This Cake Comb set comes with three combs that are double sided, meaning you can get six different looks in one little set. You can use any of these combs on your buttercream finish to get a cool, textured look that’s picture-perfect. For this tutorial in particular, the comb with the square cutouts is exactly what you need for stripes. As you drag it through your buttercream, those little squares will carve out ridges that can be filled with any color you want, then smoothed all together for a flawless striped finish.

Here’s a quick video of the process, and I’ll share everything you need to know about creating striped cakes from start to finish below. Be sure to read all of the tips in each section, because there are a few hacks I’ve learned along the way: 

You Will Need:

• A 6-inch cake that’s been crumb coated and chilled
• 2 batches of vanilla buttercream 
• Icing Smoother
• Angled Spatula 
• Wilton Icing Comb Set
• Food color gels of your choice
• A piping bag

Step 1: Frost And Smooth The Cake

With your crumb coated cake on the turntable, frost a layer of buttercream onto the top of the cake and smooth it with your angled spatula. Then, add a thick layer of buttercream to the sides of the cake and use your icing scraper to smooth it until the sides are even. 

The layer of frosting on the sides of the cake should be thick and deep enough for your cake comb to pass through and create ridges, about ¼ inch or more. Don’t worry about creating the sharp edges on the top of the cake just yet, only focus on getting those sides nice and smooth.

Step 2: Create Ridges With The Cake Comb

Next, hold the cake comb next to the cake at about a 45 degree angle towards you and gently turn the turntable. You’ll want to gradually create these ridges, so be sure to only apply a tiny amount of pressure at first. Each time you go around the cake, clean your cake comb completely by holding it under running water and drying it. You want it to be free of any buttercream bits to create perfect ridges.

If you find that there are holes or gaps in some of the ridges, fill them in with buttercream and go over them again with the cake comb. Also, if your ridges are tearing when you pass over the buttercream with the cake comb, it most likely means that your buttercream is too stiff. Luckily there’s an easy fix! Simply add a little bit of room temperature milk to your buttercream and mix it with your mixer for a thinner-consistency buttercream. Then, add the buttercream wherever your ridges have ripped and smooth them over with the cake comb.

Keep going around the cake until your ridges are more than ⅛ inch deep. Once you’ve reached the ideal depth, use your angled spatula to create sharp edges on the top of your cake. Swipe the buttercream from the outer edges toward the center of the cake until those edges look sharp and the top of the cake looks smooth and even. 

Step 3: Chill For 30 Minutes 

This step is critical to creating evenly spaced buttercream stripes, because if you skip this step and the buttercream is too soft, the stripes can spread and look uneven. Simply pop the cake in the refrigerator and chill the buttercream for at least 30 minutes, until it’s firm to the touch. 

Step 4: Fill The Ridges With Color

Add your favorite food color gel to the remaining buttercream and mix it up. I used the Wilton Color Right Food Coloring System from JOANN to mix up this deep fuschia color (using the pink and blue colors). Add the colored buttercream into a piping bag and snip off about ¼ inch opening on the end. With your chilled cake on the turntable, pipe the colored buttercream into the ridges. 

It’s best to overfill the ridges rather than underfill them – you want to make sure that the colored buttercream reaches every space within the ridge. 

Step 5: Smooth The Stripes 

Finally, use a clean icing smoother to go around the cake several times and remove the excess colored buttercream. You’ll want to clean the icing smoother every time you go around the cake to ensure that you’re removing as much of the colored buttercream as you can. 

This step requires a bit of patience, but as you carefully smooth and remove excess buttercream, you’ll see those perfect stripes start to peek through. Continue this process until all of the excess buttercream has been removed and those stripes look perfect!

From here, you can continue decorating the cake if you wish. To get this look, I added some Sweet Tooth Fairy sprinkles, a buttercream border using Wilton Tip 1M, and turquoise gumballs. All of these pretty decorating supplies can be found at JOANN! 

The best part about this technique is that you can use any stripe color combination you want! Just follow the above steps and you’re good to go. I hope this tutorial gives you more confidence in creating buttercream stripes and you’ll find everything you need to get the look at JOANN. And the best part is, if you download the JOANN app, you’ll get tons of coupons to get these cake supplies at a discount. Happy cake striping! 

Disclaimer: I was compensated by JOANN for my work of creating this project, styling, filming, photographing, and writing about their products. As always, all opinions are honest and my own. Thank you for supporting brands that support Sugar & Sparrow.

The post How To Create Striped Buttercream Cakes With A Cake Comb appeared first on Sugar & Sparrow.

