A lot of people say you gotta have a "bench scraper" but the only thing I could find in the cake decorating aisle was something called a "baker's blade." It looks like the same thing? Are they one and the same? If not, what's the difference?

My best cake decorating tools came from the hardware store and not the cake decorating aisle! Based on what I found when I did a visual search for "bakers blade", it's probably the same thing. Any large straight edged blade (like the ones used for drywalling, for example), will work.

There is also one called a dough scraper that is plastic. I have found the plastic ones, with the flexibility, do a great smoothing job. I like it better than the metal ones. Here's some pics of the rubber/plastic ones: http://www.bakedeco.com/dept.asp?id=194

I looked in more than one Home Depot and more than one Lowe's in my area and never found a bench scraper like I've read others have bought at those places. Employees there tell me they've never seen or heard of them. However, I did get a large plastic scraper from the paint department there for less than $3.00 that has worked amazingly for me. It is black and very tall. It is also wide so it's easy to set it down for bracing (leveling straight up and down) and keep it straight for going over the sides of my cakes as I turn them on the turntable.

I did see something yesterday in Williams Sonoma that looked like the blade scraper I've seen posted here and it was about $12. I'm sticking however, with what I already purchased since it works for me.

I actually use my cake lifter for smoothing but plan to pick up a scraper from Lowe's to try. The lifter works really well but it is a little large to handle.