Making Mini Bento Cakes - Cake Decorating Tutorial

foreigner, it's been a while, so welcome back to my kitchen. I'm so excited to be back this week with a new

cake

decorating

tutorial

. If any of you have been wondering where I've been the last few months, I just took off while I had a baby and if you haven't seen last week's video, go there and meet little Hendrix. In recent months, one type of

cake

that has become so popular that I have been dying to add to the channel is a little guy. Bento or lunchbox

cakes

now one of the things that makes them so special is the way you package them so these

cakes

can be added to the cupcake boxes along with the cupcakes or they can also be added to the small food boxes individual ones now in this In the video of the week, I'm actually going to make not one but two vento cakes to fit in each of these boxes, so let's get started, as I mentioned, the first Bento cake that I'm going to start with is one that fits in a cupcake box.

The first thing we need to do is adapt the cupcake box to fit the cake. What we want to do is cut out the space between four of those cupcakes just to give us a bigger hole. Now this cupcake box holds six cupcakes, but you can use any size cupcake box, the only thing you need to keep in mind is that the Cake Bento will take up the space of four of those cupcake holes, so on this one I'm going to being able to add two individual cupcakes now that you've given us space. five and a half inches by five and a half inches so I baked a five inch sponge cake and we're going to use that to make our Bento Cake and this one is about two inches tall the first thing I'm going to do is just level that cake out. .

Then I'm going to split it into two layers, so this will give me two layers that are about an inch tall each. Now I've had this cake in the refrigerator recently. to harden a little to make it easier to cut into layers, but when it comes back to room temperature it will be nice and soft and fluffy again. Now that our cake layers are ready, I'll fill them and cover them with some buttercream. on my turntable I'm just putting up an acrylic board so this board is just for proportions so I've actually created some light pink American buttercream and I'll put the recipe in the description below.

Then I'll go through everything To my cake I only added one crumb coat, now the entire crumb coat is just a very thin layer of buttercream around the outside of your cake, which helps hold in any loose crumbs before we put our coat on. final once that layer of crumbs has been added. I'm going to put it in the refrigerator to foam up before adding the final layer. Well, my cake has been in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes and is firm to the touch, so I'll go in and add. My final layer of buttercream around the outside and again just go over my smooth and we want to make sure that all the spaces are filled in once the cake has been completely covered with my buttercream.

I'm going to put this back in the refrigerator and I want it to be completely firm before I start

decorating

it while my cake cools in the refrigerator. I want to create a message to place on the top and for this cake I am going to use the Outburst stamps from Sweet Stamp to allow You to insert messages into fondant and just create little discs to place on the top so I have some examples here . We know there are a few ways you can use them with fondant, so I'll show you two. of them now, so I'm going to take some fondant and I just colored it a similar color to the color of our buttercream.

I'm going to take one of those stamps and just sprinkle it with a little bit of cornmeal. To prevent the fondant from sticking, you should roll out the fondant until it is about four millimeters thick, so it is thicker than you want. Your disc place the fondant on the back of my outer stamp and just roll it with a rolling pin when you take it off and then you will get these raised letters. Then you can use a round cookie cutter to cut it out. The one I'm using here is three inches in diameter so it fits on top of our cake with a few inches on each side now. you can leave this as is or I've simply mixed some hot pink edible Luster Dust with a dipping solution to create an edible paint by applying it over those raised letters to help it stand out.

We started

making

a lot of these Outbursts. stamps for so many different celebrations now, in fact, I have a 10 off code for a sweet stamp. All you have to do is enter Cakes by lens in the checkout on their website. Now another thing you can do is create a two tone effect with the Explosion Stamps, so I'm going to flip it over and add a small amount of cornflour to keep the fondant from sticking. Then I'll start with some white fondant and I just have this sweet little scraper or you can use just a softer cake push it into those letters and you want to do this slowly it's working on a small piece at a time so you're not taking out that fondant as you go now if you're struggling with this technique and you find it like you run your scraper through that fondant coming off the outer seal you want to angle that scraper down so it's almost flat against the outer seal and you just pull him doing little sections at a time and then you're going to take some of that pink fondant and I spread it out.