In my memories of childhood snacks, Circus Animals were an extra special treat. My eyes still get wide when I see the iconic pink and white frosted cookies covered in sprinkles, so when I found out that this A Frosted Affair sprinkle mix by SprinklePop was largely inspired by them, my heart definitely soared! I just knew I had to create a fun pink and white sprinkled cake with major Circus Animal cookie vibes to celebrate my love for all of it.

Just one look at the colors going on in the A Frosted Affair sprinkle mix will transport you back to childhood. The larger pink and white spherical sprinkles are perfectly intermixed with rainbow-colored jimmies and nonpareils. It’s all the colors of Circus Animal cookies in sprinkle form and made me giddy just opening the bottle! Look at how beautiful these sprinkles are:

Going with the fun circus-inspired theme, I decided to make the cake striped with pink and white buttercream. It’s the first time I’ve ever used a cake comb for striping the cake, and I found it to be a serious hack for creating perfectly level and evenly-spaced stripes! I’ll show you all the tips I learned below, so if you’ve been dying to create a buttercream striped cake and haven’t yet tried the cake comb technique, I highly recommend it. It’ll save you so much time and stress. And just look at how pretty the sprinkles look on these stripes!

I whipped up a video of the entire process, from striping the cake to adding the sprinkles, so you can visually see the techniques before reading all about them in the tutorial below:

You Will Need

• A 6-inch crumb coated cake that’s been chilled
• 1.5 batches of vanilla buttercream frosting
• Pink food color gel
• A cake turntable
• An icing scraper and angled spatula
• A cake comb
• 2 piping bags
• 8 oz bottle of A Frosted Affair sprinkles
• Wilton Tip 1M
• Circus Animal cookies for garnish

Step 1: Frost The Cake

With your crumb coated cake on the turntable, frost the cake with the vanilla buttercream and use the icing scraper and angled spatula to create a smooth buttercream finish.

If you’re looking for tips on how to get the buttercream extra smooth and level, this blog post will give you all the info you need!

Step 2: Comb The Cake

With the smooth buttercream frosting still wet to the touch, hold the cake comb at a 45 degree angle toward your body and gently indent the cake with it. Be sure to wipe the cake comb clean each time you go around the cake.

Continue the process of combing the cake and wiping the comb clean until you’ve got even grooves in the buttercream all around the cake. They should be about ⅛ to ¼ of an inch deep when you’re finished.

Step 3: Create The Buttercream Stripes

Tint all of the leftover buttercream a light pink shade using your favorite color gel. I used a tiny amount of Americolor Electric Pink to get the shade pictured. After the buttercream has been tinted, load it into a piping bag and snip off ¼ inch opening. Fill each of the grooves on the cake with the pink buttercream and be sure to overfill the grooves rather than underfill them.

When you’re finished filling all of the grooves with pink buttercream, use a clean icing scraper to smooth the cake. It will look a bit messy at first, but keep smoothing the cake (wipe your icing scraper clean in between smoothing!) until perfect buttercream stripes are revealed.

Once your buttercream stripes are looking amazing, swipe your angled spatula over the top of the cake, from the outer edges inward, to create sharp edges.

Step 4: Add The Sprinkles

With your striped buttercream still wet to the touch, add the A Frosted Affair sprinkles all around the bottom edges of the cake. The easiest way to do this is to pour the sprinkles into the palm of your hand, then gently press them to the cake.

When you finish sprinkling the bottom edges, gently place the sprinkles in a floating pattern around the top two thirds of the cake. You can use a pair of tweezers for this part, but I find that pressing a sprinkle to my finger before gently touching the cake with it is the easiest way to add sprinkles one by one without making marks in the cake finish.

Once you’re happy with the sprinkled sides, pop the cake in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to let everything firm up before continuing the decorating process.

Step 5: Decorate The Top

Prepare a piping bag by fitting it with Wilton Tip 1M and filling it with more pink buttercream, then pipe swirls all around the top edge of the cake. Generously add A Frosted Affair sprinkles to the swirl border and fill in the entire top of the cake with more sprinkles if you’d like. Then, place a Circus Animal cookie on top of each buttercream swirl.

And there you have it: a fun, Circus Animal-inspired cake with the prettiest sprinkles ever! It’s perfect for a circus-themed party or to get a little nostalgic.

For more cake tutorial videos, be sure to follow along on my YouTube channel! And if you’re inspired to make this cake, be sure to tag me on Instagram so I can see it. I love to know what you’re caking!

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