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So, from this point, go crazy and do what you like. Don’t go too crazy, but go a little crazy, because it’s fun.

I’m going to take some of my yellow, and don’t get it on your dress because that’s not cute. And you can see it comes right out the side. This is a nice medium round. And if you want it in any areas where you feel like you want to have a little fun, just do polka-dots kind of all over. I’m just pushing and kind of letting go. They’re almost like little kisses all along your cake. It’s a good way to kind of cover up any mistakes you’ve made. No one will know. Same thing with my purple. I have a smaller round. A little bit of frosting, and if you want it to be really fun you could swirl the two together. That’s a really good idea. Just some extra little polka-dots. And if you make a mess just dab it off with your finger. A couple little dots all over the place, and don’t be too even about it. Just kind of all over. And that’s it.

The last thing we’re going to do is just write Happy Birthday. You could do this with the same frosting that you’re using, or you can use a royal icing, which is just confectioner’s sugar and a little bit of egg white or milk or kind of anything to thin it out. But all I’m going to do is make sure, if you’re cake stand is too high, just take it off so you get a good angle. Get this out of the way. And all I’m going to do is angle it down and just let the frosting fall on it’s own. And just pretend you’re writing like with a fountain pen. And if you get a little air bubble, just push past it. You can see how easy that is. Happy, I don’t even have room for Birthday. It’s just a Happy cake. That’s all it is. But you could squeeze Birthday in there. Obviously you could write smaller if you want to put the name on it. It’s just really cute. If you run out of space like me, try to get it in there. And the last thing is some cute little birthday candle, right in. And you’re ready to go. A really cute birthday cake. Easy and delicious.

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So now my cake is ready to go. What I’m going to do with this is just start with my border. I’m going to do little shells kind of all the way around. To do that, let’s even start on the bottom, I’m going to push away from me, and pull. You can see I get that beautiful little shell kind of wide on one end coming to a point. What you’re going to do is start a little bit away and push, and pull towards you again. I’m going to do that all the way around the bottom of my cake.

Don’t feel like you have to rush and do this quickly. If you have to take your time, take your time. It’s important to kind of get it as even as possible. But, remember, at the end of the day it’ cake. Everyone will like it even if your shells are uneven.

You can see I’m using my turn table to turn my cake around as I go and just make a nice, even border all the way around the bottom of my cake. If you feel like your frosting is getting too soft you can always pop it in the refrigerator. Put your bag in the refrigerator if you have to. But that’s it. We have a cute little border around the bottom.

And now I’m going to do the same thing along the top. So, again, just push away from you, and pull. You get a really cute, very easy, it looks easy because it actually is easy. All you have to do is push, and pull. Push, and pull. I’m keeping it right onto my cake not too far over that they’ll end up kind of falling down the sides, but just right around the edge. Really cute birthday cake.

Once you have your border you can decorate really in any way you like. I’m going to take some candy, and you can see when I get to the end I just do one just to fill in right in between. I have cute little gumballs. You can choose any colors. This is a great job for kids actually. They can pick out the colors that they love.

You can just do cute little kind of dots all the way around. Just push right into the top. No fuss. Very cute. And the same thing right on the bottom. I like purple and yellow because it’s going to stay with my theme of purple and yellow. If you don’t like gumballs there are a million options. You can use M&M’s. They sell all kinds of little candies, round colorful things. A couple more. I just need two more. Okay. Beautiful.

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Hi. My name is Katie Rosenhouse. I’m a pastry chef and culinary consultant living in New York City. I started out about eight years ago at the French Culinary Institute in New York City and since then I’ve worked at pretty great fine dining restaurants, from Bouley, Le Cirque, The Russian Tea Room, Country, Olana and most recently the David Burke restaurant group.

Since leaving restaurants about a year ago I’ve been doing a whole slew of projects from working on recipe development for cookbooks, consulting for start-up businesses in New York City and beyond. I am the culinary consultant on a show called Sweet Genius on the Food Network, which everyone should watch all the time. It’s awesome. I also won the show Season 1. I won $10,000, which was awesome. I was also on a show called Chopped a couple of times. Really fun experience. So I’m just enjoying myself. If you want more information about me, by website is www.katierosenhouse.com. K-A-T-I-E R-O-S-E-N-H-O-U-S-E. And I have a great blog so ask me any culinary questions you’ve got and I’ll do my best to answer them. Thanks so much.

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All I’m going to do is, you can either take a little bit of water, just to help it stick, or a little bit of frosting. Just make sure all of the dust is off of it. I’m going to use a little water and just give it a flip, just lightly and that’s going to kind of soften those sugars and help it stick to the fondant that’s already on the cake. Just a little drop. Now, around we go. It’s going to start by me. I’m going to try not to ruin my border. So be a little gentle about it but it’s going all the way around the cake. This is kind of a very Avant-garde Christmas cake. You can see how cute that even is now. And now you can see I just swirled a little red fondant or white fondant with a little red food coloring and I’m going to roll that out as well.
Great. So this one I’m going to make a little bit smaller. I’m really just looking for something to go on the top of my cake so I’m just going to be very, kind of fun, about it. Don’t feel like you have to make it perfect. And same thing, just a little bit of water so it will stick. Whoops. If it breaks just keep on going. And here I’m just going to kind of swirl it together, kind of whimsical.

