STEP-BY-STEP Cake Decorating Pt. 2 -- Ritu Buttar

Cake Decorating

I decided to use a Christmas theme for my second attempt at decorating a cake. It turned out a lot better than my first try.


"Like all skills, cake decorating can take some time to learn and a little patience to master" (Sullivan). There is always room for improvement because things take time to master. The main goal of these blog posts is to show improvement through time. This blog will be showing people how I used techniques from Sullivan's book, to create my own design. I will be working with buttercream frosting to decorate my cake.


Ingredients

• just over 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 cups confectioner's sugar
• 2 tbsp. heavy cream or milk, plus extra for thinning
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• coloring paste, optional

(Sullivan 24-25)

Labels

If you do not have a piping bag, I showed how to make one out of parchment paper in my last blog.


In my decoration I used the Pulled Bead Border - "Use a medium round tip to pipe beads and then slowly release the pressure as you drag each bead" (Sullivan 77). Piping the border was a lot easier than I expected it to be.

 I also used the Ruffle effect - "Use a medium petal tip, dragging the frosting back on itself and then forward again" (Sullivan 77). This was a little harder and didn't look like ruffles at all, but there's always room for improvement.


Lastly I just added some of my own decorative snowflakes to complete the cake and add some sort of Christmas theme to it.

 

 

Overall I think my cake turned out good, and looked a lot better than my first attempt at cake decorating. I will keep trying to improve my cake decorating abilities, so it will soon look great.


What could I improve on my decorations?
Sullivan, Karen. Step-by-step Cake Decorating: Hundreds of Ideas, Techniques, and Projects for Creative Cake Designers. London: DK, 2013. Print.