Practical Tips for Cake Decorating
When you have spent a lot of time and energy baking a cake, you want to make sure that you do justice to the cake with excellent decor and decoration. If a cake is poorly finished and decorated, it will affect what you think and what others think too. To help you achieve greatness with cake decorating, here are a few practical tips you should follow.
Have All of Your Equipment Ready to Go
First off, you need to make sure you have all of your equipment in one place and ready to use. When you are cake decorating, you do not want to be scrambling around for modeling tools or for the cake stand that you should have gotten out while the cake was cooling. To make organization a little easier, it is worth investing in cake decorating supply storage because this way, you can keep everything together and in one place.
Never Decorate a Warm Cake
No matter how small or large the cake you will be decorating is, you must ensure that it is always cool. Warm cakes are impossible to decorate, and if you are not careful, you will end up with frosting that will not stick or that runs and loses its color and appeal. Giving a cake a couple of hours to cool (after removing it from the oven) is ideal. If you can leave it longer than this, this would be great, as it makes it easier to work on.
Make Use of Stencils
You do not have to completely decorate a whole cake by hand. You can make use of stencils instead. When you use stencils, you get the professional look you are after in an efficient manner. You can get seashell-inspired stencils that will allow you to decorate the side (or top) of a cake. Or, you can get seasonal Christmas stencils for cake decorating. Stencils can add style to a cake both quickly and effortlessly, and they can help you decorate a cake how you want to.
Use Icing Bags for Piping
If you want to go ahead and try piping when cake decorating, then practice first. Even if you are using smaller nozzles, it can be difficult to get the consistency you need. You may find that if you push too hard, you get a mess. Or, you may find that you get wavy lines instead of straight lines. When you practice, you improve the dexterity and ability in your hands. When piping, you must think about the nozzles you want to use, but also think about the bags you want. For example, are you going to use disposable bags, or are you going to pay more for reusable ones?
Practice Regularly
To improve your level of skill when it comes to cake decorating, you are going to need to practice as much as possible. If you are not practicing, you are not going to improve, and this is, of course, going to leave you feeling frustrated.
