Circus Balancing Acts Cake Decorating and Baking Tutorial

Paul prepares the stand getting all the hardware jobs out the road before adding the cake.

Time to add the cake over metal rod then starts carving. As always, it’s worth taking your time carving to big top shape.

But don’t worry, as Paul reminds us if you make a mistake just stick it back on with ganache.

You’ll want to give this cake additional structure. Dark chocolate ganache helps with the structure so watch how Paul layers on the ganache.  It takes a little longer than usual for this one.

With the big top roof to get on this one is worth watching as Paul figures out how to cover the cake. He then mixes up his special red in preparation for cutting the stripes.

Adding the red stripes makes the big top very distinctive and finishing with the decorative gold band gives it that all important circus look.

There are a number of ways you can do this, but Paul’s preference is to cut out the area using the template then add the door.

Now to make the door look like something out of the circus in this lesson Paul creates the curtains and door frame lined with a colourful selection of lights.

We’re getting there, but now comes the fun part where we add the animals to the cake. In this lesson, Paul adds the elephant’s body and legs, which gives a flavour of how the finished design will look.

Time to bring our elephant to life and give him character along the way by adding his head, trunk, tail and those very distinctive ears.

In this lesson, Paul positions the body and legs of the zebra before starting to add the stripes.

He’s starting to take shape, so time for the head and a very important facial expression! His character builds as the front legs are placed over his eyes to keep the frightened look going.

This is where the zebra gets his stripes and ears and the wee character comes to life.

In this lesson Paul positions the monkey sitting on the zebra’s head with his legs dangling down.

It’s your choice where you put the legs, but you will want to consider the overall look of the cake.

Every cheeky monkey needs a cheeky smile so here you add the head and facial expressions.

In this lesson, Paul adds the ears, eyes, nose, arms and of course his tail to finish things off.

Paul has a debate about the positioning of the arms, which again gives you some options.

Paul just adds some detail to each of the animals to finish this cake off. It’s been great fun to make this one!

Paul shares with you some other ideas you could do for a design like this.

Paul shares with you everything a professional cake decorator should know for producing a cake like this.