Now last but not least I have a couple of fun additions. So, a little bit of frosting as glue. Here I have a couple of stars that are really cute. This is just yellow fondant and I rolled it out and then I just brushed it with a little bit of gold luster. You can just put a couple of stars around the outside. Okay, there’s that. And these are just some malt balls and I rolled them in a little bit of gold luster dust as well just to kind of add a little extra something. And that is it, a really fun, Avant-garde, Christmas cake.

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So today I’m going to show you a really great way to decorate a simple but beautiful kid’s birthday cake. So you can see I’m just starting with just a nice clean, white surface with my buttercream. This is a two layer cake. I have my same buttercream in the middle, I did a crumb coat first, and I did a nice layer of frosting. Now I’m going to come in and do my design.

So the first thing that I did was take a little bit of this gel color, you can also use liquid, but I just love that this doesn’t make my icing runny at all. I could use a little bit and get a really intense result, which is great. So I took a little bit of my gel color, added it in to my buttercream, and you could see I have this beautiful purple color, great for little girls’ birthday parties. And I’m going to do the same thing with a little bit more frosting, but I’m going to color it yellow. Obviously you can do any color that you like. If your son loves blue, make it blue, but you could see I just take, you could really take a toothpick or anything, take a little bit of your gel color, and just add it right to your frosting, and you can always add more later. I like a really intense color, so just a little bit of a dollop, and then don’t get this on your hands.

So now all I’m going to do is stir my yellow color right into my frosting with my rubber spatula, you could do this with a spoon too. But you could see as I spin it around it’s going to get a beautiful, intense yellow, like sunshine. Isn’t that fun? So easy. Remember you can make this frosting at home, you can buy the frosting if you just don’t have the time, no one will know. Done.

All I’m going to do is take my piping bag, this is a disposable piping bag with a tip inside, I have a little round tip here, perfect for writing happy birthday, if you’re interested in doing that, a larger round tip and a star tip for my border. So I think for my border I’m going to start with purple. So you could see I fold the edges down on my and I push the bag into the tips, so this way when I fill it with frosting the frosting will not smush out the bottom.

So I take my rubber spatula with my purple frosting, and just a nice dollop, don’t overfill your bag. Not only because the heat from your hands kind of melts the frosting, but also because, especially when you’re piping your border, you have much more control if you have a good handle on your piping bag. So too much it’s going to be very hard to move it around. If you have a big air pocket, just push and you’re ready to go. If you could see, I kind of, I twist halfway down and I hold the other end with my hand. If you try to do this, all over you, so.

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But our chocolate ganache cake, I have some options. A really classic idea is to take these chocolate curls that I’ve made, and you can see they’ve just come off of my cooled sheet tray. They’re kind of ready to go.

And I can just take these if I want to and just pile them up. Very, kind of, anyway you please in a big. Almost imagine like a campfire. You’re building a big pile of sticks here. You can break some of them up.

And just all over the top of your cake. This is a very classic way to do this. All over. And this is one of those really good, like, winter time cakes that people just. They see it and they can’t not take a slice of it.

But also, I want to show you the final fun design that we did which would also be really cute on a cake like this, is my piped chocolate designs. You can see with my cornei I just piped a little lace.

And I’m just just going to, kind of, flip it over and peel this off. And you can see it comes right off into this really, how easy is that first of all. But look at this really fun sheet of lace. Really beautiful.

So, I would just break off little pieces of this. Very gently. And remember the heat from your hands may start to melt this, so work quickly. Or else just pop it back in the refrigerator or freezer.

But anywhere you like to put it. So you can just, kind of, finish it with some really beautiful piped lattice work here. And just a little sprinkling and you’re good to go.

Two really gorgeous, very impressive if I might say, cakes. And you can do it at home with really no effort at all.

So, I hope you give it a try.

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So my white chocolate is chilled, it’s nice and firm to the touch and all I’m going to do is flip them over and immediately you can see that the chocolate just peels right off. It’s really fun and I have my very cute little decorations ready to go. Here I have a couple of hearts. And my lace, I can just break up little pieces of this. Really fun and kind of very whimsical and avant garde. And then if I lift over my transfer sheet you can see how great that is with the color. It comes right off. Really fun designs. If you wanted to you could cut out circles, you could just break up shards. If you want to cut little diamonds, or triangles, anything you like. Just kind of go in and you can just kind of decorate however you please. And they’re very cute. So have fun with it. Do whatever you like. Make all kinds of fun designs and this is a great way to use white chocolate on cupcakes.

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So here I have a heart shaped cake and I’m just going to use this as an example of how to use fresh flowers as decorations for a cake. And all I’m going to do is take some pink frosting just to prepare it. And just very, kind of, not worrying about it too much, I’m just going to make a little bit of a ruffle going all around. And you can see all I’m doing is kind of pushing and pulling towards me. And I’m going to do another one. Just very easy, not worrying about it at all. And if you’re frosting starts getting too soft just pop it back in the fridge. All I’m doing is kind of making a little bed for my flowers to lay on. And you can see I’m just going a little bit over the edge just because I want almost a little bit of a boarder for my flowers. Perfect. I’m going to take that to the top just a little bit, just to cover the surface. You’re not going to really see this part but just so that it’s there. The quickest way to ice a cake ever.

