Cake Decorating Day

What the day is

Cake Decorating Day is observed on October 10. It covers everything that happens after the cake comes out of the oven: filling, crumb coating, icing, piping and whatever is built on top.

The skills involved are not really cooking skills. Decorating is closer to plastering, modeling and drawing, which is why excellent bakers are often indifferent decorators and the reverse is equally common.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented.

Decorated cakes became possible at scale for the same reason angel food cake did: cheap refined white sugar. Royal icing, which sets hard and holds fine piped detail, is sugar and egg white, and the elaborate white wedding cakes of the nineteenth century were essentially demonstrations of how much sugar a household could afford.

The main materials each behave differently. Buttercream is forgiving, tastes good and softens in heat. Royal icing dries rigid and is used for detail and structure. Fondant is a sugar paste rolled out like sheeting, which gives the flawless smooth finish and is widely regarded as better to look at than to eat. Ganache sets firm enough to hold sharp edges and is what many professionals use under fondant.

Competitive and televised decorating has pushed the craft toward sculpture over the past two decades, with internal armatures, structural supports and techniques borrowed from model making.

How to take part

• Chill the cake before icing. A cold, firm crumb is vastly easier to work with.
• Do a crumb coat: a thin layer of icing, chilled until set, which traps loose crumbs before the final coat.
• Level the layers with a serrated knife. Almost every wonky cake is a leveling problem rather than an icing problem.
• Use an offset spatula and a bench scraper. These two tools do more than any set of piping tips.
• Warm the spatula in hot water and dry it to smooth buttercream.
• Practice piping on a plate and scrape it back into the bowl. Nothing is wasted.