How To Decorate Wedding Cake
Dressing a cake up can exist a ton of fun… or it tin be a super-stress nightmare! I'm all about finding beautiful ways to decorate cakes that are piece of cake, fun, and fifty-fifty delicious. Hither are my 5 favorite décor techniques (and tips for pulling them off)—but beginning, a quick tiered cake primer!
Tiered Cakes 101
Make enough filling and frosting.
My biggest pet peeve when making a block (and frankly, one of my biggest kitchen pet peeves of all time) is running out of icing midway through cake associates or ornamentation. Ugh! Information technology's the worst! Do yourself a favor and make a little more than you recall you'll need. No one was ever sorry they had extra frosting leftover (specially if there are also block scraps lying around, am I correct?).
Consider peak.
Part of what makes nuptials block tiers so impressive is superlative. But that top doesn't necessarily accept to come from five tiers stacked alpine. Even a block with merely two tiers can wait super impressive (and it's and so much easier to handle!) if they're tall plenty. I ordinarily opt for 6 layers of cake, which gives each individual tier a really nice height. To do this, I usually bake iii cakes in each size I want, level off the tops, then cut each into 2 layers.
Utilise supports.
The taller the cake, the more than you demand supports. This is true of tall tiers also as tall stacks of tiers! I love Rose Levy Beranbaum's tip of using drinking straws as supports in cakes. Not only practice they work great, merely they're also easy to cut to the correct size, plus you probably already have them at home!
Insert one straw into the centre of the cake, then press additional straws in a circle effectually it. Y'all want to accept every bit many supports as yous can without them beingness visible once the next tier is on acme. You don't have to add supports to the tiptop tier, but you can! Printing the straws in every bit deep as you can, then lift it up a bit and snip the excess off with scissors, and so nudge information technology back downward.
Use cake circles.
Purchase the aforementioned size as the block pans yous'll apply. Non only do the circles support the cake, but they also make information technology much easier to stack the tiers when the time comes. Y'all'll be glad y'all did!
Skip the fondant, but know your frosting.
I'm pretty anti-fondant (gasp!?!) and I say skip information technology all together. For one, the stuff you can buy in cake supply stores isn't equally easy to work with as the stuff professionals employ (it can be kind of dry out, I find), plus information technology takes a skilled hand and some practise to nail it. Just my main problems are: Information technology's expensive and information technology doesn't taste proficient! I would much rather spend that money on high-quality chocolate to make a really delicious buttercream instead of something that most people are just going to peel off anyhow.
All this said, it's important to know your frosting. Chocolate frosting and/or whipped ganache are great for cake decorating, because they're pretty easy to get smoothen—and you lot can use a kitchen torch or hot h2o to warm the spatula yous're using to frost, making the icing easier to polish it out. But if you're not into chocolate, whatever frosting volition work. Just follow the brilliant advice a pastry chef friend once told me, and brand sure the frosting is the consistency of mayonnaise when you lot go to frost. If it's firmer than that, give it a few 10-second blasts in the microwave or hold it briefly over a water bath and stir until y'all get there. Soft frosting is much easier to brand smooth, and information technology will prepare upward one time you're washed, so no worries about it being messy come slicing time.
More than: You can even use a frosting you fabricated without a recipe.
Embrace the messy.
Who says a wedding block has to take smooth frosting? I recollect swirly frosting looks luscious and inviting—and it yet holds up well to decorations. Then rather than killing yourself trying to make a perfectly smooth cake, opt to embrace the messiness and get full-on swirly. If you lot look at the cake and want to stick your finger in and catch a dive of frosting, y'all're on the right rails.
Stack time.
When y'all get to put your tiers together, exist confident. Become boldly into the cake stackery similar you've done information technology a million times. This is no time for hesitation, and information technology'southward also easier than you'd think. Since you idea ahead and used cake circles on the base of the cake (right?!), it's easy to move the cake around with your easily.
