How to Decorate a Birthday Cake for Beginners

You've decided to bake and decorate a birthday cake from scratch - congrats!! Now what? I'm going to walk you through the entire process step-by-step: how to decorate a birthday cake for beginners.

There are numerous considerations when creating a homemade cake. Let's walk through exactly how to make your homemade cake.

First, it's important to consider what cake equipment is required. Likely you have many of these items in your home already - cake pans, electric hand or stand mixer, measuring cups and spoons. Some you will need to purchase (if you're going for the looks like it came from a bakery type cake!) I recommend investing in quality tools. I've experimented with less expensive tools and can say with certainty you do not get the same cake results.

Next, the perfect birthday cake recipe. Whenever I think about birthdays, the first flavour that pops to mind are the cakes where my mom used the best funfetti cake mix. Now, let's do a little upgrade and instead make a homemade version of the best funfetti cake recipe! I like to choose a recipe that has a little pizzazz, and sprinkle cake with sprinkle buttercream is sure to do the trick!

Moving right along, to top our moist funfetti cake, you need the perfect easy Swiss meringue buttercream. Don't worry if you haven't heard of this buttercream frosting before, I have a full tutorial below! It's important to select a frosting that is silky, smooth, and easy to apply to your cake. Frosting a cake can be daunting if you haven't been shown the tips and tricks. Carrying on...

Now that you have your fluffy buttercream frosting it's the fun part - learning how to frost a cake with buttercream. Did you know there are specific tools to make your cake perfectly smooth? No? Neither did I when I first started decorating cakes.

Follow along these posts in sequence from Step 1 to Step 4 to create a low stress, fun cake baking experience!

Here is how to decorate a birthday cake for beginners

I've created a schedule for baking and decorating your cake to take some of the stress off! Please note, I rarely bake and decorate a cake in one day. Instead, I spread my cake process out over a week.

If you enjoyed this step-by-step guide for decorating a cake, make sure you take a photo and tag BAKED by Blair on social media and use the #bakedbyblair. I would love to hear how you enjoyed the guide so comment below! If you want to pin this and save it for later, go ahead and click the pin button above and save it to your favourite desserts board on Pinterest! ENJOY!