This how-to cake decorating guide is full of step-by-step instructions, plus tips and tricks to help you decorate the perfect cake for a birthday bash, Hallowe’en party or other celebration. Includes a free cake design for a dragon from Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, plus links to my favourite cake and frosting recipes. Get messy and have fun with this one!
Jump to Recipe
Printable Cake Decoration Guide
Free Light Dragon Cake Design
Tips and Tricks
Cake Storage
Some of the most precious memories I have from my childhood are of the annual birthday cakes my mum lovingly baked and decorated for me. I remember being filled with excitement, watching her bake the cake and decorate it. It was especially fun when I got to help with the decorating, though of course eating the cake was always the highlight.
Each slice of cake tasted even sweeter knowing it was made by her. I want to share some of this enchantment by providing step-by-step instructions for creating fun party cakes that will hopefully transport you back to more carefree days.
I still usually bake my own birthday cakes to this day in the style my mum made them. It’s something I look forward to every year. For my most recent birthday, I chose to make a cake inspired by the Light Dragon from Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.
It’s a chocolate zucchini cake (also my mum’s recipe) with buttercream frosting, Smarties (candy covered chocolate tablets), jelly beans, shredded coconut flakes, and marshmallows.
I used natural food dyes for the buttercream frosting – turmeric for the yellow and blue spirulina powder for the blue. The blue spirulina didn’t add any additional taste to speak of. The turmeric was a faint flavour, since I purposely left it out in a dish on the counter to go stale before using it. I kind of liked the turmeric icing though (I mean, I just enjoy turmeric) – it added a kind of unusual flavour for a cake, but I thought it reflected the uniqueness of a dragon very fittingly. For most situations I’d probably recommend making a mango reduction for a natural yellow food colouring instead, but this was surprisingly good. I personally would totally have turmeric frosting again!
As adults, it’s important to sometimes indulge in moments of happy nostalgia and reconnect with our inner child. For me, party cakes have a remarkable ability to evoke memories and transport me back into happy memories and remind me of the magic of being a child. I’m sure we all have that one thing that is a happy reminder of days past, and it’s important to never forget it.
I think that decorating a cake should be just as enjoyable as eating it. For the purpose of this guide, decorating cakes in this manner is just an act of love. This style of cake decoration is an opportunity to “take chances, make mistakes, and get messy,” as Miss Frizzle would say. So let loose your creativity with this fun party cake decorating guide!
As adults, it’s important to sometimes indulge in moments of happy nostalgia and reconnect with our inner child.
While your cake design can be as elaborate as you desire, try to choose a design that can be achieved with a basic shape, icing, and an assortment of colourful candies. The goal is to create a visually appealing cake without the need for intricate artistic skills (I’ll do a different post about painterly-style cake decorating another time). The simplicity of your party cake should allow the texture of the icing and the placement of the candy to work together to create your chosen design image for you. You will, of course, have to make some decisions about shape, placement and colour, so try to be thoughtful and purposeful with these aspects.
Delicious buttercream frosting serves as the perfect creative canvas here. The smooth silky texture of buttercream makes it easy to work with, plus it tastes great! When you’re selecting candy for decorating, try to choose types that complement your chosen design and colour palette. Vibrant and varied types of candies add a playful touch and elevate the overall look of the cake.
Decorating a cake should be just as much fun as eating it.
For my recent birthday party cake, I chose to design a cake inspired by the Light Dragon from Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Check out this inspiration drawing I did for my design!
A Few Tips and Tricks
Get A Cake Board First!
I recommend picking out the board for your cake before choosing your design. This can be just about anything as long as it can support the weight of the cake – a marble slab, a cutting board, a cookie sheet, a big plate, or even a piece of heavy thick cardboard covered in tin foil. Use whatever is available and suits your budget.
Cake Board Sizing
As a general rule, your cake board should be at least a couple inches larger than your cake. For example, if you were making a rectangular cake that’s 9×13”, you’ll want a cake board that’s about 12×16”. If you’re making an 8” round cake, look for at least a 10” cake board. This isn’t mandatory, but it can make your life a lot easier, especially once you’ve also added the frosting and and decorations.
Picking Out A Cake Design
You can find lots of great reference pictures on Pinterest, or through a quick web search. Pinterest is great for research like this because you can create a board with multiple images, then pull what you like from several of them for your cake design. From unicorns to cats in business suits, you can find great reference pictures for just about anything online.
