How To Make Easy Sketches For Your Fondant Cake Orders

Sometimes when a client orders a fondant cake, they ask you to make a sketch of what will be their future cake.

For customers, who want their personalized cake to be the best in the world, this is an easy way to get the idea of how the cake’s going to look like. But for those who cannot draw properly, like me, that typical “Can you make a sketch of the design?” question sounds terrifying.

So today I want to show you a product that has changed the life of every cake designer. It’s easy to use and it allows you to design all cakes keeping the proportions, with different sizes and shapes; you can also add a variety of details and extra decorations with the least possible effort. Today I’m showing you how to use the CAKE & COOKIE PLANNER designed by Avalon Cakes.

Avalon, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last year in Miami at SoFlo, is the designer of this wonderful tool. The Cake & Cookie Planner was awarded the best product of the year in the last edition of the Cake Masters Awards.

The entire cake designing set consists of four types of templates: one for square cakes, a second for rounded cakes, a third for hexagonal cakes and a fourth one for decorations and accessories such as lines, hexagons, dots, flowers, etc. Besides, you’ll find a serving chart on each template.

I always use it whenever I’m designing a new cake and today I want to share with you all the sketch I made for a cake called “The Kraken Anger”.

The first thing you should do is drawing a straight line in order to place the templates properly and draw the cake evenly. Next, draw the upper part of the top tier. I always use a pen or a permanent marker, that way it’s safe to erase whenever I want to try different decorations.

In order to draw the desired height, lower the template and make the height of the top tier match with the upper part we drew in the previous step.

To make the next tier, you’ll have to repeat the previous steps: first you draw the top and then the height of the tier.

To draw the lower tier, repeat the same process.

Now’s the time to draw the base. In order to do so, you’ll need to follow a similar process. First, draw the upper line, as if it were yet another tier. Then move the template 2mm down and draw the lower line. Join both lines by the sides and paint the space between to point the thickness of the base out.

If you want, you can add a cake pedestal using the template for accessories.

Once we have the basic design of the cake, it’s time for adding details. If your design is composed of elements already on the templates, you’re lucky! If, on the other hand, you need different details, you’ll need to test your drawing abilities. I myself drew an abstract texture that simulated a coral reef on the lower right-hand side and a giant octopus attacking a ship at the top.

I use a note pad for watercolor painting to draw my designs, that way I can color them trouble-free and play with color combinations. For that purpose, dilute some gel colorant (Yes! The same colorants we use on fondant) in vodka or water and paint your sketch. For my sketch, I used color blue and I made a gradient from Baby Blue to Navy Blue.