And now I have some really beautiful fresh flowers. So what I’m going to do is, you want to make sure that your flowers aren’t full of pesticides, that they’re organic, or that they’re edible is even better if you can find edible flowers in your grocery store. Definitely go that route. But all I’m going to do is take them and trim them so they’re a little bit shorter and I’m using a nice variety. But keep in mind how deep your cake is and how big you want your flowers to be. I’m going to go nice and small. If you want to, if your flowers aren’t edible, or aren’t edible you could take just a small piece of tinfoil and you could just wrap your stem just to protect the filling of your cake if you’re nervous about it. Just a quick little wrap. And that way when you insert into your cake nothing is kind of coming out of the flowers at all. But if you’re not worried about it you can just kind of start inserting your flowers right into your cake. And I’m going to cover pretty much the entire surface here and make a little bouquet. Really pretty.

Okay. So once you get your surface covered, and you don’t have to put this many, but I just love having this kind of garden. And it’s fun. You can even dock the bottom with a little bit of… You can do a little border or do some candies around the bottom and just a really fun heart shaped flower cake.

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Hi I’m Katie and I’m so excited because today I’m making a Christmas cake which happens to be my favorite holiday in the universe.

But you can see I started out by; I did a fondant layer on top of my cake. This is just some carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, but you can do any type of cake you like whether it’s a fruitcake, spice cake, anything Christmas-y, a nice layer of fondant overseen with clean service to work off of. And I just took green, white, and red butter cream and all I did was cut a little tip off of my disposable piping bag. And I’m just going around and alternating and just pulling towards myself. I’m just pushing and pulling a little bit towards me and making a big mess. But just alternating green, white, and red or you can do any colors you like. You can do the same design for a Hanukkah cake with blue and white. It would be really nice. But I’m just making a little border, a little edge. So now, we’re going to come in and make a ribbon. Move these over.

Whenever you’re working with fondant it’s important that your surface get really clean. So here I have a little green, but that’s okay because I’m going to be rolling out the green. So, I’m just going to take a little extra confectioners sugar and dust my surface, and start rolling out my fondant. Now what I’m looking for is a really long strip so I’m really just going to go in one direction. Even though I’m going in one direction, I’m constantly going to be moving my fondant so that it won’t stick to my surface. And that’s really important. You don’t want to roll it out to the perfect thickness and then try to pick it up and you can’t. That’s kind of a very sad moment when that happens. So just keep moving her around and pushing it away from you.

When you have your fondant at about an eighth of an inch, which this is, you can see how nice and thin it is. I’m just going to take a paring knife and cut it in the shape I want. I’m not being too particular but if you wanted to you can kind of trace and measure exactly where you want this ribbon to fall and you’ll know exactly how long it needs to be. I’m just going to kind of eyeball it. But if I were doing this for a real Christmas celebration I might take the time to really measure it out. All I’m doing is making a nice even strip. And you can see I’m just going all the way down making like a big snake. And if I need to trim it even shorter later I can definitely do that. But all this leftover you can either do another ribbon if you want to. You can have two going around. Or just knead it back together and wrap it up and it’s good to use next time. Throw it away.

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So, I have two beautiful cakes and I have my chocolate decorations that I’ve already started. I tempered my chocolate. Spread it onto transfer sheets. Drizzled it onto an acetate sheet and spread it onto a cold sheet tray to make these beautiful curls. And now I’m going to finish my cakes.

So, for my transfer sheet. You can see it has that beautiful pattern on the bottom. And what I’ve done is, now that the chocolate is set, I’m going to cut squares.

You can also just cut it into shards. Just break it into pieces. That’s great too. But I like how, kind of, I’m going to put it on with all this craziness of fruit going on. So, it’s going to add a little order to our cake.

So, you can see just with my pairing knife I just went through and sliced beautiful squares. And now I’m going to flip it over and just peel the transfer sheet off.

And you can see it leaves that beautiful gold color right on there. People will have no idea how you did it. Little do they know how simple it was.

But, you can see how beautiful that is. So, that’s going to go right along the edge of my cake and just stick right into the side.

You can see how it just immediately adheres to the whipped cream. And try to space them apart a little bit. And go all the way around. Just like those very fancy patisseries. Get the same results.

And, I’m going to show you how you we’re going to add a little bit of an American twist. I’m going to take some malt balls and I’m just going to coat them to match. You can see we have all these beautiful gold designs on dark chocolate. So, I’m going to make little gold malt balls as well.

So, what I have is just regular candies here and a little bit of gold dust you can buy at any, sort of, specialty cake shop. It’s just called Luster Dust. But I take a little bit on a knife and I just kind of knock it in there.

I’m just going to roll these all around. And if you need more if it’s not coating it enough you take a paint brush, kind of brush it all over. And you can see instantly they’ve gone from being a very, kind of, dull supermarket candy to this beautiful ornate design. It’s also great for Christmas cakes and things like that.

But I’m going to take those and just drop a few right all along the top of my cake. Just for a little extra bling. And that’s it for that one.

Now we’re going to move on to our gorgeous chocolate ganache cake. You can see how fun this looks. Beautiful.

