How to Decorate a Birthday Cake in 10 Minutes!

What do you do when you have to decorate a cake in a hurry..... in a park..... and without a kitchen?

Well, the smart thing to do is to reach for "frosting in a can"!

A couple of weeks back we had our first spring picnic for the season. This was more than just a picnic though; it was also a birthday celebration. And no birthday would be complete without a cake; kitchen or no kitchen!

If you're a busy working mum then canned frosting could become your best friend. No mixing, no colouring, no flavouring - it's all done for you. Just press the nozzle and out comes the frosting. You even have a choice of 4 nozzles to give you different piping patterns. It's SO easy that a child can do it. And it tastes pretty good too. This is simply the best shortcut to cake decorating that I've seen!

So with the cakes frosted, I decorated the cupcakes with chocolate butterflies that I had made the night before.This was definitely the most time consuming part of the cake because the purple chocolate melts just wouldn't cooperate. They are very finicky if you don't get the temperature just right, and I just couldn't get the temperature right. The milk chocolate on the other hand was a breeze to work with (love Cadbury cooking chocolate - tastes so good and melts perfectly!). The butterflies are not my best effort but they still tasted really good!

Here's another tip: If you have to transport them like I did, then don't pipe them on Glad Bake (silicone baking paper). They will just slide off the paper when they set and end up in a jumble in the the bottom of the container. Pipe them onto waxed paper instead and once they are set, you can just peel them off. Luckily they had been on ice in the esky so it wasn't too much of a drama but next time I'll know better.

This whole cake took just 10 minutes to frost and assemble - perfect for a picnic. But my recommendation is that you leave the chocolate butterflies for the parties you have in the cooler months - they soften way too quickly on a warm spring day!

'Til next time.....