It can be difficult to decorate a birthday cake if you don’t know where to begin, or what to do to make it look good. However, cake decorating is not as hard as you may think. In fact, anyone can decorate a cake to make it look great if they take the time to do it right. The following are a few steps to easy birthday cake decorating.
Step one: Decide what you want it to look like. If you go at it haphazardly, you will be disappointed in the results. It should be approached like any other project, with care, and a plan. So, sketch out your idea, decide on the colors you want to use, etc. BEFORE you do anything else.
Step two: Gather the tools you will need, including icing, food coloring, cake toppers, piping bags, or a bag you can cut a corner out of, piping tips, etc.
Step three: Prepare your icing. Icing your cake is the first step, and the base of good cake decorating. The icing that you put on first is often referred to as “dirty icing” and then you decorate on top of that, using a variety of colors and other objects like cake toppers, etc. So, make your icing, and divvy it out and dye it to the colors you plan to use.
Step four: Dirty ice your cake. Put a nice layer of icing all over your cake.
Step five: Use your piping bags and tips to do a decorative icing around the base of the cake. This will look nice, and clean up the area where it sits on the plate or platter, or cardboard covered in tin foil, or whatever you have it on.
Step six: You should have an idea of what you want the top to look like. If you are doing a super hero birthday cake for example, you may want to have a plastic action figure on one side of the cake, like spider man, and then the words “Happy Birthday” coming off of him as though they are webs. Place your cake toppers, and accessories on your cake, then use icing to secure them in place, and use additional icing to write the words, or create the flowers, polka dots, etc. that you want on your cake.
Another great way to decorate a birthday cake that is really simple is to dirty ice it as mentioned, then visit your local craft store and purchase pre-made fondant icing. You then just roll it out, and use cookie cutters to shape it how you want, and place it on your cake. You could do strips to make lines, circles for polka dots, stars, hearts, flowers, etc. Fondant is easy to work with and results in a practically professional looking cake.
Whatever you choose to do, remember, it is fun for the cake to look good, but it is more important for it to taste good!
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