I'm going to take my rolling pin and I'm just going to push it over the top as hard as I can and we're just trying to make that fondant inside the Apple stamp and stick it to the pink fondant and then you. We're going to peel it off carefully so as you can see it doesn't need to be painted, but we have these raised letters in a different color than the backing fondant, so that gives us two different effects using the Outburst stamps to add a little . messages on the cake okay so my cake has been in the refrigerator for about an hour and a half as I wanted the buttercream to be completely firm so you can see we can touch that cake without leaving marks.

I'm going to go in with my offset spatula and I just want to release that cake from my board. Now we can decorate our cake on our board before transferring it to our cake box, but I'm actually going to transfer it to the cake box first. so that I don't ruin any part of the decoration while I'm trying to transfer it. You may have also seen that with Bento cakes they tend to have paper coming out of the sides and this is either parchment paper or wax paper, you can even look for wax paper online that has been printed on now this piece of parchment paper that I cut from ten and a half inches by ten and a half inches.

I'm going to take a little bit of my buttercream, just put a little bit on top. Then I got the two cake toppers I created. Now I'm going to use the one made with love to finish my cake. I'm going to add some buttercream swirls around the edge of that disk, so if you want to just mix some colors together. Starting with a light pink, then I mixed in a slightly darker pink, so I'm just stirring that gel color and for both I'm just using the sweet seal gel color in pink. So if you add a smaller amount you get a nice pastel shade, but the more color you add you get this very deep pink color.

Now for the third bowl, I want to create a peach, so I'm going to add a little bit of that pink, but I'm also going to add a small amount. of yellow and this is going to make this really pretty peach color. Now I want to keep all these shades that will go really well with the pastel pink, so I have the two pinks, the peach, and then I'm going to mix in some purple. with the pink just to give me a purple pink tone, so for the decoration on the top I'm going to use four different piping tips.

The first primer tip I'm going to use is the 1M. This is an open star shaped trim tip. and probably one of the most common piping tips to use, so I'm going to put that piping nozzle in a piping bag and just add a little bit of that light pink buttercream. I just want to start by creating a swirl that reaches the edge. of my cake and it covers the edge of my disk, so for this I'm going to make a

mini

rose there, so I'm going to start in the center and create this sweet little design.

Next, I'll use 6B. Now this one will give you a lot more texture than the others, so we cut these cloves leaving an opening at the end and I'm actually going to do a two tone effect because I'm only doing two. colors I'm going to put them directly into my piping bag, so I'm going to take a little bit of that purple pink color and just place it on one side, on the other side I'm going to add a little bit of that darker pink that Then I'll use this to make another rosette swirl, then I'll do the first one.

I'm going to use the 2D so this is a closed style piping tip and instead of starting from the center and working my way through I'm going to do a regular buttercream swirl now that I've created my first three swirls I'm going to continue around the outside of my cake following the same pattern once I have completed the entire outline of my cake I will finish it I removed with my last piping tip and lastly I have the 4B so again this one has a lot of teeth cut out with an opening. It's just a smaller version of the 6B, so I'm going to go in and put little domes on it just to fill in the gaps. around the edge of the cake to finish this cake I'm going to use some of the flamingo sprinkles from Halo Sprinkles and you can also get them on the Sweet Stamp website so this is just a mix of light and dark pink balls that I have pink, white and orange strands, some gold sprinkles and also these cute flamingo shapes, so there we have our Bento cake.

Now the last thing I have to do is finish it in my box and add two cupcakes. Now you can. You've seen me create rainbow swirls in the trough before and to do this I'm going to use a piece of plastic wrap, so I'm just using the buttercream that we have inside those piping bags, just piping it in strips. then put that cling film over you and then you want to twist the ends. None of my favorite swirls can do and one that has become so popular on places like Instagram and Facebook is a big chunky swirl so for this I'm going to use the 1e this is a closed star tip so I'm going to cut off the end of that cling film and just pop it into my piping bag to pipe my rosette, what I want to do is just hold it over my cupcake and then I want to apply pressure to get some of that buttercream out, then I'm going to swirl it just to create a big rosette, once I've gotten it to the top I'll stop applying pressure and walk away. and they're going to finish it off with some of those matching sprinkles.

