He blinded me with science!

In the Superhero Cake, we incorporated LED lights. A little tech move can push a cake over the edge into the Amazing Zone. And guess what? Adding lights doesn’t take a degree in electricity.

Read closely to find out how one of our tech team approaches lighting a cake from the inside!

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Lights!

Lights are the perfect element to start working with when you want to add a little (or a lot) extra flare to your cakes. They are way easier to use than I thought - especially with the methods I’ll talk about in this post.

Where can you put the lights?

When you’re planning your cake, think about where you can work in some lights.

Here are a few ideas:

• Point a spot light directly at a part of your cake to draw attention to an element. This makes for a nice effect with tall cakes, like “building” cakes or billboard-style cakes.
• Use a light inside of the cake, behind a gumpaste or pastillage window, if it is a model of a car, house, building, or anything that would have an interior light. Interior lights can add a nice dose of realism and bring life to your design.
• Make something glow with an internal light! You can have more fun with this technique because there aren’t any real rules to follow. Try making a hollow object out of thin gumpaste and place the light inside. The light will illuminate the object making it glow. Very cool!

We used a light in the recent superhero cake for Nathen. The Batman lantern on top of the building is a simple gumpaste cylinder with an LED Floralyte (read on to learn about these) placed inside to make it glow.

What are the best lights to use?

You could use pretty much any light in a cake, but here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. How big are the lights? Are they small enough to fit inside something if you need them to - while still being powerful enough?
2. How will you power the lights? Where will you put the batteries, and how will you connect the lights to the batteries?
3. Does the type of light you’re planning to use get hot?

LEDs!

You’re probably familiar with incandescent and fluorescent lights - these are the two popular types of bulbs that you most likely use in your home. Neither of these would work well in a cake because they are bulky and they get hot.

A third type of bulb, called an LED, is the best to use with a cake. They are tiny, bright, and they stay cool!

The easiest way to start working with lights is to buy small self contained, battery-powered LEDs. There is no wiring to do, and they are disposable.

You just stick them where you need them, and you’re done!

Floralytes

My favorite LEDs to work with are Floralytes. (Thanks Patti at Baked Ideas for turning us on to these!) I love these because they are super bright and last for 24 - 48 hours.

Balloon Lights

Floralytes are a tiny bit bulky for some applications though, so you may want to use balloon lights (aka mini party lights) if you’re don’t have much room to work with.

Balloon lights are smaller - not much larger than the bulb itself - but aren’t quite as bright and only last about 8 hours.

LED Spot Lights

These spot lights (and these) are also very easy to use. They have internal batteries and you just place them where you want them.

I think they have a cool industrial look, but they’re a little large, and the design may not work for every cake. Covering them in fondant, gumpaste, or modeling chocolate is a good way to change the look of these spot lights to match the theme of your cake.

LED String Lights

If you’re the adventurous cake decorator and don’t mind running a few wires, you can get a great effect from LED string lights. You’ll need to do a little planning to figure out where you can run the wires along your cake.

Like the other types of lights, they are battery powered, but there is a separate battery box that you’ll have to hide somewhere in your cake.

The lights on the string are tiny, and there is no battery attached to the individual bulbs, so they can be used in even tighter spaces. They would look great as “outdoor” holiday lights on a gingerbread house ^_^

Have Fun!

Hopefully this post has introduced you to some new possibilities! Have fun experimenting and share your designs in the comments.

Be careful not to overuse them as they can look tacky. But used subtly they can take your cake design to a whole new level!