I drew my own cake design just because I love drawing, but you definitely don’t have to do this. You can really choose any design that captures your imagination, as long as the outline is simple enough to recreate with cake. The sky is almost limitless here – just like in Tears of the Kingdom! (haha)
Drawing Your Design
Once you have your design inspiration pictures and references, draw your basic cake design to scale on some paper and cut out the shape. Printer paper or baking parchment will do just fine, though you’ll likely need two pieces of printer paper, depending on the size you’d like your cake to be.
Shape Mapping
If you find you struggle with drawing a certain pose, look for more reference photos. Try to look at the components that create the image, not at the image as a whole collective. You can even cut some basic shapes out of extra paper (like triangles, squares, or circles) and use them to reconstruct your design more easily.
When I’m looking at reference pictures, I ask myself, “How many shapes can I find in this?”
Next, I will trace the outline of the collective shapes I found, then refine it to get a cake outline shape that I can realistically cut out of the baked cake.
I also find it helpful to add a couple details to the basic shape I will be cutting out and laying on the cake.
Decorating with Pointillism
There’s a technique in painting known as pointillism that this type of cake decoration uses heavily. Pointillism became popular amongst several Neo-Impressionist painters in the late 1880’s, largely in France.
For our purposes, pointillistic cake decoration involves creating lots of texture with many individual dots of frosting, placed in rows, then adding candies to enhance these patterns. Two inches from your eyeballs, it doesn’t look like much, but when you stand up and look at your cake from a regular distance, you’ve made a lovely image.
I actually think this approach is somewhat similar to filling in the spaces in a colouring book. It also can give you a similar sense of calm and child-like satisfaction, at least it does for me.
Complex Cakes: Make Your Cut-Out Design Into Puzzle Pieces!
If the cake pattern is more complex, I add a few steps. First I lay the full-scale cut-out design over the baked cake and cut out the shape. Next, I take my paper design and cut it up into sections, whatever chunks of the design make sense.
Then I place these back over the cut-out cake, like puzzle pieces, and hold them in place with toothpicks. I remove one section at a time as I decorate the cake with frosting. This assures that I have more control over the decorating and keep the correct proportions for the design as I go. This “puzzle piece” process helps so much, especially with cake designs that have a lot of lines or details.
Piping Tips
- Freeze your cake before cutting and icing it. It’s so much easier to work with frozen cake.
- I recommend using some variety of star-shaped tip for piping frosting in this fashion, however the petal tips can look really nice too! Just pick the one you like best; you can always pipe a few lines of icing on a piece of wax paper first to see if you like the look of it, or just for practice!
- Ice one section of the cake at a time, starting with the outline of each section before icing the middle.
- Pipe many dots to create these borders and fill the centre of each area. Try to pipe the icing dots in repeated rows. This also adds some extra dimensionality to the cake design.
- Decorate with only one colour of frosting at a time, usually starting with the lightest shade and finishing with the darkest (excluding any details like eyes, etc – do these last, always).
- Ice the sides of the cake in one section as the last step before you switch to your next colour of frosting. If you don’t have enough frosting in the end, at least the cake will still look great from the top view! So, ice the sides last, whenever possible.
- Make sure to use a new piping bag for each frosting colour, or thoroughly clean your piping bag in between colours (if using a reusable cloth piping bag).
- Don’t lean over your cake while decorating. Instead of reaching for a far away section of the cake (which will not only be more difficult, but also potentially strain your arms), simply rotate the whole cake board so you can decorate with ease.
The Fun Party Cake Decorating Guide
Give yourself a few hours to prepare the icing and decorate your cake. I’ve made these cakes in as little as 2 hours or as long as 8 hours – it really depends on how large your cake will be, and how much detail you want to add in the decorating.
This recipe is designed for the use of 1 single 9×13” sheet cake. For larger cakes or 3-tier round cakes, suggestions are included for the appropriate amount of frosting, candy and cake to use.
Choosing A Cake Design
Choose something fun, but simple enough. Look for the basic outline of the shape, without any major details or cut-out shapes.
I’ve listed some of my own suggestions below, to get you started. Keep in mind the detail has to be pretty simple because we are using candy and icing. You don’t need to be an artist for this either!
Some of my design suggestions:
- Basic animals, possibly in fun colours – i.e. purple cat, red dog, blue horse, barn cow, Dalmatian dog, golden goose, etc.
- Objects with basic outline shapes – i.e. video game controller, sword, stringed instrument like a guitar, piano keyboard, boat, pirate ship, car, bicycle, teapot, clock, etc.
