Heather Stewart, co-founder and owner of Winnipeg-based Lilyfield Cakes has served up her classic chocolate cake, along with her line of shortbread at the Academy Awards Get Ready for the Red Carpet Suite at the Luxe Hotel in Beverly Hills.

The Farrelly brothers, Joan Collins, and Allison Janney all dabbled in her delectables while getting dolled up for the 2008 awards show. And today she's shared her secrets for decorating your Oscar-worthy cake at home!

Watch this segment in episode 55 now!

Heather's Decorating Tips:

• Bake your cake at a low temperature to avoid the heave in the center and for a more even baking. Most cake recipes say 350 oven. You will get better results at 300. Lowering the temperature should add onto bake time a little - add on ten minutes, keep an eye on it, and stick a toothpick in the centre to see if it's baked. Always a good idea to have an oven thermometer, as most domestic ovens are not accurate and can really alter your baking and roasting.
• If you need to cut your cake in half to fill (a regular size round pan will serve 10 to 12), use dental floss and wooden skewers. Wrap the dental floss around one skewer then measure approx. a foot long and wrap around the other skewer. Keep tension tight and cut through the cake with the floss. You'll have way more even results than with a knife. You can also buy a metal tool that does the same thing but rigging it up is super easy.
• Place your cake on a flat board, plate or preferably a rotating cake stand. Place strips of wax or parchment underneath the cake (not too wide so that they are easy to pull out when you're done)
• Trim cake of uneven surfaces very carefully to keep it even. You might like to do the floss to take the hard baked top off.
• Lightly brush the cake off to remove any excess crumbs.
• On the bottom half of cake, take a sharp paring knife and cut a circle out 1/4 inch from edge and 1/4 inch deep (this will help the filling from spilling out the edge when you put the two pieces together)
• Optional but highly recommended for newbies... freeze the cake.
• Lightly brush the cake with light preserves. Apricot seems top be the best. (Not really necessary but if you're making a day or 2 ahead it keeps the cake moist)
• Lightly ice and pipe a wall of filling around the edge of the bottom (again to stop the filling from leaking) fill the bottom layer with filling (Anything is fine...frosting, preserves, cherry pie filling, frosting and nuts, or frosting and broken cookie crumbles, I can go on.... broken Skor and frosting). My cake has Raspberry Cream.
• Place second layer on top of bottom layer of cake. Spread a thin layer of frosting. If you can put in fridge for 10 to 15 minutes, then with a narrow spatula evenly spread frosting over top and sides. If the cake is frozen its a firm surface and a little easier. Freezing makes cake moist - it does nothing to ruin the flavour.
• Once the cake has an even layer of frosting take a large piece of parchment paper and gently smooth off all rough surfaces on top and sides. This will take several pieces of wax paper. You will be able to make the surface smooth enough that it will almost look like fondant.
• Colour your fondant with fondant dye and knead it until the colour is through - add more colour as you need to. Now you can buy fondant pre-coloured, which is even easier.
• Roll out the fondant paste with a rolling pin. Cut out circles, and with a dab of water or frosting affix to cake and slightly press in.
• Hard part... move the cake onto a cake plate! Unless you can decorate on the plate you plan to serve on.

RECIPES:

Raspberry Filling

1 can frozen Raspberry juice thawed
1 cup sugar
3 tbsp corn starch
2 tbsp butter
In a medium sauce pan whisk all ingredient together cold until all lumps of. cornstarch are dissolved and mixture is smooth and cloudy looking turn heat on to med and continue to whisk until mixture comes to boil. Let boil for aprox 1 minute while continuing to whisk. Take off burner let cool completely.

At this stage this sauce is delicious warm over any cake with topped with whipped cream.
Any flavour of juice concentrate will work. I love it in orange.

Pour cooled fruit sauce into large bowl add 1 bag icing sugar
Mix until smooth. Kitchen Aid mixer works best. You can thicken or lighten mixture as you like with more or less icing sugar. Thick slices easiest.

Butter Cream Frosting

1 cup vegetable shortening
1/4 cup water
1 1-kilo bag icing sugar
1 tsp white vanilla
1 tsp almond extract

Mix in Kitchen Aid is best using shortening can be hard on a hand mixture. Modify half and half with butter once you have skills use butter tastes best. Regular vanilla will darken the colour ever so slightly.

White Cake

4 Eggs
2 Cups Sugar
2 Cups Flour
2 Tsp. Baking Powder
1 Tsp. Salt
2 Tsp. Vanilla
1 Cup Milk
2 Tbsp. Butter

Beat eggs and sugar. In a separate bowl, sift and stir together flour, baking powder and salt. Add to egg mixture. Heat milk to boiling point, add butter. Add to the first mixture and bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Visit Heather online at:
www.lilyfieldcakes.com