Just like having the right ingredients will ensure you get a great tasting cake, having the right tools helps to ensure you end up with a great looking cake too! There are so many fun tools and gadgets you could spend your money on, but you don’t need all of them to get started.

Let’s first focus on the “essentials” and then, we’ll take a look at the “nice to haves.”

Essential Cake Decorating Tools

Turntable

To kick off our list of essential cake decorating tools is the turntable. This was one of the biggest game changers for my decorating. There are a lot of turntables on the market, so depending on how much you’re decorating cakes will help determine what type of turntable you should get. If you’re only making a birthday cake every once in a while, I think you’ll be fine with something less expensive like THIS Ateco plastic one. It’s the same one we use in my cake classes at Orson Gygi.  For the annual birthday cakes, this is my favorite go to!

If you’re making cakes pretty frequently, I think it’s worth investing in a cast iron turntable like THIS Ateco one. It’s two separate pieces, so the top spins really nicely. The base is a heavy cast iron, so it doesn’t move around or wobble. I went through a lot of plastic ones the first year or so I started my blog and then finally decided I needed something more durable. I’ve had this Ateco one for about four years now. If it ever starts to stick, I just grease it with WD40. Check out my post HERE for tips on how to move your cake from the turntable to a cake stand.

Cake Scraper

Another tool I think is a must-have is a cake scraper. A cake scraper is a tool I use to smooth out the sides of my cake. Over the years I’ve tried a lot of variations (i.e. heights, materials, thicknesses, etc.) of scrapers. They are not all created equal. For many years I settled on, and truly liked, THIS Ateco one. What I found to be the superior qualities of this scraper were the weight and thickness. However, it wasn’t quite tall enough for my bigger cakes and I didn’t like that it had textures on all sides. So last year I decided to design my own scrapers, in addition to spatulas, acrylic disks, and a few other things we’ll talk about later. As I designed my scraper set, I made sure it was just as thin and light as the Ateco one I had liked for so many years. I also added a handle and separated the textures so you have three scrapers in the set.  It’s a must-have for occasions like birthday cakes, wedding cakes, and more!

One of my favorite things to hear from customers that have bought and used the tools is how surprised they are with how lightweight they are and the major difference the tools made in their decorating!

How to Use the Cake Scraper

Check out these videos for extra tips on how to hold and use the cake scraper:

• Instagram Reel Tutorial
• Instagram LIVE
• Smooth Sides
• Assembly Demo

Icing Spatulas

To go along with the scrapers and turntable, I think everyone needs a good set of icing spatulas – one straight and one offset. I like to use the straight spatula for the sides of the cake and the offset spatula for the center and top of the cake. As I created my own set of spatulas, getting the right blade length was super important to me. Some blades are too short, which makes it difficult to frost the sides of your cakes. And then some blades are too long, which makes it difficult to control the spatula.

Acrylic Disk

Another tool that will change your world is the acrylic disk. You’ll use the disk to help you get sharp edges and straight sides. I’ve created a full tutorial on how to use the disks HERE.

Check out THIS tutorial on IG

or THIS one

and THIS one

Quality Cake Pans

One more essential to invest in to step up your cake game are quality cake pans. I recommend Fat Daddio Pans. Fat Daddio specializes in anodizing their pans – which basically means they’ve created a pan that evenly distributes heat really, really well. What does that mean for you? It means you’ll get a more even bake in your cakes.

The Nice to Haves

Ok, so now that you have the essential cake-decorating tools, let’s talk about the “nice to haves.” These are items that you can live without, but are definitely nice to have!

Cake Leveler

A cake leveler does exactly what the name implies – levels cakes. Each side has numbers on it so that you can line up the wire to create a perfectly leveled cake. I have THIS one by Wilton. 

Cake Lifter

Ever wonder how I move my cakes from the turntable to the pretty cake stand? It’s as simple as one tool! The cake lifter. I also designed my own version of this tool to match the collection. I love the color so much, this actually sits on my counter against the wall behind my trivet near the stove. 

