Cake Decorating 101

My niece is enrolled in cake decorating with her 4H club.  Her assignment after her first project meeting was to practice frosting a cake.  I was planning to make her birthday cake anyway, so we worked together.

After she frosted the cake, I showed her how to smooth out the frosting.

It’s kind of hard to see here, but we laid a paper towel on the frosted cake (let the frosting set up a few minutes first).  She smoothed it out with the palm of her hand.  This works best if you have a paper towel without any pattern in it.  Otherwise, you end up with a pattern in your frosting.

I did this next part.  This will work with any picture you want to put on your cake.  Put a piece of wax paper over the top of the picture you want.  Fill your frosting bag with piping gel.  Draw the picture with the piping gel onto the wax paper.    When you are finished, flip the wax paper over onto your cake.  Rub the palm of your hand over the wax paper to transfer the piping gel to the cake.  The picture will be reversed.

Once you have the design on the cake, you can frost it as you would like.  Isabelle practiced a little bit of writing on my practice board.

Then, she put dots on the edges of the cake.