Mike Bisho
If you’re looking to make amazing, eye-catching cakes for birthdays, holidays, or just for family fun, you need to have the right tools. Those beautiful cakes you see in the bakery window require a skilled artisan but they also require the right tools for adding flowers, borders, and everything else that makes them so exquisite. If you’re interested in making your cakes something unique and very special, consider the best tools for the job.
A cake marker will help you to make even lines all around the cake when decorating. This is a small tool that has a handle on one side and a small slicer on the other, attached to a ruler. You place the slicing tool in the right measurement and then into the edge of your cake, and slide your cake all the way around. This gives you a small line in the same place around the cake.
An icing comb set makes even ridges all around your cake, quickly and easily. Like a large comb with handles, you can use various sizes for various types of ridges. A cake dividing chart allows you to make even decorations over sections of the cake. You put your cake on top of the chart and follow the lines to evenly divide your cake into however many pieces you want. An icing smoother will give you the flat and smooth surface you see on professionally decorated cakes and which make it easier to add decorations.
A pattern embosser makes it easy to add patterns to your icing. The embosser works on a small roller and you roll it around the cake or over the top to add pattern to your icing. A detail embosser works in much the same way but is much smaller and works only a small area of the cake, usually around the borders and edges.
Decorating bags and tips are also important for all the small flowers and decorative elements you’ll add to your cake. If you’re serious about cake decorating you might invest in an icing gun, which looks very similar to the caulking guns you see being used around tile. An icing gun has a back that holds icing and which is removable and washable, and a supply of tips you use to create different flowers and borders. An icing gun is typically easier to use because you squeeze a trigger rather than having to squeeze the icing bag, so it’s much gentler on your hands.
It’s also good to invest in a practice board which allows you to practice making those flowers and border patterns before you work on a real cake. Practice boards are better to use than wax paper as they stand up, so you get accustomed to working on the side just as you would when decorating a cake.
