Cake decorating help???!!!?!
Answers: AAUGH!!! I am baking a carrot cake (2 9in rounds) for my daughters 9th birthday party tomorrow!! I am HORRIBLE at decorating...I'm pathetic when it comes to icing and being creative!! PLEASE help me with any cool ideas!! My daughter is NOT a girly girl (asked for a skateboard), loves animals and pirates. Any suggestions would be awesome!! Thanks!!!
I agree with answer number one. If you aren't any good at decorating, stick to something simple.
Ice the cake with a simple fluffy cream cheese frosting (Traditional icing for a carrot cake) then decorate with pre-made decorations. You can buy little tiny skate boards at Target, ya know!! I saw them there yesterday. I think they might actually be key-chains. Not sure. But I think they were about a dollar. I would get several of those little skateboards and I would get the pre-made candy cake decorating letters to spell out your message..."Happy Birthday Missy!" or whatever. You can get those in the baking section. And they are cheap. No need to try icing on the lettering yourself! Add your candles, and VIOLA!! A birthday cake any skate-boardin'-9-year-old-non-girly-girl will LOVE!!
Ice cream on the side with a few orange colored sprinkles to match the cake, and you are SET, Mom!!
Good luck and Happy Birthday to your daughter!!
The easiest is to make the icing fluffy and all drifty on top. Just swirl the knife in the icing to make a fun pattern.
If you want more than that, smooth the icing w/ a hot metal spatula (just dip it in very hot water) and draw it smooth across the cake, then put your colored icing in stripes, and drag across the stripe w/ a toothpick to make a patter (don't do a circle or it will look like a spiderweb).
Place a few small safe toys on the edge of the cake to make an off-center design, or animal shaped candles, etc.
You can buy a smoother that you hold on the side of the cake, and then turn the cake to make a pattern - any craft store should have them, even Target has a $10 cake decorating kit.
Some decorating tips for frosting the cake, after you fill the cake stick it in the freezer until it is firm have extra icing and crumcoat it with the frosting on the top and sides. This keeps the crumbs out of your final frosting and makes it smoother and more appealing looking. Freeze again and do the final frosting. Have a long handled spatula. Not the rubber ones but one where the blade is of uniform thickness for it's whole length. Hold the blade straight up and down from the top of the cake to the bottom. The only angle should be facing the direction that you are frosting in so that a small amount of frosting is being pushed forward as you frost. Use ribbon instead of piping borders quick and a huge variety of colors and style avaliable. Toys are a great idea for cake decorating. Those mini skate boards were all the rage a few years ago add some of those on top of the cake Buy an animal jungle set with some palm trees, graham crumbs to look like sand and add some blue frosting for water. You coulddo something similar with pirates. They don't have to be the expensive ones. (try the dollar store... )You could spell her name out in candy and add those giant long candles and some colorful candy or sprinkles. Use larger candies for the bottom border.