Cake Decorating Game Guide: All 12 Sweet Cake Shop Orders

To get three stars in a cake decorating game, build the shape and tiers first, cover every tier completely, and add exactly what the order asks for and nothing else. We measured all three in our own Sweet Cake Shop. Three side-to-side swipes frosted every tier we tried. A tier left half frosted scored like a bare one. And one topping the customer did not ask for was enough to drop a perfect cake to two stars on half of the twelve orders. Here is how the scoring works, what we measured, and every order step by step.

How Sweet Cake Shop works

Sweet Cake Shop is a cake maker game for your browser. You build one cake at a time on six tabs:

• Cake: a round, square or heart shape, one to three tiers, and the sponge (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, red velvet or matcha).
• Frosting: 16 colors. Drag over a tier to spread it, or tap Cover. All tiers frosts the whole cake.
• Drip: dark chocolate, white chocolate, caramel, strawberry, blueberry, mint or gold, running down the sides of the selected tier.
• Toppings: strawberries, cherries, candles, macarons, chocolate squares, cream rosettes, sugar flowers, blueberries, candy hearts and gold stars, up to eight on each tier.
• Sprinkles: rainbow, chocolate, sugar pearls, hearts or stars, plus a border of pearls, gold beads, cream shells or chocolate shells.
• Plate: four plates and boards, two cake stands and six backgrounds.

Press Orders for twelve customer orders. Each order is pinned as a small note in the corner of your cake; tap it to see it big. When you press Done, the game compares your cake with the note and gives up to three stars. One star opens the next order.

How the score works

Extras are things like a drip, sprinkles or a border on a tier that should be plain, a topping of a kind the customer did not want, a second tier on a one-tier order, or a shape change on a round one. Toppings are counted by kind over the whole cake, so it does not matter where on the cake they sit. The sponge, the plate and the background are never scored. Your score is the share of points you earned: 95% or more gives three stars, 78% gives two and 55% gives one.

What we measured

We built the game, so we can test advice instead of guessing. First we spread frosting with full side-to-side swipes, evenly spaced from the top of each tier to the bottom, on every tier size and shape the game has, and counted the swipes until the game counted the tier as covered (86% of it).

The spatula is about a third as wide as the tier, so wide, low tiers are done in two passes. Three swipes, at the top, the middle and the bottom, never failed.

Then we took a perfect cake for each order, changed one thing and scored it with the game’s own rules.

The same half point matters less on big orders, because they have more points in total. A forgotten drip cost a star on all five orders that have one. Leaving one tier half frosted was the most expensive slip: on order 1, where the frosting is the whole order, it scored 0%.

7 tips for three stars

1. Read the order note before you start

The note in the corner shows the finished cake. Tap it to see it at full size, then tap anywhere on the cake to close it. Look for the shape, the number of tiers, the frosting on each tier, any drip or border, and count the toppings.

2. Build the shape and tiers first

The Cake tab sets both. Do it before you frost: when you change the number of tiers later, every tier changes size, and toppings on a tier that disappears are removed.

3. Frost with three swipes, or tap Cover

Drag across the tier at the top, the middle and the bottom. Until the tier is covered you can see the sponge and its cream layers through the gaps, which tells you where to go next. Cover frosts the selected tier at once and scores the same.

4. Select a tier before the drip, sprinkles or border

Tap a tier and a dashed outline marks it. The Drip and Sprinkles tabs change only that tier, unless All tiers is on. Order 9 wants a pearl border on all three tiers, which is one tap with All tiers.

5. Tap a topping, then tap where it goes

Tapping a topping on the panel puts one on the selected tier at once, and tapping the cake adds another where you touch. The game counts them by kind over the whole cake, so three strawberries anywhere on order 2 are worth the same.

6. Leave out what nobody asked for

Every extra costs half a point, and on a small order half a point is a star. Save your own ideas for the free kitchen, where nothing is scored.

7. The sponge and the plate are yours

The note shows a plate and the cake has a sponge inside, but neither is scored. Pick whatever you like.

Ready to bake? Play Sweet Cake Shop in your browser. It runs on phones and computers, with nothing to download.

All 12 orders, step by step

Order 12 is the longest, with three frostings, a border, a drip and two kinds of topping. Work from the bottom tier up and check the note once more before Done.

Ideas for the free kitchen

The kitchen has no score, and the choices add up fast: leaving toppings aside there are more than 30 trillion different cakes. A few to start with:

• Birthday classic: two round tiers in pink and white, a dark chocolate drip on top, strawberries and two candles.
• Naked cake: leave the sponge bare so the cream layers show, add a caramel drip and blueberries.
• Gold wedding: three white tiers, gold bead borders and a gold drip on the top tier, on the glass stand.

Want to make one for real? Our guide to drip cakes covers ganache ratios and temperatures, and colors that go together helps you choose the frostings.

Controls on phone and computer

• Phone and tablet: tap a color and drag your finger over the cake. Spreading frosting or placing toppings on the cake does not scroll the page.
• Computer: drag with the mouse, or use the keyboard: left and right arrows choose a tier, up and down arrows change the tab, C changes the frosting color, the space bar covers the selected tier, A turns All tiers on and off, R makes a random cake, Z undoes and S saves a picture.
• Your work is kept: your last cake and your stars stay in your browser on this device, and Save PNG downloads a picture of the cake.