This cake lifter is actually quite heavy and will support your cakes nicely. Just make sure you don’t rely solely on the lifter. You’ll still need to place your hand under the lifter a bit to support the cake. Stacking birthday cakes will become a piece of cake

Cake Boards

I’d also suggest getting cake boards, something you can find at your local craft store like Joann’s, Michaels or Hobby Lobby. They come pre-cut and having one under your cake will help you easily slide your cake lifter under the cake to move it. 

Parchment Paper

I think it’s also really nice to have parchment paper. Using a combination of cooking spray and parchment paper will help your cakes come out of the cake pans really nicely. You can get pre-cut parchment rounds like THESE or trace your pans on parchment paper and cut out each circle. Whichever way you decide to go, just make sure you’re spraying your pans with non-stick spray, placing parchment rounds at the bottom of the pan, and spraying the parchment with non-stick spray as well.

Silicone Piping Bag

A reusable piping bag will come in handy when you’re ready to do some piping designs on the top or sides of your cake. We just had to make one in pink! (Check out my post HERE for the best way to fill it with your buttercream!)

Drip Bottle

And last but not least, the drip bottle! I love this little guy for applying my chocolate drips.

Cake Without the Tools

While all these tools are fun to have and certainly will make decorating your cake a bit easier, not having them shouldn’t be the reason you don’t make a cake from scratch.

You can make all the same delicious cakes in 9″x13″ pans. I recorded an IGTV that you can watch HERE.

Or, if you do a layered birthday cake, you can even decorate it on a plate with a knife like you would with a turntable and spatula.

More Posts You’ll Enjoy

• Everything You Need to Know About Buttercream Frosting 
• Best Cakes for Beginner Bakers
• The Best Way to Fill a Cake with Raspberry Filling
• A Look Inside the Heart of Our Home: Part 2
• How to Use the Cake Safe

The post My Favorite and Most Essential Cake Decorating Tools first appeared on Cake by Courtney.

The post My Favorite and Most Essential Cake Decorating Tools appeared first on Cake by Courtney.

I’ve had my KitchenAid for over 13 years and it’s still running strong. It’s been worth every penny! Below,  I have four great deals on the KitchenAid mixer. My favorite is the Artisan 5 qt. Tilt-Head Mixer. You’ll also see my must-have KitchenAid mixer accessory!

Tip Tuesday: Best KitchenAid Black Friday Deals

Sam’s Club: KitchenAid Professional 5-qt. Heavy Duty Stand Mixer (assorted colors)

Best Buy: KitchenAid Professional 500 Series Stand Mixer (assorted colors)

Macy’s: KitchenAid Artisan 5 qt. Stand Mixer (My Pick!)

JCPenny KitchenAid Artisan 5 qt. Stand Mixer

The One KitchenAid Accessory I Can’t Live Without

I hope you guys find some great steals from this Tip Tuesday: Best KitchenAid Black Friday Deals! Follow me on Instagram @cakebycourtney for more tips and recipes on all things cake!

More Posts You’ll Love

• Black and White Cake
• Black Chocolate Cake
• Tip Tuesday: How To Fill Your Piping Bag
• Best Thanksgiving Cakes
• Fruit Filled Cakes You’ll Love

The post Tip Tuesday: Best KitchenAid Black Friday Deals first appeared on Cake by Courtney.

The post Tip Tuesday: Best KitchenAid Black Friday Deals appeared first on Cake by Courtney.

The New Wilton

If you’ve been in your local craft store, Wal-Mart, or even browsing Amazon for cake decorating tools, you may have noticed some changes to the Wilton brand. From first glance, you’ll see they said goodbye to purple and hello to yellow – but that’s not the only change they’ve made. Wilton has really stepped up their game when it comes to customer experience. Their website and social media accounts are full of new and on-trend baking inspiration, with helpful tutorials and how-to’s for so many creative and easy baking projects.

Bake the Happiest Birthday Ever

One of the new changes I noticed on Wilton.com are the categorized pages they put together for each of your baking needs (i.e. Occasion, Wedding, Baby Shower, Graduation, Birthday, Cupcakes, Piping Techniques, Cake Ideas, etc.). It’s kinda like a one-stop shop. You can buy your products and get ideas for your next dessert. Win, win!