When you're fix to stack, grab an offset spatula; my favorite is an 8-inch. Use the offset spatula to elevator the cake off of your turntable/work surface/what-have-you. Once yous've lifted it up a scrap, you can back up it with your hands. Identify the bottom tier on the cake stand or platter, and employ the offset spatula to keep it suspended a bit while you eye information technology. When you've got it in the right spot, pull the offset spatula out; information technology should come out nice and make clean.
Practice the aforementioned with whatever subsequent tier: Hold it over the block where you call back information technology's centered, and then place the block down. If you want, have a friend watch while you piece of work and assist you get proper placement. But fifty-fifty if it's off a little, just nudge the commencement spatula dorsum under the cake circumvolve and motility it effectually as needed. Call back, the peak of each tier is going to exist covered with stuff—another tier and/or decorations—so yous don't need to worry much about what the top looks like. Information technology'south okay if information technology isn't perfectly smooth!
5 Easier-Than-It-Looks Ways to Decorate
You've congenital your cake and you're looking for fancy (just easy) ways to decorate it. Here are my v favorite techniques. Each tin can be adapted to adjust your style and tastes, but the guidelines volition stay the same!
Fresh Flowers
Fresh flowers are a classic choice for decorating a block, and the final event always looks precipitous. About of the fourth dimension, if y'all're decorating a wedding cake, the nuptials florist will provide flowers along with the others that are delivered—a choice of blooms that appear in the other arrangements and bouquets. But if non (or if the flowers are existence DIY'd, also), ask whoever's getting married for their choices and colors.
When it uncertainty, choice a monochromatic look. White on white e'er looks good at a wedding, but even clusters of flowers in similar colour schemes (pinks, greens, etc.) will have a make clean, elegant wait. It's generally advisable to avoid huge flowers, unless you're going for a very full look (say, a cascade of hydrangeas sprouting off the top of the cake); small to medium flowers will allow you to make nice clusters and withal give room for variety. Yous tin employ floral tape to brand little bundles of flowers, or you tin but stick the stems into the frosting a little bit. A few of my favorite looks:
- Utilise flowers to cover the whole elevation of the block and fall a bit down the sides, then keep the bottom half of the cake make clean and shine.
- Make clusters of flowers all over the cake, alternating sides on each tier or keeping the aforementioned side and cluster size all the mode downwardly.
- Utilize flowers to cover the base of each tier like a border or edge. This is very classic and gives a full, rounded-out await to a block.
Edible Decorations
I'yard a big fan of piling other succulent stuff on a cake—and pretty succulent stuff is even amend! The all-time part of this technique is you can use bootleg stuff or, if you're besides overwhelmed with the edifice of the cake, you lot can bring in the aid of your favorite bakery or other products. Some of my favorites:
- Decorate with clusters of small cookies, like macarons and meringues, that are tinted to match the wedding colors. I also similar to throw some sprinkles effectually the lesser of each cake, right above the base.
- Printing Pirouette-fashion cookies into the sides of each tier. You can employ unlike heights for a messier look or trim them all to end at the same place. Bonus points for tying a ribbon around the base of each block—it looks extra pretty!
- Scatter cookie crumbs effectually the base and superlative of each tier OR fully around the sides of each cake. Y'all can do this with sprinkles, chopped nuts, coconut, etc., besides—and it's a great way to cover up a messy frosting task!
Fresh Fruit
Fresh fruit always looks skillful—so flavory and inviting. Berries are classic, but don't be agape to think outside the box. Halves of peaches, plums, and apricots tin can look great as well, especially with some smaller varieties of fruit thrown in. I decorated this cake with ii different kinds of cherries and mint leaves! Similar I mentioned with flowers, a monochromatic look can be astonishing: all reds (strawberries, raspberries, currants!) or all blacks and blues (blackberries, plums, blueberries, currants) can exist a snazzy and easy fashion to pull it all together.
Whatever you choose, exist plentiful (i.eastward. buy more than fruit than yous think yous'll demand). These cakes expect best with plenty of fruit piled high! This technique is piece of cake but it needs to be washed somewhat last-minute, especially if the fruit is cut in any way.
