Great British Baking Show Cake Decorating Stand

Before we get into cake decorating tables lemme preface this post with "probably." The Great British Baking Show Cake Decoration Stand is probably the Ateco 615 Aluminum Decorating Turntable (Amazon - UK).

You see, cake decorating stands come in 2 flavors, rotating and non-rotating. The Great British Baking Show cake decorating stands rotate. Rotating cake decorating stands seem to come in 2 flavors. 3 inches tall, and 5 inches tall. I'm positive that the Great British Baking Show cake decorating stands are 5 inches tall.

Now that we've narrowed it down to a 5 inch tall rotating decorating stand who makes it? What a great question. I've never seen a product so identically copied and then sold everywhere! Different "manufacturers" literally using the exact same images, with the same weird camera distortion on the isometric picture, are everywhere. They all even use the same flaming bearing picture - which if your bearings are on fire you have a friction problem, exactly what you don't want to have. I'm sure its just people buying the top and bottom and sticking it together and then on Amazon or what ever retailer's site.

The cake stands are made by - :deep inhale: - Puroma, Kootek, Platopotato, Luobao, RFAQK, himlay, ievei, Ohuhu, Trademark Innovations, Miecux, ANSLYQA, TANGCHU, Suuker, InnoGear, WJIASI, Evwoge, Bhriclan, GXONE, etc. etc. etc. Literally hundreds of Chinese companies selling the exact same thing with the same promotional material, anywhere from Walmart, to Target, to Wayfair, to Amazon. The only difference is that some of the companies, Ohuhu and Ateco in particular, take the time to laser etch their logo on the platter. The insane thing is, they all have like a 4.6 to 4.8 star rating and hundreds, if not thousands, of reviews. And the reviews look legit, like by real people, with pictures.

So either AI is getting really good at this, and someone is running a really convincing scam, or this is just a fairly run of the mill product, easy to produce, and without a patent. They sell for anywhere between $27 and $263. Mind you - the SAME images, the SAME product, more than $200 apart.

So why would I postulate the ones from the tent, if not the OG cake decorating stands, are the Ateco 615 Aluminum Decorating Turntables (Amazon - UK)? Well they seem like a real company, with a website, mailing address, and they can be found on Google maps... Madness! They've been around since 1905, are proudly family owned, and have been making cake stands since the beginning (model 612 not the rotating 615...). Additionally they're sold at some major retailers, which gives them some credence in my mind.

Presumably The Great British Baking Show Cake Decoration Stand, the Ateco 615 Aluminum Decorating Turntable (Amazon - UK) is aluminum, has ball bearings, markings on the 12 inch platter, and is 5 inches tall, and has a silicone foot. Lets take a look at them specs!

Being all aluminum makes the platter much lighter than had it been made of steel. It is light enough the bakers can easily move it, but heavy enough that it wants to stay where it's put (it is 4.8 pounds!). The silicone foot helps with this, making sure it does not slide around. The metal platter is rigid, keeping things stable, and wont tilt or wander off. As opposed to a plastic decorating stand which just does not have the mass or rigidity to remain where you want it, and little wobbles are going to show up in the frosting.

The turntable platter is separated from the base by a stainless steel ball bearing connection. This is what lets the turntable... turn. Ball bearings provide support to the entire circumference of the connection. This allows it to remain level and turn smoothly. If you've ever tried to rotate metal against metal without a bearing you know it gets hard fast. That's small metal flakes starting to eat away at the surface and slow things down. You don't want that, you want bearings. And opposed to the images provided by every manufacturer here, you don't want them to be on fire either... The downside to the ball bearing connection is that the junction is not sealed, and thus should not be submerged in water. Thus making cleaning it, a by-hand affair.

The stand itself is 5 inches tall, as opposed to a lot of 3 inch stands. This just gets it off the counter a bit more, and a little more accessible. Are you going to notice a huge difference between 3 and 5 inches? You tell me.

Lastly the platter is 12 inches in diameter. This means you can decorate a cake up to... 12 inches in diameter. That's a large cake! It also has concentric rings on the platter at 6, 8 and 10 inches. This makes sure no matter what the diameter of your cake you can keep in in the middle, thus while rotating it, it does not get all wonky. No one like wonky cake icing, it does not taste nearly as good. Ask any child.

I guess the first question, 'do you need this?' is one you're going to have to answer yourself. If you're looking to up your cake game and have storage room in your kitchen for a fairly large piece of equipment - go for it. The turn table is going to allow you to rotate the cake while keeping your decorating utensils still, this makes smoothing sides far easier than trying to 'get around' the cake. If going for a professional look, I'm not sure I could do it with out the rotating stand. Maybe (let's be honest - probably) you're far more skilled than I am and you may not need the stand.

That being said, where do you want to get your cake stand from and how much do you want to pay? The Ateco 615 Aluminum Decorating Turntable (Amazon - UK) retails for between $40 and $90 at the the official distributors, just look around for the best price - a lot of the official links are dead... Here - have one of the $40 ones - Shop Cake and Craft Web Site. Amazon clocks in right in the middle - around $55, Walmart around $63. Shop around and you'll be fine.

If you're looking to save $10 over the legit thing, there are TONS of brands selling copies on Amazon, Wayfair, Walmart.com etc. They all clock in 4.6 stars or more, so the stand must be fairly easy to manufacture. For roughly $28 - Kootek makes a 3.77 inch one with 4.9 stars and almost 5000 ratings. Or for $7 more they make a kit as well that comes with some decorating tools and has like 4.9 stars and 8000 reviews... To be honest the tools do not look like they're the best quality. And now you're almost at the $40 price of the original Ateco. I guess another question is who do you want to be giving your money to? Odd Chinese knockoffs or family run businesses out of Glen Cove, NY? Your call, no judgement here. Just don't buy the $260 one... Please don't do that. I'm not even going to link it - to save us all.