To celebrate the launch of their new “Birthday” page, Wilton asked if I’d share one of my favorite birthday cakes.

Of course! It was my son’s first birthday that sparked my love affair with cake in the first place! While my decorating skills were a bit scary back then, over the years I’ve been able to teach myself (through a lot of trial and error) how make a the perfect birthday cake – one that not only looks fabulous, but also (and more importantly) tastes amazing! And today, I’m going to show you how you can make the perfect birthday cake too.

The Perfect Birthday Cake

To make my perfect birthday cake, I’m using my popular Biscoff Cake. This cake is one of my personal favorites and one I constantly get rave reviews about from you! I’m so thrilled to know you love it as much as I do.

Get Ready

As you get ready to stack and decorate your cake, there’s a couple cake prep items to check off your to-do list:

1. Tape a cardboard cake board (the size of your cake) to a cardboard cake board that’s slightly larger than your cake. This gives you a board to hold on to while moving your cake in and out of the freezer during some of my steps to follow.
2. If your cake layers don’t bake evenly, use a cake leveler to level the top of the cake. We’re looking to stack an even cake, not the leaning tower of Pisa

The Perfect Buttercream

Before we stack and frost the cake, let’s make sure you’re also making the perfect buttercream. With all of my recipes, I also suggest the following:

1. Use semi-cold butter – which I cut into cubes and beat on medium speed in my stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment to soften. You do not want to start with butter that is too soft.
2.  Sift your powdered sugar – which will make your buttercream much silkier and smoother when you frost your cake.
3. Add a little heavy whipping cream – which will help to lighten the texture of the frosting IF you turn the mixer to medium-high and let the frosting beat for about 5 minutes.
4. Mix the frosting by hand with a wooden spoon – which will help to push out the air pockets created by the electric mixer.

Don’t Skip the Crumb Coat

After you’ve stacked your cake layers and filled each layer with frosting, apply a small layer of frosting around the entire cake to lock in the crumbs. At this point, you’ll want to move your cake into the freezer for about 10 to 15 minutes to set the crumb coat. This ensures that no crumbs will get in your final coat of frosting.

Perfecting the Final Coat of Frosting

Once your crumb coat is set, you’re ready to put your final coat of frosting on the cake. To get the perfect coat of frosting, I actually put another cake board on top of my cake (right on the cold crumb coat) to help me achieve straight sides and a sharp edge. If you’re new to my site and have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ve included a video below to give you a visual of what I’m talking about You’ll find additional tutorials on my YouTube page: Cake by Courtney.

With the board on top of the cake, apply frosting around the top cake board to keep it in place. Then, frost the rest of the cake, making sure to cover the bottom cake board (the one the size of your cake).

Using a cake scraper, I prefer a metal one, you’ll then want to smooth out the frosting to see where you need to fill in and even out the sides with more frosting. You end up repeating these steps a few times until your sides are even.

Cake Scraper Tips

When it comes to using a cake scraper, I have a few tips that I think will make using the scraper a lot easier:

1. Use a light touch – if you press too hard against your cake, you’ll run the risk of pulling cake up with the frosting. You’ll also get a lot of “holes” in your frosting. We also don’t want to take away a ton of frosting, we’re just trying to smooth it out at this point.
2. Watch the angle of your cake scraper – I always start with the cake scraper and my free hand on the opposite side of the turn table from where I’m standing. The goal is to bring your hands together in one motion so you don’t have a bunch of stop lines from the scraper. I also hold the cake scraper at about a 45 degree angle as it rotates the cake. Keeping the scraper close to the cake, rather than perpendicular to the cake, will also help your final coat of frosting get much smoother. You may need to watch this in my videos a few times, and it takes some practice, but once you get it, it’s a game changer!
3. After you’re done with the sides of the cake, freeze the cake for another 20 to 30 minutes to set the frosting. Once chilled, you can cut the cake board off the top of the cake by running a sharp knife under the board to create a sharp edge. From there, just fill in the top with buttercream.

