A couple of weekends ago I had a morning with my friend decorating cakes - bliss! We had already been on a Cath Kidston inspired course with the company Cake Your Day, so this time we chose the vintage one. I was able to take in more of the tips than just worrying about how I was going to make them. So here are the top 10 tips that I learnt from the course for any budding cake decorators out there.

1. So your cupcakes are all the same size, use an icecream scoop to measure out the mixture into your cake case

2. If you want to make decorations like bows and flowers you need to make the icing dry hard. You therefore need to prepare it the day before with CMC. you need to add 1/4 teaspoon of CMC to 100g of ready coloured icing. You knead it in and then leave it overnight. You then knead again until it has a chewing gum texture and it is ready to use.

3. If you have any left over prepared icing you can make up decorations and keep them. Just put them in a cardboard box rather than a plastic one to stop them sweating.

4. Piping buttercream is much easier with large piping bags.

5. Using a Wilton 2D nozzle you can make a rose if you start in the middle and work out. If you start at the outside and work in, it is a nice swirl.

7. Use a small amount of Trex on your icing to stop them sticking to silicon moulds.

8. For a cheats way of making a lace effect use a sugar veil mat to make an imprint on the icing. Then brush with a mixture of superwhite and rejuvantor fluid.

9. Be careful with edible glitter. A little bit goes a long long way! I found this out myself. Also use it on the decorations before you put them on the buttercream.

10. Use sugar beads with edible glue for an easy way of adding beading.


Have you got any other good tips to add?