cake frosting tips

Cake Ideas – Crumbs and Glazing

A Glazed Cake

Here are a couple of cake ideas to use before applying the frosting for your decorated cake. Make sure to brush off any loose crumbs. If you don't do this, you will end up with the crumbs showing in the icing. If this happens with a white cake, it's not as bad though as with chocolate cake when it can make it look like you've used a chocolate chip frosting 😉 A damp paper towel can be used to pick up any loose crumbs from the cake and from the board or plate it is setting on. There generally aren't too many crumbs to deal with if it's a cake that has just been turned out of the pan, but if you have to do any cutting or trimming of the cake, that can be a different story. So if you are wanting to seal those crumbs, it is best to glaze it. To glaze the cake, just take some of the same icing you will be using on the cake and thin it down with a little water to a very easily spreadable consistency. It will not matter if crumbs get mixed in during this step because they will be covered up when applying the frosting. It is best to let the glaze do some drying at this point to let it start to crust over a little. There are many steps to take in getting your desired finished product when decorating cakes. Eliminating and covering up crumbs are just a couple of cake ideas that will help you produce your masterpiece.

Be sure to sign up for our FREE eBook “Cake Decorating: How To Go From Beginner To Expert” by subscribing to our FREE Monthly Bulletin at the top of the right side about decorating cakes, and to receive contest notifications, recipes, and cake ideas.

Cake Ideas – Colored Frosting Tips

Decorating cakes can be done to make them look elegant or simple. One thing that adds to the look is the colors that are used. Sometimes just using white icing to trim out the edges and borders on the cake makes it have that finished look, but does not distract from the main design or decoration. If you do use colored icing, here a few ideas that may help. It is important to remember that the longer the icing sets, the darker the shade it will be. As the air dries it, it will darken somewhat. This little hint needs to be remembered when you run out of a color and need to mix up more. Leave it just a minute shade lighter and it will darken and hopefully match what you had before. One other thing we found out the hard way, that we will mention here since talking about colors changing, is that if you are going to transport cakes in a vehicle for any distance, make sure to cover it up if at all possible. We are not sure if the sun affects all colors, but we do know from experience that purple frosting will turn blue. When transporting our son's wedding cake 75 miles away, the sheet cakes were in the cake boxes with the clear plastic insert in the lid. One of their wedding colors was purple, so we put purple rose buds on the cakes. Where the sun shown in the vehicle, it faded the pretty purple rose buds to a cornflower blue. Where the edges were covered by the cardboard of the box lid, it was fine, but where the plastic was it was no longer their wedding colors. So those cakes got served last!

This sheet cake was one that the flowers changed from lavendar and purple to shades of blue. And the big one we were really nervous about transporting 75 miles. 🙁 We do keep on hand the basic colors of the Wilton tubes of colored icing. All you have to do is take off the cap and put on a tip and coupler ring designed for that purpose. We have found that if we set the tube in a cup of hot tap water for several minutes that it will make it much easier to squeeze out of the tube. These tubes can be a great time saver if you are needing a small amount of certain basic colors. Another thing we use occasionally are the cans of food color spray. Both Wilton and Betty Crocker carry these. If you frost the cake with white icing, you can use it like spray paint to change the color of the icing. We generally use it as just a light mist – just enough to give it a little color. This can be a great time saver and it comes in the basic colors of Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Violet, Pink, Black, and Orange. Colors can make the cake. As with painting a room or a house, it says something about the person the cake is for. Have fun with the colors, and people will be impressed with your decorated cakes.

Cake Ideas – Coloring the Icing

In our earlier post of "Cake Ideas – the First Steps," we talked about the frosting. Decorator icing can be mixed up several days in advance and stored in the refrigerator. It will also keep for several weeks in the fridge, as there is nothing in it to spoil. It's best to get it out the night before using it so that it is room temperature. If you have not mixed up your colors before baking the cake, now is the time to do so in order to begin decorating cakes. We personally use the paste food colors that are put out by Wilton. They have many colors available. When we first started decorating cakes, all they had were the basic colors of blue, green, red, and yellow, with maybe a few popularly requested ones. So sometimes it was very hard to get the desired color with just trial and error. Now they carry variations of the basic colors, including: Ivory, Daffodil Yellow, Buttercup Yellow, Golden Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Copper, Creamy Peach, Rose Petal Pink, Terra Cotta, Orange, Red-Red, Christmas Red, Red (no taste), Rose, Burgundy, Pink, Violet, Delphinium Blue, Cornflower Blue, Royal Blue, Sky Blue, Teal, Kelly Green, Leaf Green, Moss Green, Juniper Green, Brown, and Black. Wow – no more trial and error on those colors! We did however, run across a chart that gave some colors and what it takes to make those. We want to share this for others who have struggled to come up with a certain color.