My Favorite Wilton Decorating Tools

After you’ve added frosting to the top of the cake, it’s time to get to the fun – decorating! In my mind, the perfect birthday cake has a bright colorful drip, silky buttercream swirls, vibrant sprinkles, and of course, candles!

For the Drip

I love using Wilton’s Candy Melts because they come in so many fun colors. I often hear from readers that tinting a white chocolate drip gets a little tricky. With any drip, you always want to add some heavy cream to the chocolate or candy melts. Here’s a couple rules of thumb when it comes to cream and chocolate ratio:

1. For semi sweet or dark chocolate, use one cup heavy whipping cream with one cup chocolate chips
2. For white chocolate or any kind of candy melts, you only need ¼ cup cream with one cup of chips.

It’s also important to remember that the drip will thicken a little as it sits out and cools. If your drip starts to thicken, reheat it in the microwave for 10 seconds and add a couple teaspoons of cream.

For the Buttercream Swirls

When it comes to piping on my cakes, my favorite piping tip is the Wilton 1M tip. I use it on nearly all of my cakes. It’s just so cute! I also love using the Wilton disposable piping bags because it’s an easy cleanup. Simple as that!

A quick note about piping these swirls, try to keep your piping bag as straight as possible. If you slant the piping bag as you make the swirls, they’ll definitely come out slanted.

Finishing Touches

For a couple finishing touches, and to really make this cake feel worthy of a birthday celebration, I added these darling “Happy Birthday” candles and a handful of some Sweetapolita sprinkles. The Wilton candles actually inspired the color scheme of the cake. They also come in pink or blue, if you’re looking for a more monochromatic look.

Cutting into any cake is by far my favorite part. Take a look at these gorgeous Biscoff Cake layers with Biscoff cookie butter filling and white chocolate frosting.

Make sure to check out the full recipe HERE.

A special thanks to Wilton for providing the candy melts, birthday candles, piping bags and piping tip. As always, all the opinions expressed on my site are from yours truly

Enjoy!

Pictures by @trinaharrisphotography

The post How to Make the Perfect Birthday Cake first appeared on Cake by Courtney.

The post How to Make the Perfect Birthday Cake appeared first on Cake by Courtney.

I first learned about acrylic cake disks when searching for reusable cake boards for my cakes. If you’ve watched my videos, you know I have been using (wasting) cardboard cake boards to get sharp edges on the top of my cakes. While searching for a solution to my problem, I came across Cake Safe. Cake Safe is a family-owned company from Rhode Island that specializes in cake transporting and decorating products. They are best known for their innovative cake transporting box, called the Cake Safe. (Check out my post HERE to learn how to use Cake Safe). They also sell acrylic cake disks, scrapers, work boards, and a number of other helpful tools for cake decorating.

Acrylic Cake Disks

I was immediately drawn to their acrylic cake disks, and knew I had to get my hands on some after watching their video tutorials. The disks looked simple enough to use and gave the cakes perfectly sharp edges.

This past weekend I gave the disks a try and recorded the whole experience so you could see first-hand how to use the disks!

Take a look….

What I learned from my first use of the acrylic disks

Overall, I really like the acrylic cake disks and I’ll continue to use them on all my cakes. As you saw in the video, I did have a couple of hiccups on my first try with the disks.

1. In the Cake Safe video, they instruct you to put some frosting between the parchment paper and one of the acrylic disks. When you come to this step, just put about four small scrapes of frosting on the edge of the parchment. If you put too much frosting on the parchment, it will be hard to scrape off the acrylic disks.
2. The other hiccup I encountered was that I lost my crisp, sharp edge when I took the board off while the frosting was still “wet.” To prevent this, I suggest freezing your cake for about 20-30 minutes to set the frosting. As with my cardboard cake method, I found it easier to “cut off” the acrylic disk from the parchment using a sharp knife. This also kept my edges looking clean.
3. If you get a few frosting crumbs after taking the disk off the cake, use the back of an icing spatula to clean up those areas.

Even with those minor issues, I’m really happy with the disks. I think with each use, they’ll be easier to use.

