Cake Tip: Add A Frosting Frame

A cake with a frame. Adding the design detail is easy when you create an outline to follow.

A piped icing frame around lettering on a cake is a nice way to add decoration and little extra oomph to the design. Piping a perfect shaped frame is easy to do if you first create an outline and you do this using a dish. That's right, a dish.

Let me explain. First add the lettering to your cake then find a dish with a shape you like that fits around the writing.

For a recent sheetcake, I used a 2.5 quart CorningWare casserole dish. Once you have your dish, you just carefully set it upside down centered around the lettering on your cake so that the lip creates an outline in the base frosting to follow for piping your frame. Carefully remove the dish, add the piping and you have a frame for your cake.

The casserole dish that I used.

Adding the piping.

Piping closeup. I used a Wilton star tip for this design.

A few icing roses are also nice but that's another story.

Dinosaur Cake

I've said it before and I'll say it again — I'm not a fan of fussy cake decorations using gumpaste, fondant and crusting buttercream.

They all are sickly sweet and frankly taste terrible. Crusting buttercream isn't even made with butter. It's made with shortening and bakeries like it because it's cheap to make and forms a protective crust that makes cakes iced with it easier to box and transport.

For me, taste is what matters most and nothing is better than a subtly sweet Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  So that's what I used to make this Dinosaur Cake for my Goddaughter GraceLin's 5th birthday celebration.

My secret for adding a perfectly shaped dinosaur to the top of the cake is to use a cookie cutter as my guide to make a template. Then all you have to do is trace the template with a toothpick or skewer and add icing and decorations. It really is easy.

Here's how:

Use a dinosaur cookie cutter as a guide to draw a template. I made the template out of cardboard from a cereal box.

Cut the template out.

Position the template on the cake. I had to give the tail a clip to make it fit better.

Use a skewer or toothpick to outline the template.

Now this dinosaur is ready for some color.

Outline the dinosaur with green buttercream.

Fill the outline with more green buttercream and use a small knife to spread and smooth it out.

Looking good.

I used the pink candy hearts to make spikes down the dinosaur's back.

Just stick them in upside down.

Break some of the white hearts in half for toes.

That was easy.

Use a candy sprinkle for the eye.

GraceLin is going to love it!

Swedish Pearl Sugar makes perfect dinosaur teeth.

The candy decorations add nice pops of color to the design.

I added a bit of hot pink sanding sugar down the dinosaur's back and I used a skewer to write "Happy Birthday" so that I can be sure all the letters fit before going over them with icing.

This cake is ready!

Easter Decorating Tips