can take a paint brush and dip it into a little bit of icing color thinned with some vanilla extract and add some more color to the turkey breast, wings, and legs to make it look more realistic.

Once you’re completely satisfied with your turkey breast, take your cake scraps that you had after you leveled your cake and carved it. Break these up into pieces and place them around the turkey. Place your carrots and Peas around the turkey as well and you’re done. Happy Baking.

City and State: Chesapeake, VA

I used a round three layer vanilla cake, added coconut flakes to the top, and iced the sides with green icing to mimic the look of a seaweed wrapper. The decorations on top were made out of “airheads” that I heated in the microwave (5 seconds) to soften and mold. I made an inner circle of green and filled it in with squares-cucumber pieces, pink-salmon blocks, and round balls for fish roe. It came out adorable and all the girls loved it!