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Hi, I’m Katie, and today I’m going to show you how to decorate a cake with candy.

This is just a fun job for anyone. All I’ve done is I’ve put a base layer of butter cream over my cake, and you can see just for kind of whimsy I made a big swirl all around the top of it. I just love that. But as long as your cake is covered with butter cream you’re ready to go.

And this is actually a great job for the kids. They can come in. They can choose whatever candy they like. They can put it all over. I, personally, love to either do a little border of maybe colorful little round candies, or I’ll come in and kind of do big fun polka dots. All over your cake are really fun. Oh, I just knocked one on the ground. You can really have a lot of fun with this and kind of go to town. Let’s add a few more. Really fun.

When you get to the top of the cake this is kind of the time you can play around. You can do a big bundle of candy right in the middle, and I love these. You can either do little licorice or these cute little candies with the colors inside. I love this pattern. Really fun.

And, again, the goal here is not to be perfect. It’s to really have fun with your kids and throw candy all over the cake and just have a really good time. So I’m just kind of making sure I keep it right in the middle and continue the themes that I’ve already, just kind of sprinkle right over with some polka dots sticking out. Very cute, and a fun way to top it off by sticking in some lollipops. Really fun.

But, again, go as crazy as you want to go. Have them put candy all up the sides. This is where the creativity can shine. So have a great time and decorate your cakes with candy.

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Hi. So I’m here to show you today how to decorate a cake with sprinkles.

It’s a very simple idea. All I’m doing is taking my cake that’s already been prepared with a layer of buttercream, and you can you can see just with my offset spatula, I just made little swooshes along the top, and I cleaned up the sides so that they’re nice and neat. Also, I don’t have any frosting sticking to my cake board, because I don’t want the sprinkles, once they go on, to be stuck all around my cake. So make sure this is nice and wiped clean, and then you’re ready to go.

The best way to do this, honestly, is with your hands. Go into the sprinkles, grab a whole bunch, and you’re going to gently press against the side of the cake, and move around. And as you go, you can kind of work your way up, or go as low as you want to, but it’s fun to just kind of have it be very free form. And then when you get done, you’ll go around and take all the sprinkles that are around the edge, and just collect them and clean them up. But in the meantime, you’re just kind of moving around your cake board, and you can keep reusing. Make sure you’re working on a clean surface so you can just get these all out of your way. But it’s just a really fun thing to do, especially for a birthday party, if you’re doing an ice cream cake, anything like that.

So again, I’m just moving all the way around. I’m just gently pressing, and don’t worry about the mess right now because we’ll clean it up afterwards. But just kind of going up and down, multi-level, and take all those extras and just kind of move them around, and that is it.

So how do you cleanly get all of these extras off? Well, I take as much as I can off first. And then if you have a good piece of parchment paper, you could just kind of angle your cake, and just brush them all. They’ll come right off the sides, or else just go right onto your table. But you can see, as long as your cake board is clean, you’ll end up with a nice, clean edge on your cake. And that is it.

All I would do now is go in and write, ‘Happy Birthday,’ with a little bit of frosting, or make some little rosettes around the sides. You can even take a few more sprinkles and just go right in the center of the cake. It’s really cute. And that’s it. Very easy, totally delicious, and great for kids. How to cover a cake with sprinkles.

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Hi, I’m Katie, and I’m going to show you today how to decorate a very cute little chocolate heart shaped cake.

I’m starting with my cake that’s already baked. I just have one layer. You could do multi-layered if you like. And I have some chocolate frosting. Depending on what occasion you’re making this for you could definitely do vanilla. You could use fondant. Here I’m just going all the way with chocolate, and I’m going to cover my cake.

You can see I put a large dollop of frosting right on the top. I’m working with my small offset spatula. I really want to make sure that I’m following the shape especially when you’re working with a cake that’s a very specific kind of size and shape. You want to make sure that it’s shown. I’m just working down the sides. You can see, now that I’ve spread the frosting all over, I’m just pushing down my sides to cover them. This little offset spatula is very handy.

When I get around to the back you can see I’m just making sure that I really go in and out to keep the shape of my heart. Now we can get into smoothing it out. Normally I would take a bench scraper just to clean up everything. Right now I’m just going to keep going with my offset. I’m just going to move around and very gently pull towards myself and take off a little bit of that frosting just to smooth things out a bit. Get to the other side and pull towards me.

I like to leave the top of my cake a little more rustic looking. You can even do a little bit of a swooshing design. It’s kind of very cute, and, if you want to, go back around and just clean it up once more. Very easy way to cover your heart shaped cake.

Now, design wise, you can see how cute it is already. I’m going to keep it nice and simple. Here I have some little candy colored balls, and I’m just going to go around and do a little heart shape. Then we’ll make it into a little Valentine. Maybe I’ll write Be Mine right in the middle. Keep it really cute and simple, because on Valentine’s Day you want to be spending it with the ones you love not necessarily decorating a cake all day.

Now that I have my little balls everywhere I’m just going to write a little Valentine right in the middle, maybe a little Love or Be Mine. I’m just letting my frosting fall.

A really cute and easy heart shaped cake for Valentine’s Day.

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To build my cake, you can see I’ve already covered my cake with either whipped cream, buttercream, whatever you like.

