7 Essential Cake Decorating Tools for Beginners

Celebrations are synonymous with cakes. Whether you’re celebrating a birthday, anniversary, opening, or any other significant occasion, you have to offer your guests a delicious dessert. While it’s pleasant to occasionally order a professionally decorated cake, there’s something special about serving a cake that you’ve prepared yourself with intricate piping and personal touches.

To make a cake worthy of being the centerpiece of your table, you need more than measuring containers and pans. We enlisted professional bakers and cake artists to share their must-have tools for creating designs worthy of awe-inspiring receptions. Here, you can shop for the best cake decorating tools that experts suggest.

Here’s the Best of Our Top Picks

Cake decorating is an art form that allows you to express your creativity while crafting delicious edible masterpieces. To embark on this delightful journey, you’ll need the right tools. So here’s the list of the best cake decorating tools for beginners.

1. Best Budget Kit: Kootek All-In-One Cake Decorating Kit

This set includes buttercream and fondant cake decorating utensils. An entire set of 263 pieces is organized in a caddie, which contains everything in transparent containers for easy access. Given how many of these you’d have to purchase separately (including some that may be difficult to locate elsewhere), this is the deluxe version of all available cake decorating sets.

It was a lot of work to test everything, but we were up to the task. We divided the tools into three distinct categories: essential cake construction and icing tools, buttercream decoration tools, and fondant/gum paste decoration tools.

There are four metal spatulas—two offset and two straight—which are excellent for filling and frosting your cake with a smooth or textured finish, as well as a cake comb for a zig-zag or scalloped frosting finish. The plastic cake scraper is long enough to scrape lofty cakes and feels durable enough to last for years.

2. Best Budget Kit: Kootek All-In-One Cake Decorating Kit

Sometimes it is simpler to focus on purchasing the high-quality ingredients you desire and invest in the instruments that will help you complete the task at hand. According to our tester, this kit contains everything necessary to frost a cake with the exception of the cake itself and the frosting.

This set contains 69 parts, however, 50 of them are disposable piping bags. Aside from that, it includes one turntable, twelve standard-sized piping tips, a double-sided cake comb, a plastic bowl scraper, a plastic bench scraper, a metal offset spatula, a metal straight spatula, and one coupler.

The included plastic cake turntable is slightly less sturdy than the Ateco aluminum cake turntable, but it performed well during testing and was able to rotate in both directions.

3. Best Piping Tip Set: Ateco 55-Piece Cake Decorating Set

If you’re interested in buttercream decorations, this set is ready to take you to the next level. It includes a variety of methods for creating buttercream florals, general piping patterns, and frosting writing. Many of these techniques can also be used for cupcake decorating, royal icing on sugar cookies, and even the injection of cream fillings into desserts.

The tips are durable, seamless tubes made of stainless steel and stamped with an Ateco-specific style number, allowing the user to easily recall which size tip is required for any particular project.

Approximately 20 of the tips are of various sizes and designs of round and star tips, which are suitable for a vast majority of piping projects. A variety of flat, floral, and leaf tips in various sizes and designs are also available.

Each of the small tips is simply interchangeable and fits snugly on the included coupler. There are also four larger tips that are excellent additions to the set but cannot be used with the coupler and require their own piping bag.

4. Best Kit for Beginners: Wilton 39-Piece to Decorate Cakes and Desserts Kit

This kit is designed for cake decorators who are new to the skill or who wish to enhance their basic skills. The bundle includes a full-color instruction manual that demonstrates numerous basic decorating techniques.

This kit includes a 9-inch angled spatula, three standard couplers, one decorating brush, twelve 16-inch disposable decorating bags, twelve 12-inch disposable decorating bags, ten decorating tips (Round 2A, 3, 5, 12; Star 1M, 16, 21, 32; Drop Flower 2D; and Specialty Cake Icer Tip 789) and a buttercream icing recipe.

5. Best Budget Piping Tip Set: Kootek 42-Piece Cake Decorating Kit

The Kootek 42-Piece Decorating Kit is our second-best recommendation. Like the Ateco set, the Kootek set comes with a box to store all of the tips. Our tester did note, however, that the box needs to be put together and that the tips do move around a bit when the box is moved.

The Kootek kit contains 36 standard-sized piping tips, two floral nails, and two couplers. This set, unlike the Ateco set, includes two 12-inch silicone piping bags, which we consider to be an improvement.

6. Best Cake Leveler: Wilton Adjustable Cake Leveler

Wilton has come up with a brilliant solution for this issue. This adjustable cake leveler is an easy instrument consisting of a tensile wire stretched over a large frame, not unlike a large cheese wire. Simply set the wire to the notch that corresponds to the desired height and draw the wire through the cake while keeping the feet of the leveler flat on the table.

7. Best Cake Turntable: Ateco 615 12-Inch Revolving Aluminum Cake Decorating Stand

Ateco is a well-known brand in bakeries and professional pastry facilities globally. The 12-inch aluminum turntable has the same smooth ball-bearing spinning as the more expensive cast iron type, but it is much lighter and less expensive.

This cake stand includes a nonslip silicone base cover and easily cleanses after frosting. Additionally, we appreciate that the cake plate’s surface is grooved, similar to a vinyl record, to prevent slippage. On top of the plate are three circular cues measuring 8, 9, and 10 inches so you can keep a watch on the scale of your cake as you make and decorate it.

Bottom Line

You can decorate cakes without specialized tools, but your success will be greater and your frustrations will be reduced if you invest in the essentials.

Now that you have a comprehensive guide to the essential cake decorating tools for beginners, it’s time to gather your supplies, unleash your creativity, and start decorating delicious cakes that will leave everyone impressed.

FAQs About Cake Decorating Tools for Beginners