\u00a0Learning how to use a shaped cake pan was how I learned to decorate cakes- so therefore, it’s how you should learn to!\u00a0 Hahaha!!\u00a0 Just kidding.\u00a0 Using a shaped cake pan is ONE of many ways you can learn to decorate, and since it’s the way that I’m familiar with, I chose to show you in this tutorial.\u00a0\u00a0 When using a shaped cake pan, the lines and indentations are made for you, so the spatial piece that comes with design isn’t as tricky.\u00a0 There is still some amount of challenge as you have to figure out where each line is connected, but all in all, it is way easier than free-handing a complicated design.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When baking the cake batter in the cake pan, I will be honest and tell you that using a box mix is probably the better choice.\u00a0 For whatever chemical\/preservative reason, the baked box mixes come out of the cake pan much easier than a cake from scratch does.\u00a0 I’d rather not think anymore about what that reason is!\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are many ways you can go about decorating a shaped cake, but I find it easiest to start with the outline, and then do the little areas that are other colours, or specific shapes etc, so once those are all done, you can quickly fill in the rest of the cake with the main colour(s).\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are a number of companies that sell shaped cake pans, but Wilton seems to lead the way in shaped Character pans.\u00a0 A simple Google or Amazon search will offer you hundreds of choices of characters!\u00a0 Garage sales or yard sales are also an excellent source of cake pans.\u00a0 Cake pans sometimes serve a one time birthday purpose, and then collect dust in the bottom of a cupboard.\u00a0 If you are lucky like me, you head to a garage sale from a former cake decorator and you hit the mother load of shaped cake pans!\u00a0 That is how I acquired the many shaped pans that I had, but when I stopped decorating cakes as a business, I sold them on an online site- which brings me to the point that online buy and sell sites are also great places to get cake pans.\u00a0 There’s no need to pay the full amount (usually $25-$50) when you can get it for $5 second hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As when exploring anything as a beginner, reaching perfection takes time.\u00a0 Don’t give up.\u00a0 Practice until you’ve got it perfectly decorated.\u00a0 And then you can thank me later.\u00a0 Haha!\u00a0<\/p>\n