Cake Pan Set

While it’s perfectly okay to bake your cakes one layer at a time, it’s much more efficient to have a set of cake pans so you can bake all your layers at once. I always like to make triple layer cakes, so I recommend having at least three of your favorite pan sizes. My go-to size is a 6-inch round pan, but a set of 8-inch round pans are great to have on hand too. And opt for anodized aluminum instead of dark metal – it bakes more evenly! 

Cake Turntable

It’s impossible to get a smooth buttercream finish without a cake turntable. It’s also just all-around easier to fill, stack, and decorate cakes with a turntable even if you’re going for a rustic look. The one thing I recommend is finding a cake turntable with a non-slip pad. This will ensure your cake won’t budge while you’re decorating! 

Icing Smoother

It’s super important to find an icing smoother that you feel totally compatible with. I’ve tried a lot of them over the years, but my all time favorite ended up being this bench scraper by Norpro. I use it 100% of the time! I love that it’s perfectly level, easy to grip, and can be gently heated for a super smooth buttercream finish. 

Icing Spatulas

Icing spatulas are extremely versatile. I use them to apply buttercream to my cakes before smoothing them, create sharp edges, add texture to my cakes, and more. It’s best to have a few sizes on hand for different tasks. 

Cardboard Cake Rounds

Every cake I make is built on top of a cardboard cake round. This makes it much easier to transfer the cake off the turntable and onto a stand or into a box. 

Piping Bags

Sure, you can use a ziploc bag for piping buttercream (I have in a pinch!), but it’s so much more efficient to have piping bags on hand. I like to buy the 16-inch size because it holds enough to pipe a lot of buttercream but can also be trimmed down into smaller bags. 

Piping Tips

If you have zero piping tips in your collection and just want to start with a few, I recommend the two below. They’re both extremely versatile – 1M is great for rosettes and swirl borders, 4B is great for star shapes and swirls borders. 

Cake Leveler

Every picture perfect cake starts with perfectly level layers. Since they don’t always bake up flat, it’s handy to have a cake leveler for cutting off domed or misshapen tops. This will make all of your layers the exact same height as well. 

Food Color Gels

It’s so much fun to incorporate color into your cake decorating! My favorite brand of coloring to use is AmeriColor for a few reasons: they don’t add any weird flavor to your buttercream, they’re super concentrated so it doesn’t take a whole lot of food coloring to achieve the color you want, and they come in every single color you could possibly imagine. While they do have Nifty Fifty and Heavenly Seventy kits that include pretty much every color you could want in your collection, they also make a starter kit (below) that has all the basics. 

Anyone Can Cake: Your Complete Guide to Making & Decorating Perfect Layer Cakes

My book is written with beginners and those wanting to up their cake decorating skills in mind! It’s essentially everything I know about making and decorating layer cakes. The first half covers how to bake the perfect cake layers, create a structurally sound layer cake, and decorate it in all sorts of ways. It includes full guides and troubleshooting tips on ganache drips, coloring buttercream, and adding finishing touches like sprinkles and piping. 

The second half is all recipes you could want to practice everything you learn in the first half of the book. It’s truly an all encompassing handbook that will set you up for success and help grow your skills! 

I put together a little Amazon shop with all of these essential tools in one place. Click the link below to shop them all at once!

I’m cheering you on in your cake making and am here to support you however I can. Once you get your collection of tools going, be sure to check out my Cake Basics series to learn all the fundamentals! That series paired with my book will be a game changer. Happy caking!

The post Essential Cake Decorating Tools for Beginners appeared first on Sugar & Sparrow.

I’ll walk you through the step by step below. First, here’s a quick video tutorial of how I created this gradient rainbow cake, from mixing the colors to applying them:

Disclaimer: this post does contain some affiliate links, meaning I may receive a small commission if you click them and purchase items I’ve recommended. Using these links won’t cost you any extra money, but they do help to keep Sugar & Sparrow up and running. Thank you for your support!

You Will Need:

• A cake that’s been frosted and chilled
• 1.5 batches of vanilla or other light colored buttercream
• Food color gels in rainbow shades. I used colors from The Nifty Fifty Kit (detailed below)
• Plates and spoons for color mixing
• Piping bags
• Scissors
• Ruler

Step 1: Mix Up Your Colors

Divide equal amounts of buttercream across a few plates or in separate mixing bowls. Like I said before, I got a little crazy and mixed up 20 different shades from my Nifty Fifty Kit. The colors I used (in rainbow order) are: Watermelon, Burgundy, Super Red, Soft Pint, Deep Pink, Orange, Peach, Electric Orange, Electric Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Egg Yellow, Electric Green, Leaf Green, Forest Green, Teal, Sky Blue, Navy Blue, Electric Purple, Regal Purple, and Eggplant.

The important thing with these colors is that you have a few different shades of each rainbow color, whether you use the same color in different intensities or more varied colors for each of the seven rainbow hues.

Step 2: Fill Your Piping Bags

Prepare several piping bags (enough for each shade you’ve created) by snipping off a ¼ inch opening off the tip with your scissors, then filling each bag with a different shade. It helps to have disposable piping bags for this step.

Once you’ve got your bags all filled, line them up in the order you want to pipe color-wise. Look at all those piping bags! I was swooning before I even started adding the colors to the cake.

Step 3: Measure Out Sections On The Cake

Using a ruler as your guide, mark off six equal sections with an icing spatula or other sharp object. It’s important that you start with a cake that’s been frosted and chilled so your marks are sharp and unwavering. Place marks horizontally all around the cake so you know where each color should end and a new one should begin. This way, you’ll have nice equal sections of color instead of getting towards the top of the cake and realizing you barely have room for the last few colors.

Note that you’ve marked six equal horizontal sections but have seven colors. This is because the top of the cake will act as its own (seventh) section.

Step 4: Apply The Colors

Now for the fun part! Starting at the bottom of the cake, pipe the purple hues within the bottom section you’ve marked off. I chose to start at the very bottom with the darker purples (Eggplant and Regal Purple) and saved the lighter purple (Electric Purple) for the top of the section. There’s no real pattern here other than that. The cake ends up looking really cool with the dots in a more random order rather than piping lines of the same color. In other words, it’s ok to have some of the darker purples toward the top of the section and put different colored dots next to each other.

Pipe a few stray purple dots into the section that should be blue to help with the gradient effect, then fill the rest of the next section in with the blue hues. Again, I’ve chosen to pipe the darker blue (Navy Blue) toward the bottom of the blue section and the lighter blues (Sky Blue and Teal) toward the top.

Repeat this process in reverse rainbow color order with the rest of your shades. When you get to the top of the cake, pipe all of the red shades. Remember to pipe a few stray red and pink dots down into the orange section to help with the gradient effect.

How cool is this gradient rainbow buttercream cake? I absolutely love color and having my Nifty Fifty Kit made all of my colorful cake dreams come true with this one! It’s well worth having the entire kit in your cake decorating collection. These gels last for ages and save tons of time you would have otherwise spent custom mixing different color gels to get just the right shade. Let me know if you end up making this cake and/or getting the Nifty Fifty Kit! I would love to nerd out on color with you.

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