Cake Decorating Ideas

He is going to show us how to make a plain cake into a gorgeous butterfly birthday cake. We’re going to start with a nine inch round cake and we’re going to cut off the dome. And you’ll see why I’m going to do that. What I’m going to do is flip it over.

The first step is to just cut right down the middle. And then were going to cut a peace sign. We’re going to cut here to here. And if you need you can use toothpicks to mark the middle. We’re going to use it as a guide line and flip these over and rotate them. And your going to have a butterfly’s wings.

Now we’re going to move into the crumb coat. A crumb coat is basically this coat of frosting that you spread over the entire cake and that seals in your crumbs. So we’re just going to start spreading it on. I like to put a nice big dollop on top. I like to get a nice, thick coat of icing on. Maybe about a quarter inch.

Once I have that I’m just going to start smoothing it out and make sure it’s covered. And each time I lift up my spatula I’m going to scrape it off that way you’ll get cleaner lines. You can dip you spatula in hot water and it will melt it off, just be sure you dry the spatula.

How to Make a Butterfly Birthday Cake Video

While your spreading I noticed you put a lot on and then your scraping it off.

Exactly, it gives you a little more room for error. So you don’t actually hit the cake or the crumb coat while your frosting it. And if you want this cake to be bigger to serve more people you can always layer.

Would you have to cut the layers together so that it would fit on top?

What I would do is cut one cake pt a little frosting on it and place the other cake on top and then cut out the shape that you want.

It looks like were about ready to put some more decorating on it. And this is the part your going to help me with. What you have here is some pastry cones. And I’ve actually pre-tinted some frosting. We have some green, a yellow and a pink. Just basic food coloring.

So what I’m going to do is we’re going to place the pattern on the butterfly. Squeeze some frosting. Then I’m going to take my spatula and then just spread it toward the center. Now I’m going to put some pink on here. I want you to take your spatula and put it in the hot water and you can help me spread this.

If you want it to trail down and make a pointed shape you can bring it down and also as the icing gets thinned out it gets a little transparent. You can get a little shaded effect. If you want, you can always come back and accent it a little bit and maybe accent that shape just for a little wow.

There’s a technique to piping though, right?

If your right handed your going to hold the bag in your right hand and squeeze at the top, with your other hand you guide. You don’t want to squeeze in the middle because sometimes the icing can come out the back and you can also have less control.

Now, for a little added decoration we can put candies on. SO we can just do a little something like that. And you don’t have to use any color palette, you can just blues and purples, whatever kind of butterfly you want to make. And then we have candy sticks for the body.

And the final step if you want it to really glisten, we have some sanding sugar. Sanding sugar is just a coarse sugar. And you can just sprinkle it on top and give it a little sparkle. You can get it at the store. They come in colors too, so if you wanted to use a pink or a green. And there’s your butterfly.