Basic Cake Decorating Tips—Pan Preparation
A lot of people don’t realize that pan preparation is an essential step of the basic cake decorating process. If you don’t prepare your pans correctly all your hard cake decorating work will go to waste because your cake will probably taste terrible!
Make sure to follow these basic cake decorating steps to make sure your next cake decorating project is a success.
Proper pan preparation is essential for any cake but becomes even more critical when baking large cakes, such as sheet cakes and wedding cakes. If you don’t prepare the cake pan properly it might not come out evenly making decorating extremely difficult.
There are many cake decorating tools available to prepare your cake pan for batter. These include parchment paper, butter, shortening, and flour cooking spray. There are pros and cons to using each type–you’ll probably discover a method you like best over time. If you use cooking spray be sure to use the kind that contains flour otherwise you’ll get a gummy residue on your pan that’s hard to clean.
When using butter or shortening, take a piece of paper towel or wax paper and spread evenly all over the inside of your cake pan including every little nook and cranny. Take a handful of flour and rotate the pan in your hands to spread evenly over the layer of butter or shortening. You only need a light coating of flour. Gently tap the pan with your hands and dump out any excess flour.
Once your pan is coated, you can now add parchment paper. This adds a double layer of protection to make sure you cake turns out cleanly. Cut out the shape you need and place the paper in the bottom of your pan. You don’t need to add parchment paper to bundt pans unless you have a lot of extra time to spare!
You can also grease and flour the parchment paper for mega cake release performance.
An essential lesson of basic cake decorating is learning how to prepare your pans. Spending a little extra time at the beginning of your cake decorating project can save a lot of headaches later on! Plus, the more you do it the easier it gets. Soon you’ll be prepping your pans without even thinking about.
For more basic cake decorating tips try Cake Decorating for Dummies.
