How to Decorate a Cake

Randi Goldman: Hi, I am Randi. Today we are going to make a Chocolate Cake. Now we are going to put the final decorations on our cake. We have already put our crumb coat and our final coat using our cake decorating comb on the sides and smoothing out the top. I have in my pastry bag already to go tip number 21 it's a simple star tip, we are going to make a star border on the top and the bottom and then a simple floral spray. Now always want to make sure that you have planned your design out in your mind. So you know where you want to put the message and the design. I always like to put my borders on first, so I know how much room I have to work with. Again just like the spatula and icing our cake, I want to make sure that the tip and the bag is right in front of us so we can see what we are doing. If we are using the bag over here we can't watch our hands. Make sure the tip is always clean, we are holding it out at a 45 degree angle. We are letting the tip and the icing do all the work. Gently squeezing out a little bit of icing, we want to see the little tails at the back end of the shelf border. I like to use the same color for my icing and my borders. You can also put nuts around the side if you want. So the next thing we are going to do is show how to make a Rose. Take our flower nail, our pink icing is already in the bag with a tip number 104, we are going to make a small base with the icing, clean off the tip and then we make our petals. We are doing three rows of petals. Because I am using the same butter cream icing, if it gets soft we can put it in refrigerator to firm up and I can have the flowers already to go like I do here. We step this aside, one of the little tricks, we can take our spatula, set it aside on top of a bowl. So now I am going to take and write our message, we are going to say Happy Birthday. I would like to print. Don't forget to dot your eyes and cross your tees.

Next we are going to do floral spray. I am using the green icing with the tip number 2. Okay and you want to make sure you have planned your design in your mind. So you know where you want your spray in your flowers to go. I am making small little stems to put my rose buds, and a mound of icing in the middle for the flowers. So next we are going to take our 104 tip with the pink icing, make a rose bud. Always clean off the tip. Don't forget your sepals and calyxes with your green icing. Then next we are going to add our roses and then our leaves. And then we have our completed decorated cake. So I pick out my three favorite flowers, we are going to put them at an angle to the mound of icing. These flowers have been sitting in the cooler, so nice and firm. And then I am going to take a tip number 352 and make our leaves. And there we have our completed, decorated Chocolate Cake with Ganache filling.