Cake Decorating Tips and Tricks for Beginners and Lazy People
Cake decorating doesn’t have to be hard. Learning how to roll the perfect fondant, pipe the perfect trim or buy the most expensive tools isn’t realistic for us novice bakers, so sometimes it’s best to keep the expertise and the fancy frills to the professionals. If you’re a regular person, these cake decorating tips will help you make instagram-worthy cakes with little to no skill or effort!
I celebrated my and my close friend’s birthday a few weeks ago. Being less traditional and more of the do it yourself types, we decided to make our own birthday cake together. Some may call that sad, but we made it into a really fun afternoon activity and ended up with a finished product that we were both proud of.
Cake baking and decorating can be an extremely tedious task to take on among all of the other party prep, so it is completely understandable why most people opt for store bought over homemade. I personally prefer making my own cakes because it’s less expensive and you can control what ingredients you use. If you do plan on taking a stab at baking and decorating a cake for a loved one or yourself, I have a few tips that can make the process much less daunting.
Don’t feel pressured to use all edible decorations
While you can search the internet and find extremely intricate designs made from fondant, icing, meringue and chocolate, you really don’t have to be a master at using a piping bag to have a great design. Many cake decorating tools can be really expensive, and can require a lot of practice and skill to end up with a finished cake that you’re happy with. For this reason, I encourage you to take advantage of non-edible decorative additions. Think about all of the fun candle picks and plastic cake accessories that were all the rage back in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. They were reusable, and added a fun, quirky element to cakes while simplifying the decorating process.
The non edible decorations we used for our cake are things I already own, or bought last minute at the dollar store. The kewpies I had bought from a street vendor in Osaka for 50 yen, the eyeballs are Halloween ping pong balls I had laying around from October, and the stars are the plastic glow in the dark kind that you are meant to stick to your wall and ceiling. When opting for non-edible decorations, just make sure to give them a good wash before using them to decorate, and try not to leave them on your cake for too long before serving.
Candies, sprinkles, and gumballs are delicious AND decorative!
Using gumballs and sprinkles for the trim of a cake is SO much easier than trying to pipe perfectly consistent dollops. Another great feature is if you don’t like the placement of the candy, you can easily just pick it up and place it where you want. There is so much more room to tweak the the arrangement of hard decorations over regular frosting , just keep a small spatula close by to clean up the frosting every now and then, and you’re good to go!
Fresh flowers, tree clippings, and leaves are also beautiful additions, edible or not!
If you are using edible flowers like pansies or roses, you’re good to go. If you’re using inedible plants, just make sure they aren’t poisonous, and check to see your plant pieces are no longer bleeding to prevent their bitterness from seeping into your frosting!
Cool your cake layers in the fridge before you try to frost it.
This will soften the outer layer that can sometimes come out a bit crusty, and also help prevent crumbs from mixing in with your icing to create a lumpy uneven texture. If you have a particularly crumbly cake, apply a single thin layer of frosting to your cooled cake, and refrigerate before frosting a second layer.
I hope that these tips inspire you to try cake decorating for yourself. You really don’t need to buy expensive, fancy shaped cake pans, or strain yourself to make the perfect fondant. Getting a little bit creative and non-traditional can leave you with a really beautiful finished product, and can end up being just as instagram worthy as one bought from a store, if not more. At the end of the day, cake is meant to be shared and eaten, and the gesture of making it yourself will always be appreciated.
Happy baking!