Sugar Artisans Beginner Decorators's Kit (Liz Iarson edition)

This kit comes complete with everything that you need to create amazing cakes! I made the attached cake using this kit, including the writing on the top. It even comes with a large tip to create even layers of base icing which I used to make this cool ocean ombre effect. The large base tip creates a relatively smooth layer of icing perfect for crumb coating.To make this cake, I created first a smooth cake base using the Tip 789. I went once around the cake with the large icing tip with the aqua blue icing, a second time with a lighter shade of the aqua (diluted with white), and then the third pass at the top was with the white only. Using a bench scraper I did a first pass at the icing to even out the bumps and ridges from my first icing application. From there, you could use an icing smoother and a VIVA paper towel to create a perfectly smooth buttercream finish. Alternatively, as I did on this cake, I used an icing comb to create a decorative edge. The icing combs are far more forgiving than the icing smoother when creating this ocean look.After creating the base, I chilled the buttercream for about 15 - 20 minutes before icing with the flamingos and writing. The flamingos and writing were piped on using the various sized round tips provided in the kit. in all, this cake was very simple to make using the tools in this kit. I am a novice baker, but I was very proud of this cake. I felt that the tools and tips in this kit allowed me to advance my decorating skills quite a bit. I received the kit as part of a promotion for novice bakers looking for basic tools to begin decorating.