How to Reduce Cake Decorating time in HALF

When you are selling cakes, you know that Time is money. 

So improving efficiency in the cake decorating process means;

• No stress
• Improved Productivity
• More Profit!!!

Here's how you can cut your cake decorating time in half;

1. Clean Bakes - We often forget the importance of a clean bake. It is as important as your decorating skills. An even stable bake means you will save tons of time trying to fix it like trimming off the brown edges off the cake, layering it, cutting off the dome or fixing a sunken middle etc. And you will also decrease the chances of cake fails once decorated.

There is a misconception that you need lots of complicated recipes for various flavour cakes. How I work, and teach this exact method in my Online School, is to have one or two simple yet effective recipes that you can adapt to different flavours. 

For example, a simple Vanilla sponge recipe can be adapted to different flavours like;

• Lemon Cake - replace the vanilla extract in recipe with lemon extract and add 1 lemon zest.
• Almond Cake - replace the vanilla extract in recipe with almond extract and add 2 tbsp flaked almonds
• Rose and Pistachio cake - replace the vanilla extract in recipe with Rose extract and add 2 tbsp chopped pistachios and 2 tbsp dried rose petals

This single step alone will save you tons of time which will ensure you spend your energy and time in valuable tasks like growing your business or learning a new skill.

2. Cake Basics - We live in an age of information overload where we have access to tons of videos in our fingertips. The result of this is that we spend more time watching videos than actually learning or practising the basics.  

Basics like;

• Knowing colour theory and choosing colour combinations that work in a cake design easily and without wasting time.
• Prepping the cakes like crumb coating your cake with buttercream and letting it rest in fridge for 30 minutes before covering it with buttercream to achieve a smooth finish. 
• Preparing stable buttercream to cover the cake with smooth glossy finish.
• If it's tiered cakes, make sure you dowel them (4-5 dowels) and secure it with a central dowel too. 

3. Stable Buttercream - Learn a good buttercream recipe that is stable, easy to work with and also delicious (don't forget this part, I believe that a cake needs to always taste better than it looks!). We use our Signature buttercream for all decorations, which you can learn in our Online School.

Some buttercream hacks;

• Use superfine icing sugar so that your butter and sugar incorporates well for a stable non grainy buttercream
• Ensure you use slightly cold butter so the butter whips up well 
• Don't over beat your butter so you won't end up with tons of air holes in your buttercream
• Use milk powder, whipping cream powder or meringue powder to stabilise your buttercream further

4. Learning the Art - Carve out time to learn and master your chosen style of cake decorating. This will enable you to develop your style, improve your efficiency and thus save time.

When you focus on one medium, it's a no-brainer for your customers to order from you :)

I hope you found this write up useful. 

If you have questions, pls email me [email protected]

Much love,

Neetha