Birthday Present Cake Decorating and Baking Tutorial

Tutorial Preview

Join NOW to access 1661 courses Watch Now
14 Day FREE Trial
Birthday Present
with Paul Bradford
Skill level: Easy
HD Lessons: 8
Decorating time: 3 hrs
Now Playing
06:05

1. Icing the Cake

To start the creation of the Birthday Present Cake cake, you will need to stack two 6” square cakes, ganache them and then you can move onto the icing phase covered at the start of this lesson. To see exactly how to do this please refer to this course – Jimmy Choo Shoe

The boxed present section of the cake is then covered with a vintage cream coloured sugarpaste, of course if you prefer you can opt to use white sugarpaste for this. Covering in panels will make for a much sharper and neater finish on the cake.

Now Playing
13:52

2. Icing the Cake (Continued)

Prepare the board for your cake by first gluing the board and carefully placing some rolled out ivory sugarpaste.

Trim the edges of the sugarpaste with a sharp knife then run your fingertips along the edges to soften them.

A button design is pressed into the sugarpaste using a button trim mould from FMM available here – http://www.fmmsugarcraft.com/products.php?product=Straight-Frill-13%252d16

Duck egg blue sugarpaste is used to create stripes for the cake, add a small amount of tylose powder to this to help it firm up if the sugarpaste feels too soft. A ribbon cutter is a very useful tool to cut even stripes, set this to around 1¼” (approx 3.2cm) in thickness.

Attach the sugarpaste stripes vertically to the cake with the help of a set square to get everything looking neat and straight.

Now Playing
14:21

3. Icing the Top

Cut away the stripes so they equal  10cm (approx 4”)  in height, this creates the perfect area for the box lid.

Apply an edible glue to the top of the cake in preparation for the lid, this ensures a nice neat and secure finish. More duck egg blue sugarpaste is rolled out to form the top piece (to about 3-4mm thickness) then, cut this approximately to the size of the box lid and trim off any excess once the sugarpaste is on the cake.

Four horizontal strips of duck egg blue are added to finish the box lid, to create these measure the thickness needed and follow the same steps as used to make the stripes in lesson 2.

Now Playing
08:31

4. Making the Bow

Transfer the cake to your cake board with the help of a palette knife, push in and tidy up any loose sugarpaste at the bottom of the cake by carefully going around the base with a PME blade tool or similar.

A bow on the box part of the cake adds an extra level of cuteness and expertise to the cake, this can be created by first using the vintage sugarpaste and ribbon cutter tool (Paul uses crimped discs on the ribbon cutter) Extra detail is added using the stitching tool and then the pieces are ready to use for the ribbon. Follow Paul’s method as shown when making the ribbon.

Now Playing
03:24

5. Painting the Buttons

Before we start to create the sugarpaste boy model, a splash of colour on the buttons is needed. A uniform pattern of different colours is added to the buttons using lustre dusts, if you prefer paint the buttons a bit more random this will also work fine but try and get your colours to fit with the current colour scheme of the cake.
Now Playing
21:45

6. The Boy

The boy is created using sugarpaste of different colours, starting with the legs and moving upwards Paul will talk you through each of the techniques involved to keep this part super simple.
Now Playing
01:18

7. Other Ideas

View this lesson to hear about some other ideas for this cake, the main option is to make the cake suitable for a boy or a girl by creating a girl model instead. We hope you enjoyed creating this cake (or even just watching the videos) and feel free to let us know how you got on!
Now Playing
01:21

8. Pro Lesson

Paul talks business in this weeks pro lesson by covering realistic pricing, time limits to make the cake and more!

Learn how to make a Birthday Present Cake, a great cake for a beginner to cake decorating. The Birthday Present Cake would perfectly suit a 1st or 2nd birthday celebration or christening and elements of the cake can be easily customised to suit either a boy or a girl. The cake features a large present with bow, sugarpaste model of a boy and decorative button design on the cake board. Super cute!

The sugarcraft techniques involved are ganaching and icing a square cake, creating a sugar model boy and sugarpaste bow.

Paul Bradford

Paul Bradford

Paul Bradford´s mission is to ‘Empower people to achieve their cake decorating dreams’ by providing a range of cake decorating courses and online tutorials through their website, which currently teaches 195,000+ students.  
14 Day Free Trial