Beginners Essential Cake Equipment Guide

In our Cake Craft And Cake Decorating Shop we are frequently asked about what products are best required to begin cake baking and cake decorating? Whether you will be creating a celebration cake or a wedding cake having the correct equipment is essential.

 

Baking Tins – Having a small selection but high quality baking tins is a good starting point. The most commonly used tins are  6” 8” 10”  round and square. Depending on their use these tins can be purchased in 3 inch or 4 inch deep sizes.

 

Cake leveller – A good sized cake levelling knife 20” or a actual cake leveller is ideal for slicing and cutting cakes straight.

 

Palette knives – Useful for spreading jam and buttercream and trimming sugar paste. A long bladed straight and short bladed cranked knife are the most useful.

 

Non Rolling pins  – The non stick smooth design is perfect for rolling out icing to cover cakes and the non stick surface makes handling large pieces of sugar paste easy. A 20”and  9” are the most useful and practical sizes.

 

Smoother(s) – Smooths sugar paste to a beautiful flawless surface. A rounded base edge prevents marking the icing and the square back helps to create a clean angle between sides and base.

 

Icing tubes (nozzles) and bags – a basic writing tube and star tube are a must.  When choosing a bag for piping royal icing, either silicone, greaseproof or a nylon piping bag with an adaptor is perfect.

 

Tools – a pair of fine bladed scissors, a double ended cutting tool and a sugarcraft  knife are the most useful and  further cake craft tools can be added at a later date.

 

Good quality brushes -Round and flat for painting and dusting.

 

Selection of basic concentrated  paste (gel) colours  – can be mixed just like paints to create further colours.

 

Selection of basic cutters – Available in metal or plastic, there is a huge range available and can be collected as you go. A round, rose petal and leaf,  ivy leaf,  blossom and other shapes such as heart, star cutters are very useful.

 

Mixing Bowl – A large bowl is essential for mixing cake and icing mixtures.

 

Paintbrushes – You need a medium brush for sticking models and a fine brush for painting detail.

 

Spatula – Used for getting cake mixture and icing out of bowls.

 

Tape Measure – Used for measuring boards, cakes and ribbon.

 

Additional Equipment

 

Marzipan spacers   –   to ensure an even thickness when rolling out marzipan and sugarpaste.

 

Cake lifter  –  for easy lifting of larger cakes.

 

Bake even strips  –  To assist even baking of the cake, and prevent the outside from overcooking.

 

Cake thermometer  –  To test the cake on removal from the oven.

 

Sugar sifter  –  Convenient way to dispense icing sugar when rolling out sugarpaste.

 

Turntable  –  Not essential but does make cake decorating easier.

 

Crimpers  –  A quick and easy way to add decoration to a sugarpasted cake.

 

Icing ruler  –  For smoothing across the top of royal iced cakes.

 

Side scraper  –  For smoothing around the side of a royal iced cake.

 

Alphabet cutters  –  An easy way to create lettering if you are not confident with piping skills.

 

Number cutters  –  An easy way to create numbers if you are not confident with piping skills.

 

Loving Everything To Do With Cakes!

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