Whipped cream is really nice for the summer. A vanilla cake, whipped cream, and fresh fruit, beautiful and delicious.

I did a border, that’s optional. I just used my star tip to pipe a little border around the edge, and now I’m just going to build my layers. So don’t feel like you have to do this any particular way. Kind of the more messy you can get the better it’s going to end up looking. We’re really building a nice heap of fruit. It’s almost like a big composed fruit salad, but again, the messier the better, and I’m starting with my items that are going to be kind of taking up more room, and then building from there.

My strawberries are just going to lay right on, and again, I’m looking for a big heap of fruit. Right on top. Now’s the time, you can see I have my bed of mango. I could build it with a little bit more, if I wanted to. Just a couple of extra, and then I’ll go ahead and add my kiwi slices. Really building a nice, fun design here, but again, how easy is this? Kid’s could do this. You could trust anyone with this job.

You have a beautiful easy cake in no time, and you can see that’s kind of what my border is for, to keep my fruit contained a little bit. Now my blackberries. Really nice pop of dark color, really pretty, and now at the very end, some of the strawberries I haven’t cut yet. Just going to add that in. See how that looks. I know how it looks on video, but in person it’s very pretty. I promise you.

The fun thing to do with strawberries is, make sure if you cut blackberries you give it a little rinse. You can either, it’s very pretty just to cut all the way through the stem, and just have a nice split strawberry, sitting right on top is really beautiful, or if you wanted to get a little fancier take a nice berry, and I’m just going to slice, very thinly, and I’m not cutting all the way through. I’m just going about 90 percent of the way, very carefully, and you could just fan your berry out. So it’s a really beautiful final touch, and that is it.

Last to finish it off. I have a sifter and a little bit of powdered sugar, and just very gently go over the top of my cake, and that is it. That’s how to create a beautiful cake, with fresh fruit. I hope you enjoy.

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So I’m going to go to the fridge and get my sheet tray that I put in there so it would get nice and cold. To make chocolate curls or chocolate cigarettes I have a cookie sheet or a brownie pan that I’ve let sit either in the refrigerator or the freezer just until it’s nice and cold. I’m turning it over so I have a nice flat surface to work off of.

My chocolate is going to go right on, I have my tempered chocolate, right onto the surface. I’m going to use a small offset spatula just to spread it out really nice and thin. Just all over the surface, and you’re going to see, because the sheet tray is really nice and cold, it’s going to start setting up right away. You can tell when chocolate is starting to set. It’ll go from a very shiny, glossy, wet look to start to become mat and thick.

You can see already, as I spread, my chocolate is starting to cool down. What I’m going to do is keep spreading not really for the purpose of making it any thinner but just for the purpose of continuing to cool it down.

The next thing I’m going to do is just grab my bench scraper. You can take your chocolate and kind of hold onto the pan a little bit. I’m just going to push it away from me, and what that’s going to do is create nice, big, kind of thick, beautiful curls. You want to do this when your chocolate is still slightly warm.

And you can see it’s a great way also to make cigarettes. Just sort of push away from you. Really nice, big shards, and when I put those on top of, if I have a cake that I’ve covered really beautifully with a ganache or with any sort of glaze, if I put those curls kind of all on top it’s going to be a really beautiful presentation. You can see how nicely they kind of curl right on to each other. It’s like self cleaning your cookie sheet.

That’s it. I’m going to save all those. Be careful not to break those up, because they’ll break pretty easily. So turn your pan around and do the rest. You can just sort of inch it away from you. Really nice curls. A great technique if you have a block of chocolate you can just take a grater, or a knife, or a peeler, and kind of grate big shards of chocolate in the same way and get those really nice, big pieces.

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So, I’m here with bowl of white chocolate. And you can see I’ve set it over a double boiler. What I’m about to do is temper the white chocolate and I’m going to use that as decorations for my cakes.

So, you can see all of my chips are in the bowl. And I have the heat on, I’d say, medium or medium low. The goal is if you see all this steam happening, steam is very bad. Avoid steam.

What that does is all that condensation could end up back in your chocolate and you don’t want the chocolate to seize. What that is is when chocolate mixes with a little bit of water it will kind of firm up very hard. And you don’t necessarily want that.

So, all I’m doing is gently melting my chocolate. And the purpose of tempering is really to create what’s known as like snap and sheen.

If you’ve ever have, you know, pieces of white chocolate or dark chocolate and you can kind of snap them in your mouth and they have that beautiful glossy finish, the chocolate has been tempered. Because without it your chocolate would just kind of be limp and melt in your hands, not in your mouth.

So you can see I just melted it about two thirds of the way. This way it’s not going to stay too hot. I’m almost cooling it down with some of the seeds that aren’t melted yet.

And I’m just turning my bowl and using my rubber spatula. I’m just bringing it together.

Now the goal is to cool it down to the point where it’s about body temperature. If you find that it’s still too warm when all your chips are melted just set it over a bowl with ice water and give it a little bit of a stir and then remove it. And just kind of stir it and stir it until it’s nice and cool and ready to work with.

And that’s how you quickly temper some chocolate.

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My next one is a chrysanthemum. So, what I’m going to do is start on the outside and just push my yellow frosting. This is just a nice round tip. Just let it come right out.

