After posting photos of a Swirls and Roses 50th Birthday Cake I made recently, I had a few inquiries as to how I had decorated the cake board. This is a simple tutorial which I hope helps you create some beautiful cake boards. Remember your cake board is like the perfect “pair of shoes” to complete your cake and no cake should be presented ‘barefoot’ to any client.

I first covered my board in white fondant and allowed it to dry overnight. I placed the Crystal Candy Memoir Stencil across the middle of the cake board first and completed the steps that I am about to explain to you. The reason for doing the middle first is that once it has dried you are able to do the sides one after the other with no fear of smudging.

Once the middle section has dried, line up your stencil so as to complete the design on one side of your board and pin to your board. I pinned in an area I knew would be covered by the cake. You could also pin in an area already covered by a swirl to masterfully disguise any pin marks (see the red pin).

I chose piping gel to which I had added concentrated black Rolkem powder for this cake board but Crystal Candy Stencils can be used with royal icing or a mixture of royal icing and piping gel as an alternative. I love the ‘phone a friend’ option whenever I am in doubt and as usual Ray from Crystal Candy was ready to give advice. In this case she said I would need to use a very concentrated black piping gel in order to achieve a black stencilled board. I thought mine looked concentrated enough, however you will see that with black you have to mean business when it comes to colouring anything!

Pop a generous dollop of the piping gel over your stencil and grab your versatile cake scraper.

Pull the gel firmly across the stencil so that all the design areas are covered. Make sure here not to move your stencil in the process as you don’t want any smudges to ruin your beautiful board. Also remember not to go over the stencil onto any completed areas of your board.

Gently hold your stencil in place and remove all the pins. Carefully peel back the stencil away from your cake board and admire your stencil work as it is revealed. Going back to the colour, you will see here that my  black piping gel did not have enough pigment in  it, and it created a dark grey design instead of the inky black I envisioned for my cake design.

I decided here that it was not a good idea to let tears drop onto my board and there was no time to start my board again so I pulled out my sparkle dusts and found Rolkem’s Raven Sparkles to sprinkle over the wet gel design. This is easier if you do it over a sheet of baking paper as you can tip the board and gently knock any loose dust off the board. Fold the baking paper and then return any extra sparkles to their glittery home.

I washed my stencil at this stage and hung it over the edge of my counter to dry before using it to repeat these steps on the other side of my board. Ray suggested a feather to dust off the remaining glitter but with no feathered friends to defrock, I used this really soft fan brush. I remember in my first demo by Andries of Rolkem about 5 years ago…..in the days when I used to wander into Jodees not knowing the difference between a concentrate and a sparkle….Andries said he had been given a brush exactly like this one and it proved to be perfect for ‘feather’ dusting.

This is the stage where if you are an extrovert you will dance and if you are an introvert you will become an extrovert immediately! I am never shy to do this happy dance even though I may get strange looks from my family, as I believe there is no harm in a dash of this happiness  sprinkled over my work!

Here I have assembled all my decorative elements, including the swirled cake board,for this cake before popping the fondant cake onto it. The final step was ribboning my board with a deep black ribbon which really makes the swirls pop on the board.

Thank you to these amazing suppliers:

Crystal Candy for your amazing collection of stencils…I can’t wait to try out another design!

Rolkem for the Raven Sparkles to my rescue.

Jodees for the edible printed image of a hand I had coloured in for this design.

Please feel free to Like this tutorial or pop a comment if you have any questions regarding any of the products I used.