Ttrending cake styles going into 2021 feature bright and cheerful, hopeful colours,
shrinking cakes with growing decorations, prints stolen from fashion trends and techniques
using just basic kitchen tools and pantry ingredients for surprisingly intricate designs!
This is going to be a year for bright and bold colour combinations
including neon colors and rainbows but not limited to them. Think happy, cheerful colours,
moving away from the striking but quite ominous black cakes that were popular for a while in 2020.
To make rainbow swirls, pipe strips of each color of frosting onto a piece of cling film or saran
wrap and then roll it up into a log and cut off one end, dropping that end down into a piping
bag fitted with a star tip like a 1M tip. Then pipe your swirls and hold your bag in the same
position for each swirl so that the colours face the same way all the way around the cake.
To achieve really bold colours use gels, which are very concentrated so with just a
few drops you can get intense colors without affecting the consistency of your frosting.
I teach how to tint buttercream and share the drop count for 43 colors in my online course on the
Basics of Buttercream and the link for the course is in the video description and in the top of the
screen. Jelly can be used to create an underwater effect and cakes can be partially or completely
covered with jelly to create oceans or aquariums. To create an under the sea cake first carve and
frost your cake and create any creatures or plants or other decorations you want to put in the jelly.
You can use melted chocolate or jelly in molds to do this. Wrap your cake and acetate within
a springform pan wrapped in cling film or saran wrap to stop the jelly leaking out.
Pour the jelly in, let it set and then peel off the acetate. I have a detailed tutorial on this
if you want to try it. Some jelly island cakes have started to emerge and since jelly is so
easy to make and the transparent effect is so striking I think we'll see some stunning jelly
cakes in 2021 and I think it will be used to mimic more than just water like colourful stained glass.
Leopard print is already trending in fashion but it's coming to the cake world! I think we'll see
all sorts of animal print but particularly leopard print cake designs incorporated into frosting,
toppers, and other details. For quick leopard print frosting cut a piece of acetate that you can
wrap around your cake and pipe random squiggles of buttercream onto it for the leopard spots.
Pipe a darker colour around the dots or just use a larger round tip to pipe blobs of buttercream over
the top of the first colour you piped and then put the acetate in the fridge to set the dots.
Spread your frosting color on top, completely covering the acetate if you want to frost the
whole cake with leopard print or just do a section of frosting as an accent.
Before the buttercream sets, wrap the acetate around your cake, chill it again,
and peel it off. You can do this with parchment paper instead but acetate is thicker and sturdier
so it makes the frosting a bit smoother and neater. You can scrape around the frosting with
a frosting smoother to even out any imperfections. Textured frosting was big in 2020 and cakes
moved away from rustic, uneven texture created with an offset spatula or the back of a spoon,
becoming neater by using textured cake combs and more elaborate with carved details. Texture
isn't going anywhere in 2021 but expect to see it taken to the next level with double texture,
which you can create by chilling your first layer of textured frosting before applying your second
layer. For neatly textured cakes start with a smooth layer of frosting and make sure the sides
of your cake are straight so the grooves of the textured cake comb will imprint the cake evenly
up and down the sides of the cake. Go around the cake several times with your textured comb next,
pressing the comb down on the cake board to keep it straight and as you go, touch up any gaps in
the texture by spreading on some more frosting and then go over that area again with your comb. I
think we'll see cakes with half and half texture, where the frosting is divided down the middle or
at a diagonal. I teach how to create half and half cakes in my online cake school. Another texture
that's growing in popularity is pointillism, where designs are piped onto cakes with hundreds
or thousands of tiny dots of frosting. It's a simple concept and fairly easy to execute but
the result can be truly jaw-dropping! If you're enjoying this tutorial please click the thumbs
up button and subscribe to my YouTube channel for a new cake decorating tutorial every week!
We've been seeing more and more square cakes, which are instantly eye-catching with their sharp
angles and smooth flat sides and they're even more impressive to cake decorators who know just how
time-consuming it can be to frost a square cake compared to a round one. Having four distinct
sides on a square cake allows you to easily divide your cake into different themes or techniques and
having flat sides instead of the curved sides of a round cake make it easier to apply buttercream
transfers or icing sheets and stencils. If you're intimidated by these angular beauties, don't be!
Try my cardboard box method for a free and stress-free method to get perfect results
every time. After social downsizing in 2020, cakes are downsizing too! Perfect for small gatherings
or to sweeten up a quiet night at home, mini cakes are just enough cake and they're adorable!