Aqua – 5 parts Sky Blue, 1 part Leaf Green
Avocado – use Moss Green
Chocolate Brown – add a small amount of Golden Yellow to Brown icing
Dark Brown – add Brown; with buttercream icings, you get best results when cocoa or melted chocolate pieces are used before adding Brown color.
Chartreuse – 9 parts Lemon Yellow, 1 part Leaf Green
Flesh – Add just an extermely small touch of Copper to White icing
Antique Gold – Add just an extrememly small touch of Leaf Green to Lemon Yellow icing
Warm Gold – Add just a touch of Red-Red to Lemon Yellow icing
Gray – Add just a touch of Black to White icing
Lavendar – 6 parts Pink, 1 part Violet
Navy Blue – Mix in a large amount of Royal Blue until a deep blue is achieved, then add a very small amount of Black
Peach – Mix equal parts of Lemon Yellow and Pink
Raspberry – Mix equal parts of Pink and Red-Red; use enough color to get a rather deep effect
Red – Add Pink until a hot pink color is reached; then add Christmas Red or Red-Red until desired shade is achieved
Rust – Mix enough Orange until a bright orange is obtained; add Christmas Red until color is dark; then add a very small amount of Royal Blue
Salmon – Add an extremely small touch of Orange to Pink icing
Silver – It is not advised to simulate silver color in icing; instead, add silver leaves or other silver accessories to the cake
Turquoise – 9 1/2 parts Sky Blue, 1/2 part Lemon Yellow

You will obtain the best results when coloring frosting if you use the white or original Crisco for your icing. We like the butter flavored Crisco because of the flavor, but it tints the icing a yellow shade which can in turn alter what you are trying to achieve in your color. So instead, we use a small amount of butter flavoring when we mix up the icing. This way the frosting stays white, but we get the wonderful butter flavor. Remember that color will put the finishing touch to your decorated cakes.

Cake Ideas – The First Steps

When getting ready to make and decorate a cake, there is some thought and planning that needs to go in to it first. What if you get in the middle of it and realize you don't have all the ingredients? What if you have something else planned the day the cake is needed? Below is a list of things we check, not only with the customer, but mostly with ourselves.

One of the first things we do is to check our calendar to make sure of the day the cake is needed. If we have something else going on that day, we can make it the day ahead and put it in the refrigerator. Much less stress doing this than doing the cake on a busy day with other plans. Make sure to double check the date with the customer. We once made a cake a week early because she said she needed it on Wednesday. Problem was, she needed it the NEXT Wednesday. Thank goodness for freezers!
Next, we check to make sure we have all our ingredients for cake and frosting that we need: cake mix, eggs, oil, powdered sugar, shortening, and vanilla, almond and butter flavorings. We live about 90 miles from a Wal-Mart store, so we usually stock up on the listed ingredients in order to have them on hand when needed.
We mix up the frosting at least a day in advance, if not four or five days. We mix up 4 batches of decorator icing at a time. It's just enough to fill a 5 quart ice cream bucket. We always seal the top of the frosting with a sheet of plastic wrap pressed down on top of the frosting to keep out any air that will cause the frosting to dry out, and then put the lid on the bucket and store it in the refrigerator. Having this step out of the way will let you concentrate on just baking and decorating cakes without having to stop and mix up frosting.
The night before making the cake, we get the frosting out of the refrigerator so it will be room temperature and easier to spread. We also get our pans out and get them ready. If we are using a 9 x 13 or 12 x 18 pan, (also any square or round pans) we line the pans with waxed paper. This saves having to grease and flour the pans. Once you turn the cake out of the pans, the waxed paper just peals off and is ready to frost. Or if you have to bake them the night before, just leave the waxed paper on till the next morning and it keeps the moisture sealed in.
The night before you can also mix up any colors of frosting you will need. This will eliminate having to do it when you are in the middle of decorating cakes. We keep little yogurt containers with lids (some brands just have the foil top now) on hand just for mixing and storing colored frosting. We also use plastic wrap to seal over this frosting so it doesn't dry out.
Line out what you will be using for decorations to make your cake a masterpiece. We use artificial flowers to add color and character to my cakes. We know that is cheating, but who needs all that extra sugar from eating those frosting flowers anyway? You can get cheap artificial flowers at the discount stores and just clip off the flower with just enough stem to stick down in the cake to make it pretty. Doing this the night before eliminates hunting them down when you're trying to put the finishing touches on the cake.
Here is a checklist for a wedding cake planner you can download and print off: CLICK HERE .

Hopefully, there are some hints here that will help you with getting ready for making your masterpiece. These six steps are just some cake ideas we use when we're in the "preparation mode" to get ready to decorate cakes.