How to decorate a Cake

I was asked many times ever since I started decorating cakes to put up a post on how to decorate cake and here I am doing just that.

I just have to say I am grateful and appreciative of how far God has brought me in this journey. It has just been getting better and better. Six months ago, I had not even decorated a cake before even though I have been baking delicious cakes since I was a teenager. Today I am a cake decorator even though I am still a work in progress in cake decorating. You have asked me to make a post on this, and here I am sharing my knowledge with with you.

This is a simple baby shower cake. I started on it not having any design in mind. All I knew was it was going to be 8 inch round cake. I baked the Cake and went to work on decorating it..This was the end result. The mum to be and everyone present at the baby shower loved it and to my pleasure the colours matched the mum to be badge (I was not given any colour). Here was how I did it:

8 inch Sponge Cake measurements:

300g self raising flour

300g sugar

300g butter

6 eggs

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Click HERE for directions on baking the cake

To decorate you will need:

Scraper

Palette

Flower cutters

Fondant mat/icing sugar or corn flour

Rolling pin

Fondant smoother

Edible glue

DIRECTIONS

1) Bake cake and leave to cool. While cake is cooling, get buttercream ready. Click HERE for buttercream recipe.

2) Level cake and fill in between with buttercream

Filling with buttercream is optional

3) Crumbcoat by applying a thin layer of buttercream all over the cake.

This seals in the crumbs from the cake and makes life easier when applying final coat.

3) Leave the cake for few minutes to set the crumb coating. I normally just put in the fridge for 10-15 minutes.

4) Apply second coat of buttercream. This time be generous with the buttercream. You will scrape most off so don't worry about it being too much on the cake

5) Using a scraper, scrape the buttercream smoothly. I start this from the top then to the sides.

6) After scraping , try to smoothen buttercream as much as possible.

If you are making a buttercream cake, smoothen as best as you can. There are different methods of achieving this, pallete in hot water, parchment paper, etc. Play around and chose the method that works best for you

7) Roll out fondant on a fondant mat. If you don't have a mat, dust a clean worktop with cornflour or icing sugar to roll out fondant. The cornflour prevents icing from sticking to the worktop

8) Carefully lift the fondant and apply on the cake.

I only used fondant as a drape on the cake and not to fully cover the cake so I made sure I got measurements right before lifting on the cake as trying to trim on the cake would mess up the buttercream part I didn't want to cover.

I used a round cookie cutter for the serated edges.

9) Drape the fondant over the cake and smooth top with a fondant smoother.

10) Use flower cutters to cut out flowers and apply on cake using edible glue (you can use water or water plus tylose powder as glue)

11) Cut out letters out of fondant and apply on the board with edible glue to stay in place

12) Now place the sleeping baby on cake and cover with fondant blanket.

I used a mould for the sleeping baby. I had done this a day before to allow it dry well before placing on cake.

13) Finish by applying buttercream borders at the base.

That's it done. Go ahead and apply the fundamentals in creating beautiful cakes. Bring out the artistic talent in you 🙂

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"Cakes are special. Every birthday, every celebration ends with something sweet, a cake, and people remember. It's all about the memories" - Buddy Valastro