I’m just making little spikes all the way around. And then I’m going to build my next layer. So, this is going to be a really nice beautiful flower.

And you can see I’m not being too particular. I’m just letting it, kind of, do it’s thing. I’m pushing and then pulling away. And now that I have that one layer I’m going to come and just start working on my next.

And building all the way around. Same idea. I’m using yellow but you can really use any color that you love. This is even, this is like a sunflower really.

This is really nice. And then, like a nice, you could put jelly beans or some little black candies right in the center. Or little colorful ball candies. And you have a really fun design.

Let’s do that. I’m going to choose an orange, maybe. Just right in the middle. Really pretty. And then eat them.

Maybe I’ll top that one off also. You can see how fun. We’re, kind of, building a little garden here which is really cute.

So, my next one I have my white icing with just a little bit of a V tip. And I’m just going to make, kind of, a cute little flower. And I’m going to hold it sideways. And I’m just going to push out.

And same idea. Just let it, kind of, come to me. And this is just a really easy, almost like our leaves. And same idea. Can go right in the middle and do another layer.

And we’re, kind of, building those petals. And then just fill it in. Even this one would be really cute with some sprinkles right in the center. Just really pretty.

And then last but not least a really simple, you can take that same round tip. And if you just wanted to pipe little beads all the way around we can do some really cute little flowers.

If you, kind of, push off as you go around you can get these cute little dots without necessarily getting those kiss shapes that we had before. You could do a couple of those. Kind of all over. Would be really cute.

And a couple of pretty colors right in the middle. How cute is that? And then if you wanted to add some leaves. Done.

So, how fun and cute and easy. Some really great techniques. All you need is a good piping tip, a few different varieties and a few great colors of frosting and you can have really fun flower cupcakes.

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So, today I’m going to show you how to decorate a cake with fresh fruit.

I’m using a mango, kiwi, blackberries and strawberries. But you can use any type of fruit that you like as long as it fits in the parameters of a cake topper. So, anything nice and, kind of juicy and luscious. Berries are great. Mango is great.

I would just avoid anything that’s going to turn brown as it sits. Like apples and pears. But other than that.

I’m just prepping my mango by using my peeler. Taking the skin off. And then I’m going to take a nice big chef’s knife and just go around the pit. I choose the least ripe mango. I think I could have found, alright that’s plenty. Hold on to this.

Now, for the mango I just like to use slices. But you really can have fun with this and do any shape that you like. I try to go nice and pretty thin but not too thin. If your mango is really ripe and soft you can go really extra thin and, kind of, use it as ribbons and, kind of, fold it onto itself. It’s really beautiful.

In the meantime. Beautiful. So, our mango is ready.

Next I’m just going to prepare my kiwi. I just like to trim the ends off. Trim the ends off and then I take my peeler and just peel the sides. Just like I did for my mango. This way I’m getting the most fruit I possibly can. Okay?

And just give that a nice little slice. You can also just use a pairing knife if that’s easier. Nice thin slices. And again, the more color you have on your cake and the more interest you can, kind of, put on the top of it the better it will look.

If the two big slices are large I just cut them in half right down the center. Beautiful.

And then for my strawberries. For a good amount of them I’m just going to take the stems off and cut them into quarters. And then some of them I’m going to leave the stems on. And you’ll see it will just make it a little more decorative and very pretty.

And for my blackberries I’m just going to half them. Because I think that’s the most beautiful, really get a look into the inside and you have that beautiful white and purple, kind of, shining through. It’s going to be a really nice balance.

So, that’s it. Start building it up. Half my blackberries. You can see it’s just really, it’s a nice nice thing to do. And blueberries would be really beautiful on this.

If you have some pistachios sprinkle some pistachios over on the end. It’s really pretty. And that is it.

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So I’m going to take my chocolate that’s already tempered and that’s just cooled down, and I’m going to put a little bit of it right onto my acetate sheet, my transfer sheet, and just take a small offset spatula and just spread it. You’re looking for a very thin layer, not too thin that it will break, but just thin enough. Imagine like a piece of thin brittle like a candy. Just spread it all over.

What I’ll do is pop this in the fridge once I’ve spread it out really nice and thinly, and it’ll set up within, I’d say, five, ten minutes, you’ll have a really nice sheet of chocolate to work off of. You don’t have to fuss too much with it. Just make sure it’s nice and even. And one is ready to go.

Now, for the other I’m going to make a little bit of like a chocolate squiggly design. So, I’m going to take a little bit of my chocolate right into my cornet and you can see it just goes right to the bottom. I’m going to take it and fold it over, and I have a really cute little cone.

This is also great if you want to write people’s names on birthday cakes. You just write happy birthday with the little chocolate cone. Just snip the tip and you can go as wide or as kind of small as you want to.

All I’m going to do is just make cute little kind of squiggly designs. When they’re set I’m going to break these up and put them in shards kind of on top of my cake. It’s going to be really beautiful lace to put around. So easy, incredibly easy, but it looks really cool.

So that’s it for that. You want to do enough that it’s not going to break on you, so a good layer of squiggle, a very technical term. That is it. So, all of these chocolate designs I’m going to pop in the fridge or the freezer until they’re nice and firm and set. Then I’ll take them off of these transfer sheets and put them on some cakes, and you’ll see some really beautiful designs.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Katie, and today I’m going to show you how to make white chocolate decorations for cupcakes. So I’m going to show you a few different options.

