I’m here today to talk to you about a few basic tools for starting out in the world of cake decorating. We hope you find some great cake decorating ideas. Some of them you’re going to be very familiar with. Hopefully you have them in your own home and kitchen. Others might be new to you, so we’ll discuss them with you as we go along.
Obviously your going to need an apron and icing. Decorating cakes is a very messy job so I always keep an apron around. I also find having towels is very handy. Whether I’m washing or cleaning things and keeping things dry.
A pair of scissors, we’ll discuss a few uses for them. Obviously your going to need a frosting spatula. Something to scrape out the bowls when your working, when you’re baking a cake you want to scrape out that batter before you put it into your pans.
How to Decorate a Cake Techniques
Scotch tape, yes we’ll be using scotch tape. Toothpicks are a great thing for using your food colors. Skewers, many bakers use a toothpick to test if a cake is done or not, I use a skewer. Air tight containers also work great.
Now, let me show you a few things that you may not have in your home. There are many types of cake decorating tips, starting with some rounds ones. Tips are numbered to help you identify the size. For example a #3 tip is different than a #12. As you can see when the number is smaller, so is the tip. Those round tips are used for writing and for figure piping.
And then we have star tips. Star tips are used for stars, shells and many other techniques. The one in my left hand is a #16 and this one is a #22. They also range in sizes.
And we have some other specialty tips. These are leaf tips, this is a #67 and one of my favorites, a #349. A little “V” shaped works very well. We also have rose tips. Everyone is always interested in making arose. They come very tiny, a #104 is the most commonly used and this one is even larger.
We have other specialty tips. This one is called a basket weave and that is it’s main purpose. And this one is called a drop flower and they come in sizes, too.
This little tool is the greatest for helping you work with cake decorating. Your going to put this in your cake decorating bag and this fits on the outside with a tip in between. So when you cake decorating and your writing a message and all the sudden you want to do some flowers.
You want to use the same color and the icing is the right consistency.You take off that tip and put on your rose tip and keep working with the same color without having to change or fill up another bag.
Speaking of bags, you have different ones available to you on the market. These are called feather weight bags. They’re a light, plastic material that will work fairly well and last a long time, they’re very durable.
We also have plastic disposable bags. And we have parchment triangles. You can make a parchment triangle into a nice cone so you can work with that.
You also will want to invest in a few spatulas. This one is my favorite because of the angle design. While I’m working on a cake I’m not going to get icing on my knuckles because that allows for some extra room that a straight spatula doesn’t.
The small spatula I use for mixing up my colored icing as well as other small techniques. You may want to invest in this. I keep it in plastic because it is very sharp. But this is a wonderful tool for trimming off your edges and leveling cakes.
Another thing you may not be familiar with are cardboard circles. When I’m working with an eight inch cake I will use one that is the same size as the cake. And I will use two for my base and cover it with a nice decorative foil so that it will look nice once I set my cake on top of it.
Speaking of that foil, here is a nice roll of it. You can use regular aluminum foil, but this has a pretty pattern in it and is great. Another thing that you might not happen to have are little paste food colors. They come in half and one ounce sizes and they last you a very long time.
An extremely helpful tool with cake decorating is a turn table. You find similar ones to this at a department store, they are normally around 14 inches round. Another thing I use often is wax paper. Many of the things I’ve discussed you can buy or be bought at any candy supply and cake decorating store.
