Decorating a Cake With Absolutely No Experience

I will be the first to declare that I am the absolute worst at cake decorating. Seriously, absolute worst. So when I came upon a few tutorials (Moey’s Heart & Hearth, Hipknitized, Sunshine and a Summer Breeze) on decorating a cake simply by copying a coloring page…woo-freaking-hoo! We had a Vintage Batman birthday party for my 2 year old son last weekend and it was the perfect opportunity to give this a try.

The process is super easy. Just tape the image you want to be on your cake (here’s the Adam West line drawing we used) under a pane of glass. Then tape a sheet of wax paper on top of the glass. Don’t forget the image will be reversed when you flip it onto the cake. Won’t matter for some images but we wanted Batman to be on the left side of the cake so had to flip the image accordingly.

Whip up your frosting. It can either be store bought or homemade. I went with the Easy Vanilla Buttercream Frosting recipe that Moey’s Heart & Hearth recommended. I ended up using a cream cheese frosting on the rest of the cake though. (Big fans of cream cheese frosting over here.) Using a pastry bag and a small tip (smallest I had was #2), start outlining the image with frosting dyed black. Color in anything that is the color of your outline as well.

Mix up all the other colors. I kept mine rolled up in cellophane wrap and then pulled it through the tip of the pastry bag  when I need that color. It’s easy to just trim the edge of the cellophane down, screw on the tip, and then squeeze away. Makes clean up a breeze as well!

Continue coloring in your image until completely covered and then stick the whole thing in the freezer to harden. Ok, this is the part where I mention doing as I say, not as I do…Keep the frosted image in the freezer for a really really long time. And by “really really long time,” I mean more than a few hours. I’ll show you why in a second.

When the frosting has hardened all the way, you’re going to remove the wax paper with the frosted image and flip it on top of a completely cooled and frosted cake (the wax paper should be facing upward). Gently peel back the waxed paper to reveal your awesome cake decoration!

You see the hole in the middle of Batman’s head? That was a result of me not having enough time to let the frosting harden completely. If I was more prepared (sigh), I would have made this a day or two before I needed it and just let it sit in the freezer.

I just smoothed over the areas of the frosting that didn’t transfer as well. Turned out ok but if you look at the picture above, you can see that area of Batman’s forehead looks like a different shade. Meh, looked good enough for the 30 seconds it took to sing to Max and then the whole thing was devoured.

I’m thinking this little one didn’t care too much about the mistakes! Hope this helps all the other seriously inept cake designers out there. Good luck decorating a cake with your design!