Here I have cupcakes that are already prepared, either with a little bit of butter cream, or I have fondant. Whatever you like is fine, but they’re all already ready to go, so I know when I make my decorations I can just put them right on and they’re ready.

My white chocolate, you can either use the microwave or double boiler to melt your chips. I melt them about halfway, and then I stir them until the rest melts. In a way we’re kind of doing a quick temper of our chocolate, that’s bringing down the temperature so that it’s about body temperature. It’s going to create the nicest snap and sheen of your chocolate. So this is ready to go.

What I’m going to be pouring this onto is, you can use parchment paper. I’m using an acetate sheet. This is just a plastic sheet, but it helps create a really nice glossy finish. Or my favorite thing ever, this is a transfer sheet, so this is just a little bit of color, that once I spread my chocolate on and the chocolate sets, I’m going to lift this off, and all of these fun little polka-dots are going to be left on my chocolate.

So, I’m going to take a little of my white and just transfer it right on, and use my off-set spatula to just gently coax it over the surface. I don’t want it too thin that it’ll break when I try to take the sheet off, but I don’t want it too thick either. We’re not looking for big chunks of chocolate. So, just enough. And this works the same, I’m using white, but you could use dark. You could use milk chocolate. Same process. So I’m just going to smooth this over my surface. And that’s it. I’m going to pop this in the refrigerator. But in the meantime, let’s do one more.

So this is just a fun, kind of quick thing you can do. I’m going to take a disposable piping bag and a little bit more of my white chocolate and just put it right in the bag. And since it’s for cupcakes, I want my decorations to be really cute and fun, so I’m just going to be kind of demure about it, in a way. You can see I folded down my bag so that when I lift it back up I have a nice clean edge. Just twist your end. And now I’m just going to take a scissor and just trim off, just a little bit, I don’t want it too small, but I don’t want it too wide either, so just a little circle. But depending on what you feel like, you could do little hearts if you wanted, like a double heart. You could do a little lacy business, and then once they’re ready, I’ll take these off and cut shards. That will be really pretty.

If you wanted to, really do anything, a little cross-hatch design, a little tic-tac-toe. Anything you feel like you could pipe, whether it’s someone’s name, any decoration you can think of is great for this. This is very classic. And once those set, I’m going to be able to lift them right off and transfer them onto my cupcakes. So now I’m going to take both of these and put them in the refrigerator.

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So today I have some really beautiful dark chocolate and I’m going to show you how to make cake decorations with chocolate. So I’ve tempered mine. What I did was just set chocolate chips over a boiler or you could do this in the microwave and just melt it down a bit of a way. And then just stir it until the rest melts. And what I’m using is, I’m going to be doing a few different techniques. Here I have what’s called a transfer sheet. You can buy this in specialty cake shops and what this does is once you spread the chocolate onto the sheet and let it set, when you pull the plastic off, this beautiful design that’s on here now will then be on your chocolate. So I’m going to have a really beautiful, kind of gold swirl design. Really professional look for a very simple process.

The other thing I have is just the sheet of acetate. What this is is just a nice plastic sheet, also available in specialty cake shops. And anything you spread onto this, any piped chocolate, spreadable chocolate, once it sets you’re going to have a really beautiful, shiny surface. So really great. And the last thing I’m going to do is show you how to make what’s called a cornet. So I’m taking a sheet of parchment paper and I’m going to fold it over into two triangles. You can see I’m leaving an edge on each part and just with a small knife, I’m just going to cut this in half and all I’m going to do is roll this together into a cone. And what I’m going to do is use this to pipe my chocolate. You could also use a piping bag if you have a piping bag, but this will give you a really fine tip which is really great. You can see I just folded down the lip. And I have a little cone that’s kind of ready to go.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Katie and today I’m going to show you how to put a layer of fondant over your cupcakes.

So I’m starting with a few different colors of fondant, and you can find those in specialty stores, or you can order them online which is always a good way to do it. But all I do is . . . you want to make sure your fondant is really sealed in airtight container at all times. If it sits out for too long it’ll dry out and get very crusty. So if that happens it’s really no good, because it’ll just start cracking.

But if it’s nice and fresh all you have to do is pop it out. I dust my countertop just with either a little confectioner’s sugar or corn starch is great. I’m just using my sifter, and all I’m going to do is lightly just knead the fondant like I would with bread dough or anything like that, like if I was giving the fondant a massage–same process. Just knead it; you can see I’m using the heel of my hand and just pulling it towards me and pushing away. The same thing. We do that for a couple of colors, just make sure they’re ready to go. I have purple, green, and yellow; but obviously any color you like for any occasion.

And the only thing I’m going to do before I start rolling out my fondant is just prepare my cupcakes. So I have a little bit of butter cream, or you can use any type of frosting, really. But just take a little bit either with a spatula or a piping bag and just to give the fondant something to stick to. So here’s just a little dollop right in the middle. You don’t want to go too far out or it’s just going to make a big mess–just a little something. And who wants to eat just plain fondant without frosting? If I was using a piping bag I would just go in and just a little dollop. So we’re ready.

