How to do Cake Decorating for Occasions

Birthdays! Graduations! Weddings! These are celebratory events that most often come with a cake involved. Sure, you could buy one, but wouldn’t mean more to make and decorate yourself?

We know what you’re thinking! People go to school for years to learn how to do that. This is true, but basic cake decoration, all you need are the right tools and patience, and you can surprise your loved ones and friends with some fantastic cakes.

So below, we will look at why you should decorate cakes yourself, what you will need, and some tips to help you knock it out of the ballpark!

Why Decorate It Yourself?

As we said, you can buy yourself a cake for whatever event you are celebrating, but you have some significant benefits in baking it yourself. First off, you save a bunch of money. You also show the ones you love, how much you care about them.

Here are a couple of other reasons you might consider decorating that cake.

• Some people find baking relaxing.
• You get to enjoy all the wonderful aromas.
• Express creative

Tools for Cake Decorating

Ensuring you have all the tools on hand will help you feel more confident in your decorating skills and affect the quality of the final product. Here are some tools you should have.

• Pans – If you are going to be doing this a lot, you may want to purchase a set of good quality cake pans. These will have straight sides with no slants so that your cakes have nice smooth sides.
• Parchment Paper – Not wax paper, parchment paper; there is a difference. Place the paper on the bottom of the pan before you pour the batter in and see what wondrous things it does. 
• Knife – A sharp, clean knife can help you remove the cake from the pan easier. Run it along the edge, and as long as you placed the parchment as we talked about above, the cake layer should come out with no problem.
• Cake Board – This tool will help you move around your cake more easily as you begin your decoration process.
• Offset Spatula – This will be the tool you use to spread your icing.
• Bench Scraper – Then, you will use the scraper to get that smooth icing coat as the professionals do.
• Turntable – Decorating without one of these will be challenging. This tool houses your cake and turns all the way around so that you have access to all sides of the cake when decorating.
• Fondant Rollers – These should be used instead of traditional rollers as they are made of plastic or silicone, and the fondant won’t stick as much. Plus, they come in different sizes, which will help with the versatility of design.  
• Fondant Smoothers – This tool helps smooth the fondant onto the cake.

Cake Decorating Tips

There is the standard cake decorating tips like using a turntable and practice your piping and design techniques, but there are a few others that could help you deliver a successful and beautiful cake to your next big occasion:

Freeze It

Your cake will be hot when it comes out of the oven, which may make the icing and decorate a little more challenging. So why not bake it one day, freeze it and finish the cake the next day. All the steps from the crumb coating to leveling the cake will be so much easier when the cake is chilled.

Crumb Coat

This is vital to having a smooth and perfect frost on that cake. This is a light layer of frosting coated with a light layer of crumbs. It gives the bulk of the frosting something to latch on to. Make sure that coating is set before you place the second coating, otherwise, it won’t work.

Level It Out

You want flat cake layers so if your cake has a bit of a dome leveling it out will be very helpful when decorating your cake.

Summary

Decorating a cake will allow you to personalize the cake for the person and the event. It will also show the person or people that you do care. With the above tips, we hope you will wow your friends, family, or colleagues with your mad cake decorating skills.

If you are looking for some beginning cake decorations ideas, check out this article.