Ever wonder how to add colorful drips onto a cake? Learn from my mistakes! Anyone can do it.

I love when my decorating skills are challenged! Being a novice baker though, let’s be real, every cake I make still comes with a challenge!

This one I made for a friends daughter who is really into art. My friend gave me a general idea of what she would like and then I took to Pinterest to find some inspiration.

It may not look like it from the photo, but there is pudding in between the layers of the cake! I had never used pudding between cake layers before so I used a fairly thin layer. This is why it looks like there’s nothing holding the cake layers together. I overthought the pudding a lot. Would it drip out the sides if I added too much? Would it soak into the cake and make it soggy? I had no idea so I aired on the side of caution.

I absolutely love this frosting recipe and have started to use it for all of my cakes! I find that it’s the perfect consistency for spreading and very easy to work with. After I add my crumb coat and smooth it down, I’ll put it in the fridge for at least 15 minutes for it to harden a little. I’ll then take it out and add a second layer. Once again, putting it in the fridge after I’ve smoothed out the frosting. When that layer has set, check for any areas that need to be touched up. The imperfections in the frosting are easier to smooth once it’s hardened. I didn’t put too much time into that with this cake since I knew a lot of it was going to be covered by the drips.

Before this cake, I had only used chocolate for drip designs on cakes. I had no idea how colorful drips were done and almost went to the store to buy individual bottles of colored frosting thinking that was the way to go about it. But then thankfully I came across a post that talked about using white chocolate chips and heavy whipping cream! This was definitely a face palm moment. If melted chocolate and heavy whipping cream worked so well on my other cakes, why didn’t I think to use vanilla candy coating, heavy cream and food coloring?! The simplest answer is sometimes right in front of you.

Since this was the first time trying this, I heated way too much heavy whipping cream. As you can see in the photo, I’m about to completely drown the candy coating bark. (It’s been lessened in the recipe above.) When I made this I believe I had used a little more than a cup. It all worked out though! After whisking it all together I noticed that it was runnier than I would have liked it so I set it aside hoping it would begin to harden as it cooled, which it did! It only took a few hours. Lesson learned!

Once the drip had cooled down and was at the right consistency, I divided it into different sandwich bags and added food coloring. Then zipped the bags shut, squished it around with my hands until the color was combined and snipped a small piece of the corner off. Actual pipping bags can of course be used but this was a much cheaper option. If you’re still not happy with the consistency you can layer it. Add your drips, place your cake in the fridge for about 15 min. and then add another layer of drips over your first one. This is what I did in a few areas I thought looked too thin.

Since I had some left over frosting, I decided to color it to match the paint drips and then added it on top. The thinking behind it was blotches of paint like on a painters pallet. Did that idea translate well? Who knows. It’s pretty and tasty and that’s all that matters!

The final touch was an easel and paint brush which I found at Walmart. The sign I made with some left over paper from another project and cut the wording out with my Cricut. This cake definitely took some time and left my kitchen a rainbowy mess, but I was so happy with how it turned out!