So again, a little confectioner’s sugar or corn starch in your sifter; just lightly dust the top and either this is my nice crunch rolling pin. You can use the kind with the handles. I’m just going to roll it out like I would with any pie dough or anything like that, constantly moving it so it’s not sticking to my surface. It’s really funny; you’ve got to put a little muscle into it. I want it to be really nice and thin; nothing is worse than a big thick bite of fondant on top of a lovely light little cupcake. So I try to go as thin as possible.

And then when I get to the point where I’m happy with it, which I’m almost there, I’m just going to brush off any additional. And I have a yellow one also that’s kind of ready to go. What I would do is either take a circle cutter, or you can use a fluted cutter–anything that will give you that same approximate shape of your cupcake. If you don’t have a cutter on hand a nice metal cup measure; this is a third of a cup, or kind of a standard sized homemade cupcake. The ones you buy in the store I think are like an actual cup. But for these I’m just going to press down and you can see I get a perfect circle.

So once you have that all you have to do is press on. The frosting should just come out to the edge. And that’s it; I’ll do one more.

And from here once you have your fondant on your cupcakes you could decorate it however you like with candy, with piping; you could pipe names or words, shapes, anything you like. And that’s how you put fondant on a cupcake.

Transcript

And all I’m going to do is, I’ve got my cake on my turntable. I have my rolling pin. And the best way is just to start at the edge and roll towards you, and if you find there are any big, kind of clumps of dry stuff on the bottom, just brush them off with your hands. And this is just the easiest way to transfer. Now that I have it, I can just lift up my rolling pin. Make sure you’re going far enough away from the edge that it’s not going to cut into the cake, so I’m starting kind of on the side. And just gently rolling over and releasing. And you definitely want to have extra. You don’t necessarily need this much extra, but you definitely want to have extra.

So, a good thing to do at this point is just kind of immediately, just to trim a little bit. So, with my paring knife, I’m just trimming off a bit of excess fondant because I have too much here. And don’t feel like you have to get rid of anything you don’t use. Just knead it back together. Make sure you wrap it up really tight, and you can see immediately, just like Play-Doh, it comes right back together and you can use it later. So, all I’m going to do is gently rub the surface. Make sure there are no air bubbles, and work my way down. And you’re starting right at the top, and if you see any folds, just as you go, you’re doing this very gently, and as it goes down, it’s just going to kind of start to stretch itself out and become like a little skirt. You can see I’m just moving around my cake and rubbing. And once I get toward the bottom, I can just kind of keep going and seal my edges.

Now is a great time for my smoother. Just kind of give it a quick rub and that should smooth down any big bumps that I have. Same thing, I can go around my sides if I want to. And you’re really looking for kind of 90 degree angles. And here’s the time when I would just start to trim. And if there are any little imperfections, keep in mind you’re going to be covering it anyway with decorations, but the nicer you can get it, the better. The problem with the bottom is if you, this is kind of the part where you may get crumbs, so this part I just kind of get rid of, unless you feel like it’s really clean and you want to save it, then save it, but otherwise it’s kind of unnecessary sacrifice. But I just make sure I go all the way around. Make sure it’s nice and smooth. And that is it. So, that’s a quick way to cover a cake with fondant.

Transcript

Today I’m going to show you how to use butter cream to create flowers on top of your cupcakes.

So you can see I have my cupcakes baked and they have a nice beautiful round top to them. That’s going to be the perfect base for our flowers. And I have some beautiful colors of butter cream. I have purple and white kind of blended together, yellow, white, and pink. So using different tips I’m going to show you how you can achieve different results.

First I’m going to start with probably the most complicated which is a little kind of rustic looking rose. So you can see I’m using a tip that’s almost like a tear drop shape but very rectangular. That’s going to let me build my leaves.

What I’m going to do is hold my cupcake in one hand, start in the middle, and just push my frosting out. You want your frosting to be nice and cool so that it’s really holding its shape. You can see already we kind of have the bud in the center of our rose. What I’m going to do is slowly build leaves or petals around the base.

You can see while I’m doing that those beautiful petals are just coming right out. I’m just pulling and building all the way around, just little leaves. This is very kind of rustic, fun looking, and very easy to do. If you’re looking for a more complicated rose you can get into that, but such an easy design and it really creates a fun, beautiful look. That’s really nice, and you can see how quickly we did that, a very easy rose.

If I wanted to add leaves I could just go in and take a bag without a tip and just lightly make a little bit of a V. You can see I’m going in one direction and then in the other to make a V shape. What I’m going to do is just kind of push my frosting, and pull, and let it fall off. That’s a beautiful, easy leaf. Do a couple more of those if you want. Just kind of let it fall off the edge. Really fun.

So that’s number one. We’re going to get a little more fun than that. We’re going to move into some pansies. You can see I took my frosting, and I’m looking for a two-tone design. I just put a big sploosh of white in on one side and a kind of big amount of purple in on the other, and I’m using a very similar tip to my rose. You can see it still has that same tear drop shape. This one is just a little bit smaller.

What I’m going to do is, again, lift up my cupcake. I’m going to go in this direction. You can kind of just create leaves and move all the way around. You can see as I push it pushes out and makes these beautiful two-tone flowers. You can kind of go in the middle and just fill it in a little bit. Very easy and fun design.