Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid Before Decorating a Cake

Here are five mistakes you want to avoid before decorating any cake.

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Mistake #1: Allowing your cakes to cool in the pan. Without getting into a whole lot of science behind why this happens, simply put, if you leave your cakes to cool in the pan, chances are you will not be able to remove your cake from the pan, so just don't do it. There is one exception to this rule: When you’re using a Tube Pan to make angel food or chiffon cake.

Place cake layers on a wire rack to cool slightly before removing them from the pan.

Mistake #2: Leaving the dome on your cake. The process for removing a cake dome is called leveling. This can be done with a serrated bread knife or a leveler tool. To level your cake with a small leveler such as this, you want to make the adjustment for the height. Once you have that figured out, you are going to hold the leveler upright and slice through the dome. Once it's cut all the way through, you can see that the dome of the cake lifts off very easily and reveals a nice surface to the top of your cake.

Don't forget to level your cake layers with a leveler tool or serrated bread knife.

Mistake #3: Forgetting to pipe a barrier to contain the filling of your cake. Now, if you place a layer of cake on top of this, your filling is only going to spill out of the side, so make sure that you pipe a barrier not on the edge, but slightly in from the edge before placing your filling into the center of your cake.

Mistake #4: Icing the sides of your cake in long horizontal strokes. Now this is a mistake that I've seen quite often on social media. To get the best results when icing the sides of your cake, you really want to hold your angled spatula vertically, and instead of trying to ice the entire side at once, you really want to work in two-to-three-inch sections as you go around the side of your cake.

Mistake #5: Skipping the crumb coat. A crumb coat is a thin layer of icing that's meant to encapsulate any crumbs that may have fallen off your cake from this initial icing process. You do not want to skip the crumb coat if you're working with darker colored cakes, like chocolate cake, red velvet, carrot cake, spice cake, any of those cakes, and that's because the crumbs are a lot darker and they could potentially be harder to cover up, especially if you're using lighter colored icing.

A "Crumb Coat" hardens to keep loose cake crumbs out of your final layer of frosting.

Bonus mistake: Icing your cake with icing that is way, way too thick. Doing so will tear your cake apart. When you ice your cake, your icing should be thin and have a whippy texture, but never watery.

Comment below and tell me which of these mistakes you've made in the past. I will admit I am completely guilty of skipping the crumb coat on quite a few occasions, but what is it for you?