Decorating a Cake

If you're going to decorate a cake, it's usually important to obtain as flat a surface as possible. If you simply fill your pans with batter and pop them into the oven, you're cake will come out with a domed top.

The first thing to do after you've filled your pan with batter is to pick up the filled pan and rap it on the countertop a few times. This will help remove excess air bubbles from the batter. But this in and of itself is not enough to make a flat topped cake. Next, take an old (but clean) towel (heavy kitchen towel will do or you can cut up an old terry bath towel) and wet it. Fold the wet towel and wrap it around the outside of your cake pan. Secure the end of the towel with a safety pin so you have a wrapped cake pan like the ones in the photos below. The moist heat from the towel helps the cake bake and rise more evenly, resulting in a flat topped cake like the one in the photo at right below. Save the towels for re-use with your next cakes.

If you've ever had trouble frosting a cake - getting the icing to stick to the sides of the cake or those annoying crumbs getting in the way - consider it a thing of the past. A few simple tools will help make this job a breeze. Offset spatulas like the ones in the photo above left keep your knuckles out of the icing and make quick work of applying and smoothing icing. A jumbo pastry bag and giant icing tip, like in the photo above right, makes icing the sides of the cake a snap, as you'll see below.

Follow these simple instructions and you'll make a perfect cake canvas for all your decorating needs.

Place your cake on a cake board or plate. To prevent the cake from moving, use about a tablespoon or so of icing to "glue" it to the plate. Just plop the icing down and set the cake on top of it.

1. Next, use an offset spatula to spread a layer of icing over the top of the first layer, then set the second layer on top.
2. Spread icing over the top of the second layer. The trick to not getting crumbs in the icing is to always use your spatula to push outwards. If you don't pull back, you can't pick up crumbs. Start with a large blob of icing in the middle and spread outward in all directions. Don't worry about getting everything smoothed out at this point, we'll come back to that later.
3. Start with a large blob of icing in the center of the cake. Don't worry about adding too much, you can always use you spatula to scrape off the excess. Adding a lot, then smoothing it off helps prevent crumbs in the icing and also makes it easier to give the icing a smooth finish.
4. The easiest way to ice the sides of the cake is to use a jumbo pastry bag and giant decorating tip. Simply fill the bag and roughly pipe a wide ribbon of icing around the outside of the cake. If you don't have these tools, you can also use your spatula to spread the icing on the sides of the cake, using the same push outward but never pull back back technique we used to ice the top of the cake.
5. Take your spatula and smooth out the frosting you just piped on the sides of the cake.
6. Use the spatula one more time to go over the top and sides of the cake, smoothing out the icing and creating a flat surface. You now have a blank canvas on which to decorate.

Have you ever wondered how bakery cakes get those cool two and three color borders? The technique is really very easy. If you can pipe an ordinary border, you can make a multi-colored one like those on the cakes pictured below.

There are two ways to accomplish the task, depending on the final result desired. For a pastel border, you should simply pipe rows of different colored icings into a pastry bagt. Use two, three or even four colors if you like. When you pipe the icing the colors will come out together.

If you want a more intensely colored border, you will want to actually paint the inside of the pastry bag. Take some paste fod color and an artist's paint brush. Paint 4-6 stripes of the desired color(s) down the inside of the pastry bag, then fill with icing. The border will come out striped.

Does you child have a favorite cartoon character? Wouldn't it be nice if you could put the company logo on the office party cake? Now you can. Transferring simple line drawings to cakes may seem like a job for the professionals, but it's really one of the easiest projects possible for a beginner cake decorator. It's true, you're friends will be ultra-impressed and only you have to know how simple it really was.

In addition to the regular cake decorating supplies- pastry bags, decorating tips, etc., you will need a sheet of rice paper. This edible "paper" is used for a pattern. Don't worry, the icing will naturally dissolve the paper before you ever get around to eating the cake, but even if it didn't, it's edible. You can find rice paper at cake decorating suppliers or we have it available here for your convenience.

So follow these simple steps and before you know it, you'll be turning out professional looking cakes!

1. Use a non-toxic crayon to trace your design onto the rice paper. In order to get the most use from a single sheet of paper, place you design as close to the edge as possible. Once you're finished tracing, carefully cut out the design as close to the borders as possible. Save the remaining paper for another time.
2. Center the cut out rice paper pattern on your frosted cake.
3. Fill a pastry bag, outfitted with a small round writing tip, with dark colored icing. This is what you'll outline the design with. If you don't want to make your own icing (getting a dark enough color can be difficult), canned dark fudge icing works very well for outlining.
4. Now it's time to fill in the design. Remember to start filling in with the smallest detailed areas first and the largest areas last. Use a small star tip for filling and pipe lots of tiny stars until the entire area of your design is completed.

Enjoy!