Looking to get into cake decorating? Cake decorating is definitely an art, but with a little patience and practice, you’ll be able to decorate cakes that look like they came from your local cake shop. Just be careful, once your cakes get too good, everyone is going to be calling on you to make them for their parties! Check out our favourite easy art cake ideas for beginners, plus the tips and essentials you need to create gorgeous, show stopping cakes!
4 Art Cake Tips for Beginners
1. Freeze Your Cakes
Making and decorating a cake can be a lot of work, and splitting it up into stages has its advantages. Cakes stay fresh in the freezer for up to a week, so you can bake the cake on a Thursday, freeze it and decorate it on a Sunday, for instance. Splitting it up gives you more time, making the process less stressful. Plus, frozen cakes are easier to frost. They don’t crumble as much and levelling cakes is easier when they’re frozen.
2. Make Homemade Frosting
If you want a smooth base for your cake, you need to DIY the frosting. Canned frostings are thinner and don’t adhere as well, so they can end up looking lumpy or worse, sliding off your cake. Make your own buttercream and use food colouring to create custom colours!
3. Invest in a Cake Turntable
A rotating cake turntable will make decorating your cakes so much easier. You can turn the cake while levelling and frosting it, allowing you to create beautiful borders along the base and perfect designs on the sides or top of your cake.
4. Practice Your Piping
Piping designs may not come easily in the beginning, but the more your practice, the prettier your cakes will be. You can create a variety of shapes and designs with piping bags and tips, and you can practice designs and writing on wax paper before moving to your cake.
8 Art Cake Essentials to Invest In
1. Professional cake pans: to ensure your cakes are cooked properly inside and out.
2. Offset spatulas: to ice your cake perfectly and frost hard to reach areas.
3. Serrated knife: for levelling your cakes.
4. Bench scraper: to get your cakes perfectly smooth on the sides.
5. Cake cardboard: thin boards to build your cake on and move your cake from the turntable to the cake platter.
6. Piping bags: for piping your designs, of course!
7. Piping tips: to make designs like pretty rosettes, ruffles, leaves, hearts and more.
8. Cake stand: for presenting your beautiful art cake.
7 Easy Art Cake Ideas for Beginners
1. Easy Unicorn Cake | How to Cook That
Looking to make a cute cake for a kids’ birthday party? This unicorn is magical, and it’s relatively easy too! The recipe comes with a video tutorial that you can follow step by step and you’ll need materials like gold lustre dust, cake pop sticks and a round cookie cutter. This one will take some time but it will be so worth it in the end!
2. Funfetti Drip Cake | Preppy Kitchen
This gorgeous funfetti cake would make for the perfect birthday treat. Featuring confetti sprinkles and a soft drip, it’s contemporary meets nostalgia all at once. He uses tools like cake strips, a stand mixer and a piping bag set to create this ultra-moist, fun and delicious art cake.
3. Easy Painted Buttercream Flower Cake | Wilton
This flower cake is so gorgeous and the colours really make it pop! You don’t even need to use piping tips for the flowers, you can simply “paint” flowers on the cake with a cake cream spatula. You’ll need a round decorating tip to pipe the dots and don’t forget a cake leveller for that perfectly smooth base.
4. How to Make Marbled Buttercream | Georgia’s Cakes
This marbled buttercream cake is incredibly dreamy. She shows you how to create the marbled buttercream as well as how to use the extra to create designs on top. You’ll need materials like mixing bowls, a spatula and a palette knife. She chose pink marble, but you can do any colour you like!
5. Dinosaur Cake | BBC Good Food
This dinosaur cake is ideal for any kid’s birthday and is sure to be a show-stopper. It’s deceptively easy to make, but everyone will think you got it professionally done! To make this cake, you’ll need tools including electric beaters, a palette knife, a sifter, and a whole bunch of yummy ingredients!
6. Candy Covered Cake | Lovely Indeed
This cake is covered head to toe in gorgeous candy and the coloured frosting between each layer adds a lovely surprise when you cut into it. This is a perfect art cake design if you’re not looking to use piping bags. It’s still just as stunning. You’ll need materials like a cake stand, cake rounds and an icing spatula to create this candy-covered masterpiece.
7. Under the Sea Cake Tutorial | BakeUp – Priscilla Chavez
This beginner under the sea cake is sure to be a hit! It’s super cute and the cake itself is perfect for anyone just getting started with cake decorating. She starts off with the decorations because they need time to freeze, so make sure to give yourself the right amount of time for this cake! She uses cake piping for some of the designs, but you’ll also need mini seashells molds and a turtle mold, as well as a pair of clean tweezers to place on your pearl sprinkles.
We hope these ideas and tutorials get you excited for decorating art cakes! Use these tips and tools to create stand-out cakes your friends and family will love!
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