- Food – i.e. a bunch of bananas, tomatoes on the vine, eggplant, fish, breakfast plate with fried eggs and sausages, ramen bowl, broccoli head, or even a fruit basket!
- Fantasy creatures or television characters – i.e. dragon, mermaid, unicorn, garden gnome, fairy, monster, etc.
Ingredients
Note: If you’re strapped for time but want to enjoy the decorating process and create a special design, just buy ready-made cake and frosting, plus the candy.
Remember, this process should be fun and not too stressful, if at all possible. There’s no exam at the end, just cake!
- Baked Cake
- For my cake I used 1 single 9×13” sheet cake, but you might need a larger cake. This could be 1-3 sheet cakes (9×13” each) or 2-3 round cakes (8” diameter each).
- The amount of cake you need really depends on how large of a final cake you want, how many people are eating the cake, how large is your cake board, etc.
- Try using my mum’s Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cake recipe, or the chocolate coconut beet cake from my Monster Cake post. They are both so tasty!
- Buttercream Frosting
- Click here for my basic buttercream recipe!
- As a rough idea, plan to use 4 cups of frosting per 1 sheet cake or 2 round cakes. This means you may need up to 8 cups of frosting for 2 sheet cakes, or up to 6 cups of frosting for a 3-tier round cake. Really depends how much decorating you want to do!
- Having a bit of extra icing also helps, especially for larger cakes using many different icing colours.
- You can always freeze the frosting you don’t use – just use it within a couple months.
- Colourful Candies and Toppings
- The amount of candy you’ll need depends on your cake sign and design. I usually get 1-2 cups of candy for a small cake, and more for a larger cake.
- Smarties (or other candy-coated chocolate tablets), M&M’s, jelly beans, licorice, gummy candies, chocolate chips, toffee pieces, caramels, etc.
- Use whatever suits your cake design and personal taste best!
- I usually pick out my candy based on the colours I’m looking for, from the bulk section at the grocery store.
- You can also use toppings like coconut flakes, nuts, dried fruit, or fresh fruit, whatever you like!
- Larger cakes, or cakes with more complex designs may require more candy.
- Again, you can always store what you don’t use (or eat it!).
Tools
- images for your design inspiration – could be a picture from Pinterest or an internet search, story book, whatever!
- pencil or pen
- 2 pieces printer paper, or a large piece of wax paper / parchment paper
- scissors
- cake board, cookie sheet, marble slab, big plate, or even a piece of sturdy cardboard covered in foil – Just something to build your cake on, and it needs to be structurally sound to support the weight of the cake! Remember to make sure the board is a few inches larger than the cake will be.
- knife – suitable to cut through frozen cake, but not too large, for accuracy
- large cutting board
- spatulas
- mixing bowls
- measuring cups
- measuring spoons
- piping bags, or freezer-style ziplock bags (they are stronger)
- piping tips – star or petal-shaped tips recommended
- plastic wrap
- optional: toothpicks, for holding any pieces of your design in place on the cake while you decorate other sections
- optional: paper towels, for cleanup
- optional: wax paper or a plate, to test out your icing piping or piping tips
Instructions
1. Freeze your cake.
Once fully baked and cooled, wrap your cake in plastic wrap or place it in a large sealed bag. Place the bagged cake in the freezer, preferably overnight.
2. Draw your cake design to scale.
Draw your chosen design to scale without too many details on some paper. Measure it against your cake board to make sure it will fit, then cut out the shape from the paper.
3. Prepare any natural food dye colours before you start making the icing.
Check out my basic buttercream frosting recipe for more information on natural food dyes.
Take note of the different colours you will need for the icing and gather the ingredients you’ll be using as the food dyes, either natural or artificial.
While some natural food dyes work super well, using turmeric for yellow or paprika for orange can result in a flavour that might not match the taste buds of your dessert audience. Try making fruit-based reductions if you can, especially for younger cake eaters. Mango and carrot work just as well as spices, you just need to make a reduction with them, and it doesn’t usually take more than 15 minutes.
Basically, if you need to make a fruit or vegetable reduction of any kind, just simmer 1 cup of the fruit or vegetable in question with a few spoonfuls of water until almost all the liquid is reduced to nearly nothing (but don’t let the mixture burn, of course). Press the reduction through a mesh sieve to remove the pulp. You’ll be left with a very concentrated natural food colorant! Let it cool a bit before you use it in the frosting.
