But I’ve always been interested in the beautiful ways a cake can be finished. I love watching baking competitions where cakes are topped with hyperrealistic fondant sculptures, or impressive ribbons of buttercream. The fact that a bit of butter and powdered sugar can morph into a perfect rose seems incomprehensible, but that is the magic of cake decorating.
So when I got the opportunity to attend a cake decorating class in Los Angeles at the Sweet Spot Workshop and learn from Mia Starr — the host of Tastemade’s Baking the Holidays, a competitor on Disney’s Magic Bake-Off, and a popular cake decorating content creator — I jumped at the chance.
For Starr and her Sweet Spot cofounder Susan Gladden, teaching cake decorating allows them to witness the triumphs — and struggles! — that comes with doing something creative. “It’s so cool to see the pride that people have in themselves being able to create something with their hands,” Gladden says, “especially if they struggled at first but became really successful with corrections.”
Here are all the tips Starr shared with me, and what I learned through my own cake decorating experience.
Focus on fundamentals
Before you can focus on the intricacies of a lambeth-style cake, you have to nail down the basics of putting a cake together. “Learning the fundamentals of stacking, assembling, and frosting a cake [with a crumb coat] are really important,” Starr says. Practice smoothing the cake’s edges with an offset spatula and get comfortable with a rotating cake turntable, which you’ll need when you begin piping.
Before you pipe directly onto a cake, you might want to practice on laminated sheets printed with cake designs, or map out the design in a sketch first. “Once you build those fundamental skills and learn some basic techniques, then you have a lot of different skills to put together to create different cake designs,” Starr says. “Learn the rules so then you can break them and be creative.”
Make sure everything stays cold
The cakes for the workshop were already covered in a smooth layer of frosting and ready for a flourish. But if you’re starting from scratch at home, one of the most important things to know about cake decorating is that everything should be cold. “If you rush it and you’re frosting a hot cake, or even a warm cake, then your buttercream is going to get all melty, and you’re not going to be able to have such a smooth finish,” Starr explains. That goes for the initial crumb coat, but also for any additional frosting layer; make sure your crumb coat has time to chill in the fridge before the real decorations can happen. If the icing in your piping bags is too warm, you won’t get any real definition, no matter which frosting tips you use. So the first — and perhaps the most important rule — is to keep everything, cakes and buttercream, cold.
Use the right frosting
If you’ve ever tried decorating anything with whipped cream, you’ll know how important it is to use the right frosting. Whipped cream is unstable and deflates easily, so it doesn’t hold its shape. Buttercream is a more viable option.
When you start to feel confident with making and piping your own buttercream, then you can begin experimenting with different types of frostings. At the workshop, we used American buttercream, which is made from butter and powdered sugar (you can also add extracts to flavor the buttercream). It held the contours of the various star tips well and never loosened or melted, even though we handled it for over an hour. (But again, if you find that your buttercream does start to feel too soft, refer back to rule number one and get it back in the fridge!) “For beginners, use American buttercream,” Starr advises. “Then Swiss meringue buttercream” — which incorporates cooked egg whites and granulated sugar alongside butter — “is the next level up.”
Experiment with angles
My biggest takeaway from the cake decorating course is how important angles are to perfecting detailed shell borders, ruffles, and rosettes. If your piping tip is too perpendicular to the cake, your shells make look too spherical and bulbous. If the angle is too acute, your ruffles may fall flat. Practicing on a flat, laminated sheet is helpful for finding rhythm and figuring out how much pressure to exert when you’re squeezing a piping bag, but it’s also different from the experience of piping onto a three-dimensional cake. It’s important to rotate your wrist as you pipe and find the perfect angle; it almost feels like a lesson in architecture or engineering, but without the potentially devastating consequences of a failed engineering job. If your piping doesn’t look great, you can always scrape the frosting off and try again.
Have confidence
My other main takeaway is the importance of having confidence and committing. If you hesitate when piping, it shows in your work. Instead of smooth and fluid lines, you’ll wind up with something disconnected or shaky. “It’s almost like a dance; it’s so subtle the amount of movements you do with your hands when it comes to piping techniques,” Starr says. “You have to release pressure and keep moving.”
Because the cake decorating class had over 30 students, it was easy for my eyes to wander to other cakes and compare my work. Feeling discouraged, however, is unhelpful in learning. “Yours might not look like your neighbor’s, but that’s okay,” Starr says. “As long as you are consistent with yourself, then you’ll have a nice cake.”
In fact, individuality is important in developing personal style. Starr herself started out crafting watercolor and ombre cakes and loves attempting both modern and minimalist styles. “It’s good to be inspired by others and try and learn new techniques, because that will expand your cake decorating technique toolkit,” she says. “When you’re designing a cake and you want to come up with something original, you have so many different styles and tips and techniques to pull from.”
When in doubt, use sprinkles
If the piping is frustrating or working with oozing frosting is too messy, you can still make a cake look special with other decorations. Flowers are one option; Starr and Gladden offer workshops on floral cake decorating. Frosted cranberries and sugared rosemary are another, and during the holiday season, the pair host a class on how to make both. “I love the style of cake decorating where you get a bunch of different elements and assemble them together, like macarons and fruit,” Starr says. You can also add bows, fancy pearls, modeling chocolate sculptures, and sprinkles. “Sprinkles,” Starr adds, “fix everything.”
Remember, it’s just cake
Let go of the desire for perfection and remember, at the end of the day, it’s just cake — and the whole point of cake is togetherness and enjoying something sweet. “I think about how cute it is that humans celebrate each other’s birthdays or milestones or achievements with cake,” Starr says. “It’s just a really beautiful expression that brings people together.”
Jutharat ‘Poupay’ Pinyodoonyachet is a New York-based photographer.
Drew Aichele is a food stylist and master baker based in New York City.
