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Cake Expert ChoppA: "It's Not How Well You Decorate The Cake, It’s How Well You Hide The Mistakes."

For ChoppA, it all started with a Spiderman cake.
For ChoppA, it all started with a Spiderman cake.

Former kindergarten teacher, ChoppA, would never have predicted five years ago that today he would be a YouTube sensation teaching mums, dads, children and even grandparents how to make and decorate their own novelty cakes.

Before he began cake decorating, ChoppA (a name that stuck since childhood from his favourite cartoon at the time Hanna Barbera), already had a flair for the arts and was also a YouTube content creator.

“I use to try and make funny videos and we would tag videos, skits, but I could never get any decent traction,” he says.

After realising he perhaps wasn’t as funny as he thought, ChoppA took away some advice from a YouTube meeting that, little did he know, would be the start of something big.



“YouTube suggested we focus on things we can repeat, things we had talent in, things that we love to do that we can do over and over,” he says.

What started as an activity with his mum making cakes for birthdays, turned into Cakes by ChoppA and in under a year he had quit his job to peruse his online persona.

ChoppA has come a long way since his first video of himself making a Spiderman cake for one of his students, with more than 200 cake decorating videos and more than 55 million views worldwide.

Eeyore by ChoppA.
Eeyore by ChoppA.

Unlike novelty cake television stars Buddy Valastro of Cake Boss and Duff Goldman of Ace of Cakes who make cake decorating seem impossible, ChoppA makes cake decorating easy and relatable for his viewers to grasp.

“With the technique I’ve come up with of templates and showing you step-by-step… like cut out this lemon shape, I just relate it to really basics steps and if you follow it, you end up with this result,” he says.

He even has 10 year-old kids making his cakes that he says, “look amazing.”

RELATED: 13 Ultimate Cake Decorating Fails

Using ingredients like fondant, butter cream, ganache and modelling chocolate to decorate his cakes, ChoppA says while they are easy to use and make the cake look great, if your surroundings aren’t right a lot can go wrong.

“If the humidity is wrong, your fondant goes sticky, if it’s too warm, your butter cream won’t hold or it wont dry out,” he says.

So what’s the best advice he ever got from a fellow cake decorator that stuck with him forever?

ChoppA at work.
ChoppA at work.

“It’s not how well you decorate the cake, it’s how well you hide the mistakes. So even if it is a fail, it is rescuable,” he says.

ChoppA will be just one of the YouTube stars at Game ON, an interactive games and online video showcase being held as part of Vivid Sydney 2015.

He hopes his demonstrations will prove that anybody can take a stab at cake decorating.

<i>Despicable Me</i> minion by ChoppA.
Despicable Me minion by ChoppA.

Fans will even get the chance to decorate a cake in less than five minutes with his guidance.

“I’ve got it down to a few little cheats and tricks,” he says.

To see ChoppA make his famous cakes and to get some hands-on cake decorating skills and tips to make your own, he will be at Game ON all weekend from Friday 22nd May to Sunday 24th May 2015, at the Australian Technology Park.

RELATED: Hip Hip Hooray Birthday Cakes

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