4. Make the buttercream frosting. Click here for my recipe, or use your own!
Cream room-temperature butter in a bowl, then add the icing sugar, vanilla, and milk. Mix until a smooth icing forms. Add 2 tbsp milk to begin, then add more liquid if necessary, until the frosting reaches the desired consistency. For piping, I like the icing to be soft and pliable, not too stiff or too runny.
5. Separate the frosting into bowls, one for plain uncoloured frosting, plus one bowl of frosting for the amount of each colour you need.
Gradually add a little food dye to each bowl of frosting, to form the colours you need. Error on the side of adding less dye to begin with, mix it into the frosting, then reassess if you need to add more dye.
6. Cut the still-frozen cake into the design shape and lay it on the cake board.
Take the cake out of the freezer, unwrap it, and lay it upside down on a cutting board. Place the paper design cut-out over the cake and cut out the shape you need with a sharp knife. Transfer the cut-out cake, still upside down, to the cake board.
Try to leave as much of the cake in one whole piece as possible, however you can meld several pieces of cake together to form the larger design on the cake board – just glue them together with extra frosting.
7. Add a crumb coat to the cake.
Use a knife or spatula to spread a thin layer of plain frosting all over outside of the cake, to form a “crumb coat.” Basically, this thin layer of frosting will contain all the crumbs and prevent them from ruining the decorations.
Note: If you don’t have very much icing, or if the cost is an issue, skip this step and just pipe out the dots of icing with the piping bag. It doesn’t make that much of a difference, though the icing may not stick to the cake quite as easily as with the use of a crumb coat.
8. Mark out the segments of the cake that will be different frosting colours. You can momentarily mark them with toothpicks, or even cut up your paper design into pieces and lay them over the cake, to map out the space. Remove these pieces of paper, section by section, before you add the frosting.
9. Fill a piping bag with frosting and begin decorating, section by section.
- Use one colour of frosting at a time.
- Starting with the lightest colour of frosting, then work your way through to the darkest or most vivid.
- Pipe the details last (like eyes).
- Select the piping tip you like best to add texture. I prefer star-shaped piping tips.
- Pipe the icing in repeated rows of dots. This pointillistic approach will add more depth to your cake design.
- Start by piping the outline of each section, then filling each section with rows of dots of colour.
10. Once you’ve finished frosting the cake, add the candy.
Decorate to your heart’s content, but try to make it fairly simple, with a “less is more” approach. I like to just enhance the frosting decorations with the candies.
You can also cut some of the candies in half to utilize new shapes or make smaller pieces. It’s generally manageable to do this with Smarties, jelly beans, gummy candies, marshmallows – anything like that.
If any actual children (as opposed to your inner child) want to get involved with the decorating process, having them help with adding the candies can be a very fun and successful group activity.
Based on past experience (by that I mean between my mother and myself, as a kid) I don’t recommend sharing the work of piping the design out with the frosting – but this is completely up to you and your ilk, of course!
11. Now your cake is fully decorated and ready. Serve and enjoy your cake!
Advice For Storing A Decorated Cake
This cake probably shouldn’t sit out overnight due to the dairy and egg ingredients. Try to make space for it overnight in your fridge, if you can. If the icing is stable enough, you can lay plastic wrap lightly over the top, but be careful not to wreck all your decorations.
If you aren’t able to refrigerate the cake overnight due to the size, I recommend at least putting the cake in a cool, dry area away from direct sunlight, heat sources, and humidity. By a cool room, I mean that the room should ideally be below 21°C or 70°F.
For added protection for storage in a room overnight, you can cover the cake with a large, clean upside down plastic bin or cardboard box. Try to avoid any direct contact between the cake and the bin or box. If necessary, use tape to secure the plastic bin or cardboard box over your cake to keep it in place.
Also, definitely don’t store your cake like this for more than one night. It really should be stored in the fridge for any longer than that. Try to serve your cake the same day, if at all possible.
A Printable Cake Design Collection
I really like making these cake designs, so I might make a whole page on my website for them. If so, they’ll be free to download and come with colour palettes. Keep an eye out for this, if you’re interested. I’m hoping to make quite a few!
Will you be making a party cake sometime soon? Let me know!
Click on the image below to download a 2-page printable cake design for a light dragon cake. It’s pre-formatted with a 1/4″ margin (the general minimum).
Once printed, fold and tape the 2 pages to attach them at the markers.
