I am making mini square cakes for my neices bitrthday.I am not as good as all of you!I have very few skills when it comes to cake decorating.I used mmf 1 time.So what would be any easy way to decorate these little cakes? I am stressing out.Please give me some tips!I have the mmf made and the cakes just need some tips on how to put them together please help!!!

How big is mini? I have some mini cake examples in my photos. They are around 4 inches (roound or square). I have iced them just in buttercream or covered them in fondant. Either way looks cute. The ones I did most recently, I iced in pink buttercream, but a fondant ribbon around the side, and put a few easy fondant flowers on. It took less than an hour to make four of them.

Your photos are amazing!!!The cakes which I have not cut yet,will be about 4x4 or I have a 3inch round biscut cutter.I love the little cakes you did with the pink buttercream and fondant ribbon and the flowers just gorgeous.What would be good to start with for a newbie fondant or buttercream???

It's hard to say whether buttercream or fondant would be easier. It's really more of a matter of what are YOU more comfortable with. Someone who is better at doing fondant cakes would find fondant easier and vice versa with the buttercream.

I can tell you from personal experience (I make 4" round single layer and 4" square single layer cakes all the time for kids at the school I used to teach at when they have their birthdays)....the easiest way to apply buttercream is with a piping tip. It doesn't have to be the big flat icing tip, though if you have that it is helpful. Even if you just use a #10 round tip and zig zag the icing up and down on the sides and then coil it around in a circle on the top, then use your spatula to smooth it.

This way, the cake is already covered in icing and you don't have to worry about pulling up crumbs as much, and also the cakes are small so they will try to move around on you a bit (which is why people charge MORE for minis)


here are some examples of 4" single layer cakes I've done.

In any case, if you want some more examples I've done like 30 or so of these 4" cakes...you can see an album with them here

http://www.freewebs.com/khalstead/apps/photos/album?albumid=806864

Just wanted to say KH - you are amazing! Those little cakes are darling! You are always so helpful and talented...thanks for being here!

Mini cakes are a bear - using a little tip to ice them is a great idea, I never would have thought to do that! What is it that indy says.....half as big = twice the price!

wow gorgeous cakes!Thank you so much for the tips they are very helpful!I think I will try the buttercream and make some fondant accents.I have some small cookie cutters that i can use.Thanks for sharing.

my pleasure....and indydebi is so right...twice as small TWICE as expensive. The 4" ones arent that bad, when you get into the 3 and 2" ones............oh look out!!!!!! you'll be throwin stuff across the kitchen in NO time lOL

Well my cakes shifted and are now lop sided lol ugh Do you use some kind of support in these?How many layers do you usually stack ? How do you get the buttercream so smooth?Ugh Im about ready to throw in the towel.I just want to get good enough at cakes so I can make them for special family events.

No, I dont' use supports in a 2-layer cake. Sounds like you have too much filling. Remember, you have to adjust the amounts of everything, including filling, to smaller amounts because it's a smaller cake. What kind of filling are you using?

I'm just browsing the site this morning and caught this thread. You people are so nice -- always willing to advise a beginner. It's great to see that kind of generosity. "Acts of random kindness".

Im just using buttercream icing thats it.Im am very much a beginner.Why are these so lop sided I trimmed them to make them more even.I put a little buttercream in the middle but I dont think I put to much.When I put the layers together I pushed it down a little and it was a thin layer between layers.