Have you ever thought about trying some cake decorating? With bake off back on the telly, and the nights are drawing in due to Autumn, you might be looking for a new indoor activity to try. If you’re not 100% confident with the whole baking process but would really love to attempt a bit of cake decorating you could buy one of our cakes to decorate yourself!
If you are just starting out with your journey don’t worry, the biggest thing we’ve learned when it comes to getting a great result when decorating a cake is to practice, and listen to the experiences of others. Don’t be too downhearted if it doesn’t turn out exactly as you like on your first, second, or even third attempt. The more you do it, the better you will get at it.
You’ll need to think about how you want to decorate your cake, sometimes, if you’re feeling ambitious, it can help to draw a plan of how you would like the cake to look. It doesn’t have to be a very detailed picture and you don’t need to be great at drawing, but having a plan can help you to reduce the risk of mistakes later on.
Another thing to consider is what do you decorate with? There are a few options, you can do decorations entirely with buttercream, you may want to use the slightly trickier fondant, or you might want to use modeling chocolate for certain items. Once you’ve decided what you want to use then you can start the process.
As we mentioned before practicing your skills is the best way to learn, now depending on your design, you can practice, there are certain ways to practice certain skills. Piping is a skill used in cake decorating, a great way to practice your piping design is to use some baking paper and trial and error with royal icing or buttercream icing. When it comes to fondant and covering a cake many people get polystyrene cake dummies to practice on first (these dummies are reusable – you can just peel the fondant off them – for cleaning you’ll have to check any instructions they come with as it can differ). The cake dummies come in handy for practicing using modeling chocolate to create figurines, to check to see how they will stand or sit on a cake. The great thing about modeling chocolate is that there are some great recipes online to help you make it at home as opposed to buying lots of different colours, you can make your own, coloured modeling chocolate.
A simple but effective way of decorating a cake is with buttercream flowers, there are a couple of ways to do these, both with piping tips. There are a set of piping nozzles called Russian piping tips, there are intricate cuts made into the end of the nozzle by the manufacturer, which means that when buttercream is pushed through the end different patterns are produced, quite often these are flowers. Then there are traditional piping tips that can be used to create wonderful floral illusions with buttercream icing, each flower will require a different tip. Roses are possibly the easiest flower to start with, you require a 5 or 6 tipped star nozzle – start from the centre of where the rose would start and swirl around to the outside of what will be the rose until you have reached your desired size.
These are just a couple of tips for decorating cakes, there are so many things you do but it’s very much dependant on what design you want to achieve. Whatever it is, you will more than likely be able to find some online tutorials to help.
As we said at the beginning if you want to try your hand at decorating a cake yourself but aren’t confident with baking (or don’t have the time/energy to do so) why not buy one of our naked cakes to decorate.