Cake Decorating Ideas

I started decorating cakes as a hobby three years ago when I made a cake for my son’s first birthday and have made a cake at every opportunity since. I am learning by experience and from my cake decorating books as I go.

This is a pink bra cake which was made as a raffle prize for a friend. She was holding a fund-raiser prior to doing the “moonwalk”, a marathon length walk at night, where participants wear a pink bra to raise money and awareness for breast cancer research.

I knew I wanted to make a bra shaped cake but I wanted it to be tasteful so I was really pleased with how this turned out.

I made 2 1lb pudding bowl, madeira cakes for the cups and shaped them into a realistic bra shape. Maderia cakes are great for shaped cakes because they are firm, don’t crumble much while cutting and hold the shape well. Chilling the cakes before shaping also helps.

The rectangular cake board was covered with white fondant icing and left to dry for a day before I decorated the cake.

The maderia cakes were cut in half and spread with buttercream and strawberry jam (yum). I also spread buttercream all over to stick the fondant. A tiny amount of red colouring paste was added to the white fondant icing to give it a great delicate pink colour. The pink colored fondant was then rolled out to about 5mm thick to cover the two cups.

The bra waist strap was cut from the rest of the fondant icing and stuck to the covered board with some water. For the shoulder straps, I added a bit of gum tragacanth to the remaining fondant icing to make it a bit stretchier, so it would be easier to work with, dry harder and stronger. The fringing was also made from the same ingredients, cut into long ribbons and impressed with a cake decoration modelling tool. The tiny amount of remaining fondant was coloured darker and was used to make the central bow and two breast cancer research ribbons for decoration.

This cake was my first attempt at piping royal icing. I used a No.3 nozzle for the diagonals and No. 0 for the pattern. I found that I had to water down the icing quite a bit for the No. 0 nozzle so it won’t keep clogging up.

My friend was delighted with the cake and I am so glad I helped her raise a great sum for the charity.

First Name: Karen
City-State: Bathgate, Scotland