Cake decorating incorporates a variety of colors and materials.
Teaching children decorate cakes can help awaken their baking and creative talents, and help learn to assist you in your kitchen. The classes should be structured in chronological order as well as order of difficulty. Teach the students basic techniques first and build upon these skills to educate them in more complex and creative decorating.
Frosting
Learning to smoothly and properly cover a cake in frosting will form a basic and necessary foundation for young bakers. Teach the children to let the cake cool completely before frosting it; which baking tools will work best for applying the frosting; and the techniques for applying and smoothing the frosting on the cake. Explain to the students that the recipe will usually denote how long to let the cake cool or rest before frosting it. Tell the students to touch the cake to see if it has cooled in addition to following the recipe. Explain to the children that applying a smooth frosting base on the cake will allow them to have a clean background to apply more complex and creative decorations. Show them coat the spatula with frosting, and apply it smoothly and evenly to the cake.
Writing
Writing messages on cakes is very common when celebrating a special event like a birthday, anniversary or graduation. Since young children already learn handwriting techniques in school, such as learning to print letters and write in cursive, this cake-decorating technique should easily build upon those concepts. Show the students hold the icing tube, squeeze it to apply adequate pressure and move fluidly from letter to letter. Go child to child and hold the icing tube at the same time as the child so that each child can feel by the pressure you put on her hand how hard to squeeze the tube. Move your hand with each child's in the writing so that he can feel the proper motion of creating the letters. After working with each child, instruct the children to write practice messages on their cakes or on wax paper for practice.
Icing Decorations
Teach the students the proper way to fill an icing bag--a bag specifically designed for cake decorating--with the frosting or icing. Show the students hold the bag and squeeze it to form the decorations on the cake. After teaching the fundamentals in using the bag itself, teach the students create simple shapes and designs on the cake using the techniques. Demonstrate to the students properly clean the bags as well, so that the frosting color is pure in the next application.
Candy
Incorporate elements besides frosting into the decorating. Show students use other edible tools such as candy, crackers and cookies to decorate the cake. The children can form the entire decoration in a jelly bean mosaic fashion, or they can use the candy as the finishing touch. For example, after creating Halloween bats on the cake out of icing, apply the glinting eyes with a couple well placed candies.
Tags: each child, Show students, before frosting, build upon, cake cool, complex creative