Our low down on all the indispensable equipment you need to get started in cake decorating. From boring but essential things like cake boards, to the more exciting things like turntables, this list will help make a great starter kit for the budding cake decorator in your life!
An essential part of cake making; you need boards to decorate on and then to display the finished cake on. They are available in various shapes, sizes and colours.
There are three main types of cake board available:
Cardboard: made from a 2-3mm piece of cardboard, these are the cheapest option, but also the least strong. Use this type of board for light cakes. They come in silver.
Masonite: made from 5-6mm thick masonite and covered in food safe paper, these are your everyday type boards. They are strong, but also not too heavy. They can be used as a presentation board as well as under each tier in a multi tiered cake. They come in various colours including, silver, gold, black, white and a variety of pastel colours.
Drum: made from corrugated card, these are extra thick at around 10mm - 12mm. Not used so much in Australia, but are very often used in the UK and US. They are strong and very lightweight. Mostly used just as a presentation board. They come in black and white.
Dowels are needed to help support a cake with two or more tiers. If you place the second tier on top of the first with no support, the bottom tier will squish due to the extra weight on it. When dowels are inserted first, that second tier actually sits on those dowels rather than on the cake itself, so no squashing can happen.
There are a few different types of dowel available:
Wooden: The cheapest and most eco friendly option. You'll need a dowel cutter (like this one) to cut them.
Plastic and Poly Dowels: These are made from a sturdy plastic and you'll need a dowel cutter (like this one) to cut them.
Central dowel: A dowel that is attached to the main presentation/base board and goes through the whole height of the cake. It prevents the tiers from sliding off each other in transit. Where support dowels are just the height on the tier, a central dowel is much taller and thicker. When using a central dowel, all tiers of the cake need to be on a board that has a hole in it, so they will slide over the central dowel. You'll still need support dowels when using a central dowel.
Loyal have made a great system to make it a lot easier to use central dowels. No drills required! Check out this video:
Don't forget to let the cake recipients know there are dowels in the cake when you give it to them. There are some people who like to push the birthday person's face into the cake "for a laugh" (it's not for me, I have to say, but each to their own I guess) For quite obvious reasons, having hard, pointy things inside a cake and pushing someone's face down onto them is not a good idea.
A very useful thing, the spatula. Angled spatulas, also known as cranked spatulas, are great for getting the buttercream or ganache from the mixing bowl onto the cake. The handle ensures you keep your fingers out of the icing!
The other type of spatula is the silicone spatula, which will ensure you get every last bit of cake batter and buttercream out of the mixing bowl (much to the dismay of anyone waiting to lick the bowl!)
You'll need at least one of each.
Scrapers are needed to get the sides of your cakes looking super smooth and straight. There are a few options available, but the key thing to look out for in your scraper search is that it has a square corner. If it's rounded, it's leave an unsightly smear around the bottom of your cake - no one wants that!
Metal: These come in all different heights. Personally, I find them best for buttercream. They are also useful for doing the final smooth on your icing or ganache, as you can heat them up with a blow torch or in hot water, which helps to give a lovely neat finish.
Acrylic: The advantage of acrylic scrapers is that they around around 6mm thick, so it's easier to keep them flat on the board. The OG is Janet O'Sullivan's clear scrapers. These have a bevelled edge and are see through, so you can, well, see through them at what is going on behind. They are also very useful for stencilling.
Colour Mill have brought out their own colourful acrylic scrapers, and they are flying out the door. Along with being in aesthetically pleasing, on trend colours, they feature ruler markings and a bevelled edge for precise scraping.
IN-DIS-PENSIBLE. If you are planning on decorating more than one cake YOU NEED A TURNTABLE. Scraping a cake without one is the most unco thing you'll ever tackle. There are cheap ones, there are more expensive ones, there are plastic ones, there are metal ones, there are tall ones and there are short ones. In fact, we've written a whole other blog post on the different types of turntables available. You can check it out here.
If a whole blog post is giving TL:DR vibes, just buy one of these. It's an investment, yes, but you'll only need to buy it once and it'll last your whole decorating career. It features all the things I suggest looking for in a turntable:
Guess what? We've got a blog post for this too! Check it out here!
TL:DR version: Get this wire leveller for the very beginner. Get an Agbay as a special present.
Click on the links below to take you to your interest!