With the economy being so bad right now many people are making budget cut backs. Even though we may have less money it doesn’t mean that our kids stop having birthdays or that we stop having anniversaries. It just means that we have to be more creative. Have you ever looked at a cake that you’ve spent good money on from the bakery and wondered if you could do it at home cheaper? Now, I’m not saying that everyone can be a 5 star pastry chef over night, but there are some basic design tips that can help you create a one of a kind birthday cake that your child will love and remember forever because you made it yourself!
- Decide on a theme, whether it is an anniversary cake or a birthday cake you need to decide on a theme. Does the couple like to ski? Maybe you can incorporate that into the cake. Does your child love dogs? That could be the theme of an easy and wonderful cake.
- Determine how many people you need to serve. If you are having 100 people over for an 80th birthday party you don’t want to make a single two layer 8-inch cake.
- Once you decide how many people your cake needs to serve go online and check out cake serving charts to see what size cake you need to make.
- Don’t want to invest in a bunch of cake pans that you may or may not use again? Rent them. Go online or to your phone book and look up cake supply stores and see if they rent pans. Many will rent character pans for a child’s cake or big round pans for any other type of cake and usually it will only cost a few dollars a day.
- The same serving chart should list how many cups of batter a specific pan requires. A box cake mix yields 5 ½-7 cups of batter depending on brand. If you want to make the cake from scratch look at online cake resources to find cake recipes that work well for stacked cakes.
- Now that you have your cakes baked and cooled to room temperature you need to level them. To level a cake you need to take a long knife and cut off the rounded hump that a cake gets on top. If you are unsure about doing this free hand you can use toothpicks all around to guide the knife.
- The next step is frosting. There are many types of frosting. Butter cream is a common and delicious choice. There are many recipes for butter cream available, just make sure that it crusts (has a hard finish when it dries).
- Crumb coat the cakes individually. A crumb coat is a very thin layer of frosting spread over the cake to seal in any loose crumbs. Using an offset spatula will make this job a lot easier. If possible refrigerate the cakes for 10-15 minutes to allow the crumb coat to set.
- Once the crumb coat is set add the final layer of frosting. Be generous at first, it’s easier to take frosting off than to put it on. Make the top and sides of the cake as smooth as possible. Sometimes an offset spatula dipped in hot water and then dried off will help in the smoothing process.
- Butter cream flowers can be purchased at many bakery supply stores. Flowers or any items put on the cake will look better in odd numbers.
- Using a star tip in a piping bag filled with a coordinating color of icing create a border around the top and bottom edge of the cake, if that is appropriate for the style of cake you are making. You should practice making individual stars on waxed paper before you apply them to the cake. A size 16 or 18 star tip is most commonly used in this application.
- If you’re making a tiered cake you will need to make sure that the bottom tier is at least 4 inches larger than the next tier so that there will be an even 2 inches all the way around the layer.
- Make sure that you create enough support for the tier by inserting dowels in the bottom tier under where the next tier will be resting. Traditionally bakers will use one dowel for every inch of the layer being stacked. For example, if I were going to place an 8-inch cake tier onto a 12-inch cake I would want 8 dowels in the bottom layer under where the tier will rest. However, with smaller layers you can get buy using fewer. Each stacked layer needs to be resting on a cardboard round the same size as the layer.
- Keep it simple. You are better off with a simple design over one that is too busy.
- Most importantly, have fun. Remember that we are often our own worst critics.
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