Cake Trends: Painted Cakes

Here at Renshaw, we believe our sugarpaste is a canvas for all sorts of creativity. One of our favourite trends is beautiful hand painted cakes. Rainbow Dust have an incredible range of products perfect for painting with from pearlescent pastel shades to shimmery metallics and bold and vibrant colours.

We’re going to run through some of our favourite painted creations and our top tips to help you achieve similar spectacular results.

Hand Painted Floral Wall

A floral wall is a beautiful design to add a splash of colour and elegance to your cake creations. This beautiful effect was created using Rainbow Dust’s Powder Colours, which were mixed with a little cocoa butter to create a paint.

? Academy Advice: Work with one colour at a time and allow each colour to set and become touch dry before painting the next to prevent the colours from blending together.

Click here for the full step-by-step tutorial for painting this beautiful design with Powder Colours. To learn how to create and dust the peony cake topper click here.

Full Coverage Painting

Covering a tier of a cake in a painted effect is a beautiful way to create unique results each time. This perfect pastel tier was also achieved using Powder Colours mixed with a little cocoa butter. This abstract flower scene was designed for the colours to blend together to create a kaleidoscope of colour, whilst the plaque was beautifully painted using Rainbow Dust’s NEW Rose Gold Lustre.

? Academy Advice: When painting with Powder Colours you can mix them with Snow Drift to make the paints more opaque and to create pastel shades.

Find the full tutorial for this beautiful pastel painted cake here.

Rose Gold Heart Cake

This is the perfect cake for Valentines or indeed for any occasion where a heart cake says it better (especially a stunning shimmery heart cake).

This gorgeous metallic shimmer was painted using Rainbow Dust’s NEW Rose Gold Lustre on pink coloured Renshaw Extra. Using a coloured icing as a base for painting on helps to achieve beautiful metallic finishes by ensuring that no contrasting colours show up underneath the Lustre. If you’d like a traditional Gold cake, use Renshaw Autumn Gold Icing before painting with a Metallic Gold Lustre for a stunning shimmer.

? Academy Advice: To ensure the colour doesn’t transfer, set the Rose Gold paint in place by brushing over with Rainbow Dust’s Edible Glaze. Be sure to soak the brush in Glaze Cleaner straight after to clean.

Find the full tutorial for this gorgeous cake here.

2D to 3D Cakes

One of our favourite cake trends at the moment are 2D painted designs that break out into 3D sugarpaste details, bringing cake designs to life, like this beautiful Romantic Balcony Cake by Renshaw Academy Ambassador Berna Garcia, Ilusiona Cakes.

Rainbow Dust’s professional-grade gel food colour ProGel’s have a variety of uses beyond the standard colouring of batter, sugarpaste, buttercream and more; they can also be used for painting when mixed with a little alcohol or rejuvenator fluid.

This perfect balcony scene was painted on to Renshaw Marshmallow Flavour Extra Icing and the full tutorial features in the March 2020 copy of Cake Masters Magazine (which can be found here).

? Academy Advice: If you don’t have the most suited ProGels to achieve the necessary colour you can mix the ProGels together to achieve the perfect distinct shade. Berna mixed Caramel and Black ProGel at a 3:1 ratio with a little whitener to achieve medium-dark brown tones.

Kim-Joy’s Shortbread and Sugarpaste Easels and Paintings

It’s not just Berna who loves painting with Rainbow Dust ProGels. 2018 Great British Bake Off Finalist Kim-Joy also used ProGels to paint these cute sugarpaste coated shortbread biscuits.

Kim-Joy mixed ProGel’s with alcohol to create this beautiful watercolour effect. Click here for the full tutorial.

Socials Snapshot

We’ve seen some incredible painted cakes on our social media timelines, here is a small collection of just some of the cakes we’ve seen.

This amazing Alice in Wonderland inspired cake by Chef Ece Akyildiz proves that Renshaw Extra truly is a canvas for cake art.

This selection of beautifully painted cakes were created using Rainbow Dust’s Powder Colours and a steady hand by Perfect Cakes Co.

This incredible Infinity Gauntlet carved cake was covered in Renshaw Ready to Roll Icing, before being hand painted with Rainbow Dust’s ready-to-use Paint Metallic Dark Gold by Anthony Andrews from All Day Bakes.

Don’t forget to share your painted cakes with us on social @renshawbaking