5 Tips For Easy Cake Making

5 Tips for Cake Making made Easy

At one point in my life I wanted to do professional cake decorating and I did pretty good and got a few customers.  I decided it wasn’t the job for me because it was to stressful.  Well since then I’ve done some cakes here and there for family and myself on occasion.  And if I wasn’t already deep in another career at the moment I would more than likely get back into cake decorating full time.  Anyway I figured out a few tricks that have made it so much easier that I decided to share for any new cake decorators that want to simplify things.

Lower your oven temp when baking your cake

Most cakes call for baking temp of 350 degrees F.  If you turn it down to 325 and let it bake a bit longer then your cakes will raise flat instead of getting that annoying bump in the middle that you end up cutting out to level the cake.  Note: some cake recipes ended up taking a long time to cook at the lower temp but I waited it out and it was almost perfectly flat.

Make it cost effective

There is so many rules out there for what you need to use in cake decorating however some of these items can be expensive. I am always looking for ways to cut costs. Things like dowels, I’ve gotten into the habit of getting pvc pipe from a local hardware store. I use an electric saw to cut it to size and wash it really well. So much cheaper! When I first started trying to decorate some cakes it could cost me 60 bucks for a tiered cake to be completely decorated if I bought normal items or pre-made fondants and such.  I knew right then I had to find something else that would work.  Check out a homemade cake recipe that is to die for.

FREEZE YOUR CAKE!!!

This has saved me in many different ways.  I save hours day of or day before getting cakes made and waiting for them to cool.  It also fixes the problem I’ve had in the past of moist cake from needing a ridiculously crazy crumb coat layer of frosting to stop the cake from crumbling.  I make the cake a week in advance, cut it to size, wrap it up and put in the freezer.  I usually pull it out the day before and decorate it frozen then put it back in the fridge to slowly defrost over the next 24 hours.

Freeze Your Frosting

You can also make your frosting week before and freeze it as well.  Just give yourself at least 12 hours of defrosting room temperature.  Less to do last minute the better.

Easiest Fondant is Marshmellow Fondant

Make marsh mellow fondant and let it set!  The easiest and in my opinion the best tasting fondant is marsh mellow fondant.  However, if you don’t give it time to set when you try to roll it out it will be sticky and difficult to handle.  So make it the day before (giving you yet another thing you don’t have to do last minute) and put it in a zip lock bag and set it on the counter overnight.

Now when you start your cake everything is ready and you just need to frost your frozen cakes, roll out your already made fondant, apply and stick it back in the fridge until the event.

Here are some cakes that I’ve made to back up my work.