Phewwwww! After spending a little time editing these pictures, I have finally sat down to get this tutorial ready for you.

I will keep it short and simple as I am sure you don’t want to be sitting here reading me waffle on and on like I normally do!

1. The Wilton Paisley Cake Tins, as you can guess, do not have their own specific cake boards made for them. This just meant that I had to go out and purchase thick cardboard to cut around the shape of the tins and then cover with either aluminium foil or silver board cover.

2. Once cake has been baked, let it cool for about 10 minutes before attempting to turn it out. Then when the cake has cooled down, start to level it. You can do this free-hand, by using a leveller, with an agbay, or by using the cake tin. To use the cake tin method, you can view my amateur (lol!!) video tutorial here. (This was a very old video, so I will be making a new one very soon!)

3. Now you need to start assembling your layers on top each other by filling them with your desired filling.

4. When you place your last layer on top, make sure to lay it on with the bottom of the cake so that it is facing the top. This is because it is the most flattest and will help you to get a lovely smooth finish when doing your crumb-coating and when laying over the fondant.

5. Start to do your first layer of crumb-coat using buttercream/frosting.

6. Smooth it over using a stainless steel scraper, spatula, and hot water (video tutorial to show this very soon!).
And just wanted to tell you guys… WOW. Just plain WOW!! This product alone has made a huge improvement to how my cakes are decorated you seriously need to get one now!! Honestly, I don’t know how I have coped so long without this product in my life! I will be putting it onto ‘My Essential Cake Items’ page. In the meantime, you can purchase it from here.

7. Place it in the fridge until the frosting has become somewhat hard. So when you touch the cake lightly, the frosting does not come onto your hands.
Do another layer on crumb-coat just to make sure it is completely level on the top and around the sides. Leave it in the fridge once again to harden over. (But not too long!)

8. Your cake is now ready to be covered.
Measure the dimensions of your cake and make sure that you roll out your fondant wide enough on every angle so that it is covered! I had to roll mine out twice as the first time I didn’t even think about measuring it!

9. After they were covered and smoothed over. I let them rest for a couple of hours to let the fondant harden as I knew I would be doing a lot of piping work and didn’t want to take the risk of leaning onto it and leaving marks! Arghh! Just thinking about the possibility of that happening makes my stomach churn!

10. Make your royal icing for the piping. Now, really you are supposed to use egg whites when making royal icing to pipe. But I have made it in the past without it and got the consistency correct to work with. Plus I am a little funny about using raw eqq whites. I did once buy some imitation powdered egg whites but just didn’t like the results that I got from it!
As I was saying! I made the royal icing with icing sugar, water, and Sugarflair “Autumn Leaf” colour paste. I can’t give you the exact recipe I’m afraid as it’s a secret recipe! Joke! As if! Pffffft!
On a serious note, I just kept adding water and icing sugar until I thought I had the right stretch! Next time I will definitely keep note of how much I am adding so we can all benefit from it hey?! :-p

11. Draw on your desired henna pattern directly onto the cake tiers. You don’t have to do this part if you feel you are confident on piping freehand! My cousin who is a make-up artist can do freehand as well as one of my husbands’ cousin. You must see their work it is just stunning! I have no idea how they can do it so fast! My hubby’s cousin does half an arm within a matter of minutes, it’s just crazy talent!
I used Sugar Art Pen in “liquorice” to draw on my designs. I didn’t use one design, I actually gathered inspiration from a selection of designs that I found on Google Images!

And of course, I MUST give credit to where it is due!

My customer gave me a design to work with and it didn’t have any watermark on it so I just couldn’t figure out who the original cake maker was. But last night whilst I was on Instagram, one of my favourite cake makers based up north in Liverpool called Sprinklez Liverpool… (Check her work out right now! Do. It. Now. It is a must! You cannot leave this page until you have seen her work. Your jaw will drop just like mine does every time some new material is uploaded. It’s not just her amazing cake artistry, but her photography is mind-blowing!) As I was saying, she shared a page called Say it with Cakes. I was admiring her beautiful work when I saw the paisley henna cake picture that my customer gave to me! Woohooo! Success!
So here it is, the original cake that inspired my own paisley cake!

12. Okay, Pipe the royal icing on very slowly and once it has hardened, go over it using Rainbow Dust’s Click & Twist Pen in ‘Metallic Light Gold’.

13. Place some buttercream on your covered cake board where you have decided to place your cake tiers.

13. Place the ribbon on around the cake using either piping gel, water, or edible glue. And then use some double sided sticky tape which you can buy from most stationary shops for cheap. I bought mine instore from Hobbycraft for 50p for 50 metres!

14. Add on any finishing touches that you would like to add such as lettering, any extra flowers around the board etc… and VOILA! Finished!!

Now sit back, and admire your work. Or if you’re anything like me, keep looking for flaws to attempt to fix/hide/cover!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial as much as I did making it for you. I know there are probably many more things that I have missed out on which you would like to know about so please do ask! This is my first tutorial so go easy on me 😉

Nel xXx