Chocolate Plaques
Chocolate is a great mode to decorate a block: It looks fancy and tastes great to boot. The trickiest function of working with chocolate is that it needs to be tempered, so you become a nice, shiny look. Yous can also apply sparse ganache or DIY magic shell for a similar wait, though both are sensitive to heat, so be careful if the cake has to stand a long fourth dimension.
More: How to atmosphere chocolate—the stovetop manner and the microwave way.
One of my favorite (and easiest!) ways to decorate a cake with chocolate is to make big shards of sparse chocolate to put around the whole outside of the cake (yet another way to comprehend up frosting if you lot're iffy about your skills!). Line a blistering sail with parchment newspaper and pour the melted, tempered chocolate over it, and spread into an even layer. No need to be crazy precise about smoothness, because the part touching the pan will be the visible surface. Let the chocolate gear up (you can throw it in the refrigerator, but it will also fix at room temperature unless your kitchen is especially hot!), then utilise a pocketknife to cut score marks and break it into shards.
You can go precise by cutting the plaques to the exact height (or slightly taller) than your cake, or yous can embrace the randomness and break them all into different sizes and simply build it until you lot similar it. I prefer to wear gloves when I handle the chocolate, because your hands can make smears and fingerprints that are pretty visible. Terminate the cake by arranging something on the cake inside the chocolate "walls"—fresh fruit, flowers, more chocolate, whatever you like! Or yous tin can swirl or pipe more frosting onto the exposed surfaces for a more than finished await.
Piping
Pipe is a great way to finish a "fancier" block, even if you don't have great piping skills. Seriously—I know piping tin can seem a little intimidating, but it's actually a really useful tool, peculiarly for those who aren't sure how to decorate. The pipage tip does a ton of the piece of work for y'all, and the results tin can be really lovely.
One way to employ a piping tip is to pipage borders around the base and/or tops of each tier. The best mode to do this is to hold your pastry handbag at a 45-degree bending with the tip nigh touching the surface of the cake. Clasp the handbag by applying gentle pressure level and allow the icing flow from the tip. When you've made the shape you lot like, terminate applying pressure, and move the handbag over to the next spot. Begin to employ gentle pressure again, and repeat the process. Continue until you've covered the whole edge of the cake. I like to use star tips to brand a "shell" or "rosette" border, or a patently open tip to brand little dots or pearls.
But my favorite fashion to pipe on a cake is, no surprise, to encompass randomness and just go crazy. I fit several bags with unlike sizes of tips; it looks not bad with star tips, open circle tips, or fifty-fifty a combination of the two! Tint your frosting in a few different colors—whites and creams, pale blues to deeper bounding main colors, dusty pinks to rosy reds, whatever matches the theme of the event. Use at least 3 tints of color, and up to 7 (the cake higher up uses three: white, stake blue, and darker blueish), and at least 3 sizes of tip, and upwardly to 7 (this block uses 5 different tips, with some colors used twice in two different tips).
Begin piping shapes wherever yous like. I chose round the base of operations and superlative of each tier, cascading down. Yous tin can practise just a little flake, in clusters all around, or have the shapes totally cascade from the top down (or bottom up), leaving role of the cake untouched. Withal you exercise information technology, starting time by going around the cake with one color and type of tip, randomly making shapes and leaving space effectually. Then grab the next color and tip and start filling it in. It might look a piddling strange at the kickoff, but don't fret. But keep building until in that location's no space between the piped shapes, and I promise it will look absurd! Mix up the size and formations of the shapes you pipage. If you're trying to go information technology perfect, information technology may be easy to notice a fault—but if you plan on being crazy and random from the offset, errors will exist harder to spot.
Erin McDowell is a blistering aficionado, writer, stylist, and Test Kitchen Manager at Food52. She is currently writing a cookbook. You can larn more well-nigh her here.
Do y'all have whatever simple ways y'all similar to decorate cakes for special occasions? Add them to our list past leaving them in the comments below!
How To Decorate Wedding Cake,
Source: https://food52.com/blog/17190-5-easy-wedding-cake-decorations-you-can-do-yourself
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