To make these use a mini cake pan or cut the layers out of a bigger cake layer using a round
cookie cutter or you can even use cupcakes! There are a few secrets to frosting these without them
toppling over or sliding around and I have a full tutorial covering the whole process
but the most important parts are to use a dollop of frosting to secure the cake to the cake board,
to chill your cake layers so they firm up before you attempt to frost them,
and to use a loose consistency of buttercream (less stiff than normal) so that it glides easily
over the cake as you spread it on and smooth it. These individual or couple-sized cakes are also
a great way to experiment with cake decorating techniques without wasting large amounts of cake
and frosting. Just because cakes are getting smaller doesn't mean the decorations have to!
Expect to see larger than life cake toppers in 2021: top-heavy sails made with chocolate or
sugar, donuts, and shapes cut out with cookie cutters from chocolate, brownies or cookies.
To make a chocolate sail melt chocolate or candy melts and then pour them onto parchment paper or
a silicon mat or you can drizzle different colours to create a marbled effect. Drape it over a bottle
or bowl and wait for it to set or put it in the fridge or freezer to speed up the process.
Peel the paper away from the chocolate and press the sail into the top of a cake. For softer baked
toppers like brownies or doughnuts you can push paper straws into them and use those to
attach them to a cake or you can bake meringues or cookies with the straws already inside them.
Another way to attach toppers is to pipe some swirls of frosting on top of the cake and press
the topper into them and when the frosting sets it will secure the topper in place.
With the hot chocolate bomb trend of 2020, anyone who made them has a sphere mold or several of
different sizes and as the hot chocolate bomb trend inevitably dies I think we'll be seeing
those molds repurposed in lots of unique ways. Forget about the marshmallow filling, you can
just fill the mold with melted chocolate, attach two halves together by dropping one half onto a
hot plate or pan to melt the surface and you've got a pretty round chocolate! Add a pattern or
design by painting it onto the mold with coloured chocolate, letting it set and then adding more
melted chocolate over the top to cover the whole mold. I'm confident we'll see a lot of spherical
chocolate toppers on cakes in all sorts of colours and patterns placed on swirls of frosting or
creating gravity-defying sculptures on top of cakes. Combine three trends with leopard print
on an oversized topper made with a hot chocolate ball mold! I'm sure we'll see the molds used to
create balloons on cakes, planets on space-themed cakes and lots of other clever decorative ideas.
People learned to be really resourceful in 2020 and I think we'll see that reflected in
cake designs in 2021 created with very minimal cake decorating tools like makeshift turntables
using microwave wheels. I have a tutorial on cake decorating with no tools that exploded
with the rise of home bakers who couldn't or didn't want to rush out and buy a bunch of
tools for a new hobby. I think people will be using basic materials like parchment paper to
make homemade stencils as well as parchment paper cake wraps and if you're looking for
ideas of things you can do with parchment paper I have a tutorial on six ways to use it on cakes.
Another example of a resourceful cake technique is creating texture with kitchen utensils like
cutlery: forks, spoons, knives, even chopsticks! As well as cakes made and decorated with the
tools available I think we'll see an increase in cakes featuring pantry staple ingredients like
marshmallows, cookies and chocolate chips instead of special materials like icing sheets or isomalt.
Check out my tutorial on 10 Ways to Use Chocolate Chips to Decorate Cakes for ideas of all the
things you can do with just a simple ingredient! You'd be surprised at how elaborate and intricate
cakes can be using the most basic tools, materials and ingredients. The final trend? Sprinkles!
Sprinkle designs have been gaining momentum over the last two or three years and with the growing
availability of colourful, metallic and thematic sprinkle blends we're bound to see them continue
into 2021. We've seen increasingly creative uses of sprinkles to decorate cakes that are shared on
social media to inspire other sprinkle fanatics so I think sprinkle cakes are here to stay.
Try pressing sprinkles into the bottom of a cake to make a colourful border
or into a stencil to make a sprinkled shape or add them to your cake toppers for some extra sparkle.
If you'd like to learn new techniques and cake decorating ideas check out my free course on
my online cake school. It's called 10 Frosting Techniques and I have lots of other courses and
classes and if you join my Club you'll get access to every class including all future classes that I
add so you can keep on top of all the cake trends get inspired with new cake designs and learn new
techniques! You'll also be able to join my members only live cake demonstrations where you can vote
for the cake I demonstrate and you can ask me any questions you have. I've put the link for my
online cake school in the video description and at the top of the screen and I hope to see you there!