Making a decorated Cake
Follow the pictures below for a step by step. First we remove the baked layers of cake from their pan, we cut a bit on the top to make it a bit more even. In the cake below we have 2 levels, so we cut from the top of both pieces of cake before we began. Se on picture 3 how we leveled our Genoise cake.
The leveled side is then turned to the bottom as the bottom is very flat and helps to balance the levels better. Next we surround the border with our buttercream (4 & 5) and fill the center with the desired filling, in our case a Raspberry Jelly. The second level is then placed with the bottom up again. The leveled side is down and the irregularities are accommodated by the frosting on the side and filling in the middle.
The cake is setup on a turntable and with our scraper we start to level the sides until it is smooth, don't carve in too much, the whole cake needs to remain covered (pic 10). We then use an offset spatula to smooth the top. By heating up a little the spatula (with a blowtorch or very quickly on the stove flame) we can get an even smoother finish (pic12).
The possibilities for piping and piping tips are endless, here we did a classic pattern with some flowers and shells. Piping tips are not expensive but it is easy to loose track and have too many, it is also a good idea to have your tips marked (on the outside) with a permanent marker, they go missing so easily.
To finish we made a bit of chocolate Ganache and piped a beautiful Happy Birthday on the top. Hope you like it. Questions, comments ? Send us your message, we would love to hear from you.