Decorate your child's cake

By BRIGITTE ROZARIO

Decorating your child's birthday cake need not be something complex, expensive and professional. It could be something simple and you could even do it yourself at home and with the help of your child.

Lu Soo Chee, sugar artiste at The Cooking House in Desa Sri Hartamas, Kuala Lumpur, says although there is intense competition these days among parents to have the best cake and best party for their child, there is no reason why parents can't bake and decorate the cake themselves.

“If you decorate with the kids it also provides the opportunity to bond with your children. If you're worried about things not turning out up to your expectations then do it a day in advance. This way, if you want to, you can do redo it a bit if there are any mistakes that you need to correct,” says Lu.

After you bake the cake, let it cool down for a minimum of four hours. After that you can start decorating it.

Lu with some of the simple chocolate and candy toppings that can be used to decorate a cake.

As cupcakes are the current craze, you might even consider having cupcakes instead of one big cake.

“It's a great idea to have cupcakes instead of one big cake because you can control the number according to how many guests you are expecting. If you bake a 9in round cake, somebody might have a bigger piece and someone else might have a smaller piece,” says Lu.

The base

It is best if you make your own icing instead of buying the instant type from the cake ingredients shops or supermarkets. Lu recommends this because this way you know what goes into it.

“Which is not to say the instant type is not good. They really make life easy but you don't know what preservatives they use to make sure the icing stays on the shelf slightly longer.”

What type of icing to decorate with?

Marzipan is great for wedding cakes but should be ruled out for children's cakes. Firstly, because of the high cost. Secondly, not everybody likes the smell of the almonds. Thirdly, there are limits to what you can do with marzipan because it is so sweet; if you add anything sweet on top of the marzipan that's almost a lethal combination.

The choices for icing are then basically butter, fondant or chocolate.

“Butter icing is pretty easy to mix because it has only three ingredients – butter, icing sugar and milk. In fact, some people only use butter and icing sugar.

“The only thing about it is you need to have a bit of skill to pipe it so that it looks more professional. But of course if you feel this is just a children's cake, you don't really care what it looks like and the more fun the better, that can work as well,” she says.

Lu says it might not be a good idea to let children handle fondant icing because it is difficult to deal with. If the mother wants to do it she will need to learn some basic skills on how to handle the fondant. In addition, fondant dries up quite fast and once it dries up it does not look so elegant, so you have to be pretty quick.

“Butter icing is still the easiest and that is what most mothers use.

“It would be better if mothers could go for a basic course to learn how to handle the consistency and also how to handle certain ingredients like butter. As you know butter melts when it is hot and our body releases heat so you need to learn how long you can hold the icing when piping it and also how to cover up when you have a problem,” says Lu.

As for chocolate, all you have to do is melt the milk chocolate (the one for cooking, not your favourite candy) and pour it over the cake. You can even use white milk chocolate if you want the icing to be off-white in colour.

Lu says if you're melting white chocolate you can then add colour to it to make it even more interesting. The icing colours can be bought at your local ingredients shop. They come in small little containers.

Take note that melted chocolate takes about 10 minutes to solidify so be clear about what you plan to do with that melted chocolate before you start.

Decorate it

If you're really pressed for time and you don't think your hand is steady enough to decorate the cake or you're not sure how creative you can be, then why not opt for some plastic figures.

If your child is into toy soldiers, get some plastic green soldiers, wash them first, dry them and then place them on the icing, strategically of course. Or for a football fan, there are always the tiny plastic footballers – just don't forget the football.

Lu says, “There's no harm in using plastic figures because they won't be on the cake for long. The only disadvantage is that all the figures might look identical. If you are short of time, or if you don't want to mould the figures, then using plastic figures is a good idea.”

However, if you're worried about putting inedible plastic objects on your child's cake, then why not use Smarties, M&M's, candies, sugar sprinkles or even Oreo biscuits?

You can even use these candies and chocolates to form an image or word. Just use your imagination to decorate the cake.

“Another ingredient that the cake shops use is piping gel. It's a gel and it's very sweet. You can add colours to it. Piping gel is a good idea if you want to make a swimming pool effect as part of the decoration on your cake. This gives you a realistic touch because it looks like water. And it's pretty easy to use.

“If you are creative you can use all of these assistive ingredients to play around with.”

Chocolate can be used again to decorate the cake. According to Lu you can mix a bit of milk to it for a different colour and texture.

“You can also change its form by mixing in liquid glucose to harden it so that you can then mould it into shapes. Or you can even do something really, really simple which is to buy the chocolate mould, then melt the chocolate and pour it in to get different shapes.”

Conclusion

The only thing required for anyone who wants to decorate a cake and make it look good is time and patience, informs Lu.

“A major problem for people who want to decorate a cake is that they try to make it look very professional and they want it to be perfect. When they do this they miss out on the beauty of the imperfect. Actually, if you get your children to decorate the cake with you you will notice the cake is imperfect. Yet, because of the inspiration and the fun of doing it, it drives them and it looks very pretty at the end of the day. The cake looks cute and often touches the heart of the parent.

“So in my opinion it is really not necessary for you to make a perfectly presented cake like a beautiful wedding cake.”

She recommends letting the children experiment with colours as they tend to be more creative while adults are normally more conservative when it comes to mixing colours.

“It all depends on how open you are because decorating a cake is about creativity, so don't be so conservative about the colours and ingredients,” says Lu.

Two examples of fairly simple cake decoration that can be done at home.