Then I can add my cupcakes to my cake box so there we have our first Bento cake so we have this really nice five inch cake in our box and these are two of the same cupcakes now the second one I'm going to work on will go on this little food box and this one actually needs to be a little bit smaller. I have a circle cutter so this one is four inches wide so I'm going to cut this out now four inch cakes are pretty small so I don't usually bake many four inch cakes so I don't have a pan to four inch cake, so I have baked them on my five inch cake. mold that gives me this excess around the edge now I'm going to set this aside and use it on some cake pops but if you have a smaller size cake mold you can use that, alternatively you can bake a square cake and use the cutter to cut smaller circles, now small cakes get a little trickier when frosting with buttercream because of their size, so I hold on to that while putting some buttercream in the center and again just as I did. before you start with some American buttercream and add a crumb coat, I now have a more detailed video showing how I cover my cakes with buttercream and I will leave a link to this in the description below and then again just like I did it before.

I'm going to place my crumb covered cake in the refrigerator so it can harden so I can add another layer. Well, my little

mini

cake is out of the refrigerator, so I'm going to add my last layer of buttercream just like I did. With my previous cake again, I will place it back in the refrigerator until the buttercream has completely set on the first cake. We added a message at the top using the sweet Stamp Out stamps. Now for this one, I'll do it. they're a little bit different and they actually use their letter sets so you can create whatever message you want so here I have some of the lowercase letter sets so this is the trendy set and now I also have Timeless if you've seen it . on a channel for a while, you've probably seen me use the letter sets on various cakes, but I love how easy they make it to add messages, so for this one aloneI'm going to add I love you, so I'm just introducing. those letters and then I'm using the little pick up pad, I create a little stamp and then I'm going to insert it into the fondant and we get that lovely little message.

Now I'm actually going to use a smaller cookie cutter, so this one just finished. two inches in diameter and this will allow us to have a little border so we can add a little bit of buttercream around the edge of our cake. Now I really want this to stand out, so I'm going to use the best candy stamp paint. brush and I'm going to go in with some black edible paint and just paint those raised letters so once it's all painted there you'll have your little disk so like the previous cake I left this one in the refrigerator . about an hour and a half for it to be completely firm.

Then I'll use my offset spatula and remove it from my board. Now again I have a piece of parchment paper, this one is actually eight by eight inches and this will give me enough parchment paper to get to the edge and also let me close the box now that this cake is smaller so it will have a simpler design at the top and that's why I'll do it before I put it in the box so I can turn the cake instead of the Box getting in the way, so first of all I need to glue on my little disk to create my Rock.

I'm going to use the 1M piping tip and this is one of my favorite border designs so for the boulder because I love doing the two tone effect on the cake above. I'm going to use two different colors of pink, so I have a darker pink to match the cake and also a lighter pink now like with the previous cake because I'm just using two different colors of buttercream and I'm going to place them on my piping bag, so I just put that lighter pink on one side and the darker pink on the other. Well, what I want to do is create a chain of buttercream swirls, so I'm going to tilt my piping bag down slightly, apply pressure and just make a loop now, if at any point you need to stop applying pressure, just remove it and then for the next one, put it back together again and for the last one, I'm just tucking it in to get this really pretty loop, we have a light pink on the inside and a dark pink on the outside.

Then I'm going to place this on my cake box before adding it. some sprinkles now to finish my cake. I'm going to use these pink Halo sprinkles. Now I put my cake to the side, you can also put the cake so that when you open the box it says From the front, the reason I've done it this way is because it's going to look better for the photos I'm going to take, then You can close your box and be ready to give it to someone to get to know you. We are thinking about them, so we have two different styles of Bento cakes.

The first one only fits in one cupcake box and don't forget that you can use any size cupcake boxes. Then we have the second Bento cake that only fits in one. of these little food containers, don't forget I'll put a list of all the tools that I've used throughout today's video in the description below so you can find them there if you enjoyed this video, don't forget to hit it. The Like button also let me know what kind of

tutorial

s you want to see on the channel over the next few weeks or months. I'd love to know, so let me know in the comments below until next time, bye, thanks foreigner. foreign