And because I’m so happy with the cake disks by Cake Safe, I want you to have a chance to try them too! Cake Safe is offering a special 10% discount to your order of acrylic cake disks with code “CakebyCourtney.”

CAKE SAFE ACRYLIC CAKE DISKS

More Recipes & Tutorials You’ll Love

• How to Get a Sharp Edge on Your Buttercream Frosted Cake
• Delicious Golden Oreo Cake
• Everything You Need to Know About Buttercream Frosting 
• Raspberry Chocolate Truffle Cake with Chocolate Ganache

The post How to Use Acrylic Cake Disks first appeared on Cake by Courtney.

The post How to Use Acrylic Cake Disks appeared first on Cake by Courtney.

All you need to do is pin one of my recipes from CakebyCourtney.com to your Pinterest page. One pin is one entry. The more you pin, the more entries to this giveaway you’ll get. You’ll also get an extra entry for following me on Pinterest.

Good luck!

Winner will be announced Friday, June 23rd.

The post Amazon Gift Card Giveaway first appeared on Cake by Courtney.

The post Amazon Gift Card Giveaway appeared first on Cake by Courtney.

Baker’s Gift Idea #1

Marble and Wood Cake Stand: every beautiful cake needs something beautiful to stand on! I love how this neutral marble and wood cake stand from Nordstrom will match with any cake you make.

Baker’s Gift Idea #2

Icing Spatula Set: I can’t live without my icing spatulas, both straight and offset. This would be a great stocking stuffer for a new baker.

Baker’s Gift Idea #3

Sweetapolita Bakebook: Rosie was one of my first cake baking inspirations and I still love everything she does. This book is full of fabulous cake and dessert recipes.

Baker’s Gift Idea #4

Ateco Turn Table: I’ve tried just about every turn table on the market and this is my favorite. It spins beautifully and I love the clean, crisp look of the white base. Make sure to get the rubber mat to go on top – it holds your cake board in place.

Baker’s Gift Idea #5

Cake Scraper: Another great stocking stuffer, this cake scraper is my go-to for smoothing out the sides of my cake. It’s also under $3.00, so you really can’t afford not to get it.

Baker’s Gift Idea #6

Copper Measuring Cups: I know everyone has measuring cups, but how cute are these copper ones?! Just a fun gift that most people wouldn’t buy themselves but would love getting.

More Ideas You’ll Love

• Last Minute Stocking Stuffer & Gift Ideas for Bakers
• My Favorite Finds on Brickyard Buffalo
• The Stockplace Dress Collaboration
• Top 6 Essential Baking Tools for Every Level Baker

The post Baker’s Wish List first appeared on Cake by Courtney.

The post Baker’s Wish List appeared first on Cake by Courtney.

This past weekend we celebrated Avery’s 3rd birthday with a “Frozen” themed party. Now, I know for many of you “Frozen” is old news. But, for my 3-year-old, who just saw the movie for the first time early this year, it’s all she can talk (and sing) about. Since then, she’s only talked about a “Frozen” birthday party.

Of course, my number one priority, and the inspiration for the rest of the party, became the cake. I pretty much knew from the get-go that I wanted to do an ombre style buttercream with white chocolate “ice” on top. I took Avery to Bakers C&C in Salt Lake with me and let her pick out the teal beads and sanding sugars, which seemed to really get her excited about the cake. For a week after that she would ask me, “mom, is that my cake?” every time I was working on one. I was so excited to finally show Avery her cake when I was done. And her reaction did not disappoint! “Wow, mom! (with a gasp) Is that my cake? It’s beautiful!”

Frozen-Themed Birthday Party Ideas

More Birthday Cake Ideas You’ll Love

• How to Make a Dog Cake with Buttercream Icing
• Top 5 Favorite Strawberry Birthday Cakes
• 4 Easy and Cute Animal Themed Cakes
• Cotton Candy Cake
• Milk Bar Birthday Cake

The post Avery’s “Frozen” Birthday first appeared on Cake by Courtney.

The post Avery’s “Frozen” Birthday appeared first on Cake by Courtney.