When I first began baking I was overwhelmed with all of the options for bakeware. These essential tools for decorating cake are stocked in my kitchen at all times. I use them every single day!
This blog post contains affiliate links, that means at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase. (This post was originally published July 14th, 2020 and has since been updated).
Tools:
A KitchenAid or a hand held mixer. This mixer is extremely durable and helps immensely with baking and decorating! It’s certainly possible to decorate cakes without one - and if you are just starting out, I recommend starting with a hand held mixer. I use my handheld mixer for recipes that require less steps.
When you're making Swiss meringue buttercream you need to whip egg whites into stiff peaks. This process can be extremely time consuming (not to mention hard on your arms) if you're using a hand held mixer. I recommend getting a KitchenAid with a metal bowl not the glass one. I've previouslyhad a glass bowl break while I was making buttercream.
A bench scraper. If your goal is to make a smooth cake, this is 100% necessary. A bench scraper is essentially a tall metal or plastic tool that allows you to smooth out your buttercream of any lumpy or rough bumps. I have about 15 different types of bench scrapers. I started with Wilton, tried out Kake by Darci, and also purchased one at William’s Sonoma. My favourite is my far my Ester Cake Comb. I purchased the Smooth Hound, in addition to many others! Purchasing a bench scraper that is tall assists with scraping cakes that are taller!
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A cake turntable. This will make your cake decorating life so much easier! I started out with a plastic cake turn table I purchased on amazon (find it here) but I absolutely do not recommend this one unless you are going to be making 5-10 cakes a year. If you are going to be making more, I would recommend investing in a higher quality one such as the one I linked.
Piping Bags and a set of piping tips. Decorating cakes is so much fun and you can make amazing designs with these must haves! I recommend starting with two piping tips. The Wilton 1M and 4B tips!
Offset Spatula. You can absolutely use a regular knife to spread your buttercream, but this will make your decorating substantially easier! Keep in my there are different sizes, but I prefer to decorate my 6” cakes with the small spatula and larger cakes with the large spatula.
There you have it! A complete list of all the tools you need to get started decorating beautiful cakes!
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