Baking and Decorating Cakes

Cakes are meant for all festivals, occasions and celebrations: be it a birthday, anniversary or Christmas. These are also made in thousands of different varieties and types and never fail to tempt people of any age group. Well, if you are a novice at baking and wish to have some easy recipes, then you are at the right place. Here are some cake baking and cake decorating ideas and information.

The very first question to arise in the minds of amateurs in this subject is how to bake a cake. Well, here is a simple recipe of the most favorite type of cake: the chocolate cake!

Ingredients

• 1 oz of unsweetened chocolate
• 2 cups of all-purpose flour
• ½ cup of softened butter
• 2 cups of sugar
• 2 beaten eggs
• 1¼ teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract / vanilla flavor
• ½ cup of buttermilk
• 1 cup of water
• A pinch of salt

Method of Preparation

• In a saucepan, boil water and melt the butter and chocolates in it.
• Remove the mixture from the heat and add flour and sugar to it. Mix it well to form a homogeneous mixture.

• Now add baking soda, eggs, vanilla extract / flavor and buttermilk to it and mix until smooth.
• Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Add the mixture in a cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes.
• Check the cake after prescribed time. It is ready if soft but firm and the color is dark brown.

This is the easiest cake recipe for making basic chocolate cake. One of the most important cake baking tips is that you need to be careful in every step of making it. For e.g., if you miss out one ingredient, your cake or cupcake may taste different. Secondly, if you bake it for more time than prescribed, it may get burnt. Once you master the basic recipe, you can improvise using different substitutions.

Once you have mastered the technique of baking cakes, you will definitely wish to know how to decorate a cake! There are many easy cake decorating ideas that you can follow in order to make a cake like that in stores!

• Before beginning with the decoration, remember to let the cake cool off completely. A freshly baked cake should be placed on a wire shelf for cooling for a couple of hours before decoration.

• Butter cream icing or frosting is the most popular and widely used cake decorating designs. There are different icing pens available in the market that can be used for decoration.

• Using fondants is another cake decoration idea that can be easily used at home.
• Sugar icing or sugar frosting is one of the other cake decorating techniques which is easy and attractive. This technique is even used for decorating wedding cakes.

• Lastly, one of the best cake decorating ideas is to use sugar coated flowers and fruit pieces for cakes. Secondly, you can also make patterns of flowers on fondant and place them on cakes for decoration.
• Cupcake decorating ideas include use of jams and jellies, silver balls on cakes or even small candies.

• When thinking of decorating cakes from sides, the classical basket weave pattern is widely used. However, you need to master cake icing before going for it. You can rather stick to lines, waves, dots, stars and checks, as they are easy

Now that you know the basic cake recipe and basic ideas for decoration, you can practice with these recipe until you are perfect with it. After that you can try out different methods of baking and decorating cakes, and be a master at it.

You are sure to be successful if you follow the proper techniques. You will surely love decorating and baking cakes once you are successful in your first endeavor! Good luck!