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In this cake decorating tutorial I'll show you how to make buttercream stripes and how to fix messy stripes! I'll also show you how to pipe a multi-coloured rope border on top of the cake and Christmas trees on the side.
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0:00
Let's cover a cake with buttercream stripes and Christmas trees
0:07
I thought it would be fun to include some behind-the-scenes shots in this tutorial too
0:12
I film with two cameras so that I have two different angles, and usually with a phone too
0:17
so that I can use those vertical clips for Instagram reels and maybe YouTube shorts too
0:23
Okay, striped frosting. Start with smooth frosting, but this doesn't have to be perfectly neat
0:28
You want straight sides on the cake and a level top, and the frosting needs to be thick enough that the grooves on your striped cake comb
0:36
can go through it without reaching the crumb coat underneath. For any indents in the frosting, it's easiest to do touch-ups now
0:44
spreading on more frosting and scraping again with your cake comb, rather than trying to touch up indents in the stripes later
0:53
When the frosting is fairly smooth, switch to a striped cake comb
0:57
These can be made of plastic, acrylic or metal, and I find that metal works best for me
1:03
The first few scrapes will look terrible, but keep scraping and you'll imprint the grooves of the cake
1:08
into the frosting on the cake. These grooves need to set, so once they're smooth
1:14
put the cake in the freezer for 15 minutes while you prepare piping bags with the other colours
1:18
you're going to use for your stripes. You'll also need an offset spatula and a straight-edged
1:23
cake comb and a little bowl for the frosting you scrape off the cake. After 15 minutes in the
1:29
freezer, the frosting will be cold and firm. Pip the next colors into the striped grooves
1:36
holding the piping bag very close to the surface of the frosting within the grooves, and squeezing
1:41
until you see the frosting bulging out to fill in the striped groove Pulling the turntable slowly to fill the groove all the way around the cake There are two things that can go wrong with striped cakes which happen really often and that why
1:56
people think striped frosting is so difficult. The first is if you don't completely fill these grooves
2:01
with these colours, then when you scrape next, the wrong colour can get into the groove and cause
2:07
random flex or spots within that stripe. The other thing that can go wrong is if you don't get the
2:13
frosting really smooth with the striped cake comb before adding these colours, these colours will get
2:19
into any air pockets or indents or air bubbles in that first colour of frosting and you'll have
2:24
random pink or green specks within the white stripes. After filling in the grooves, switch to a
2:31
straight-edged cake comb and scrape around the cake. With each scrape, you'll push the colours into the
2:37
grooves and you'll also take off the excess, flattening the coloured frosting until it's level
2:43
with the striped grooves of the first color, so all of the stripes are perfectly flat. It's a long
2:48
process to get there though, so keep scraping and after each scrape, wipe off the frosting from your
2:54
cake comb into that little bowl. I like to start with a plastic cake comb because it's the quickest
3:01
to use, but once the frosting starts to get smooth, I switch to a metal cake comb, which gives me
3:07
the smoothest frosting and the other benefit of a metal cake comb is that you can heat it, with hot
3:13
water or a blow torch, and the hot metal will melt the very outer layer of the frosting so it comes
3:19
very easily off the cake, leaving a super smooth surface underneath. Okay, let's talk about all of these
3:26
imperfections why they happen and how to fix them This big patch of green up here happened because something fell out of the freezer door onto the cake before the striped grooves had set and then I filled in the grooves with colours and when I scraped them with a straight cake comb those colours filled in the dented part of the stripe grooves
3:46
So there are patches of pink and green frosting where there should be neat stripes
3:52
These specks of green and pink within the white stripes are here because there were little indents in the white stripes
3:59
which were filled in when I scraped the colors around the cake with my straight-edged cake
4:03
cake comb. You can keep scraping to try to scrape the flex off, or if they're very deep
4:09
you can scoop out the coloured flex with an offset spatula or the corner of your cake comb
4:14
and then spread white frosting into the gouges and scrape that smooth. By now, the striped
4:20
frosting will probably have set, since the cake was in the freezer, so it's very cold
4:25
so using a hot metal cake comb is the easiest way to scrape around the cake now. And the stripes
4:31
are getting so neat. The top edge of the cake is uneven, but before leveling that
4:37
put the cake in the fridge for 15 minutes to set that uneven frosting. When it's cold and firm
4:43
you can slice it off the cake with a knife and that will give you a very sharp top edge around
4:47
the cake and prevent smudges or stains of coloured frosting on the top of the cake. Now let's add
4:55
some details. For a colourful border, put your leftover frosting into piping bags fitted with
5:01
with 1M piping tips or any other star-shaped tips. Pipe a little dot and then pipe a circle
5:08
swiping away at the end to leave a C shape. And then switch to the next colour and pipe another C to overlap it
5:16
If you only have one piping tip, just use only one colour for all of this piping
5:22
The dot at the beginning will raise the first C up so that it sitting at the same angle as all of the other piping This is called a rope border and it a great way to use up leftover frosting and also adds height and color and detail to the top of a cake
5:39
To add some Christmas trees, you can use any star-shaped piping tips
5:44
I'm piping the trunks with a number 363, which has short prongs very close together, and then for the green parts of the three-shaped piping tips
5:50
And then for the green parts of the trees, I'm using different star-shaped tips with longer prongs, more spaced apart from each other
5:59
This first one is a 1M tip which is huge, so it's fine for big trees, but for smaller trees, a smaller piping tip looks much neater, like these, a number 16 and a number 18
6:13
The technique for these trees is very simple and very forgiving. Start in the middle of the tree, above the trunk, and pipe outwards and downwards
6:22
starting with the longest line and then work your way up, piping shorter and shorter lines
6:28
so that the trees get narrower towards the top. If you're filming the process of decorating this cake and want a spin shot at the end
6:36
good luck getting the trees to face the camera at the end of the spin
6:41
To learn all about how to pipe stripes and more advanced stripe techniques like multi-coloured
6:46
stripes and peekaboo designs, check out my layer up program, which takes you through three layers of
6:52
skills and techniques to go from a beginner to a professional cake decorator, or join my all-you-can
6:59
cake membership for access to everything on my cake school. Visit Britishgirlbakes.com
7:04
or click the link in the screen or in the video description, to start your free trial
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