Tools for Cake Baking

An offset icing spatula is ideal for spreading fillings and frostings on horizontal surfaces. If you make cakes, you should have two of these narrow, flexible metal spatulas. You will want a large offset spatula (with a blade about 8 inches long) for frosting a layer cake. A smaller model (with a 4-inch blade) is ideal for frosting cupcakes.

Frosting a layer cake is no easy task. Aside from a deft hand, the pros use a turntable-style cake stand. These stands elevate the cake, giving the baker a better view and making it possible to hold the spatula steady while rotating the stand, improving the likelihood of seamless frosting. You can live without a stand—a large flat platter is fine—but it certainly makes the process easier.

Pastry chefs can make decorative work, like piping perfect meringues or buttercream rosettes, look easy. While skills matter, so does the bag. A large bag (roughly 18 inches long) will give you enough length to grip and twist the top. While canvas is traditional, we like materials that are easier to clean, such as plastic and coated canvas. Pastry bags have larger openings for handling jobs such as meringues or mashed potatoes, while decorating bags’ smaller openings fit the tiny piping tips for fine scrollwork and writing. If your pastry-tip set didn’t come with a coupler to help adapt tips to your bag, you can buy one at any kitchen store.

Cakes should cool on a wire rack so that air can circulate underneath the hot pan (and later the unmolded cake). Don’t buy a rack with bars that run in just one direction—a woven grid with bars running in two directions supports both delicate and heavy cakes better. Buy racks that fit snuggly inside standard 18 by 13-inch rimmed baking sheets so you can cook directly on these racks, too. A rack that measures 17 by 12 inches is perfect.

A roll of parchment paper (or, better yet, flat sheets you order online) is absolutely essential for lining pans and protecting platters. Don’t bake a cake without parchment paper. Check out the video lesson on prepping round cake pans to see how we use parchment to ensure our cakes come out in one piece.