Decorating your cake

Hopefully, you already have the design for your cake chosen before you make the cake. If you aren't the artistic type, you can find many ideas on the internet and from cake designing books. You can mix and match ideas from more than one cake. If you are the artist type, you will be in the heighth of your glory designing your own cakes. But beware, sometimes the ideas don't always convert well from brain to cake. I always have these really cool ideas, but somehow I don't have the expertise yet to transform those thoughts into reality. But, I try not to get discouraged and trudge on.

There are some really basic designs you can put on a cake and make it look beautiful. Some of these include
SwissDots,
CornelliLace,
BrushEmbroidery,
Scrollwork,
SwagsandRuffles, or simply just some ribbon.

You can decorate very simply with fondant as well simply by attaching some fondant you have cut out with cookie cutters (e.g. stars, circles, squares, letters) with incredible results like these:

Stars
Circles
Squares
letters

Or you can combine the two to create still another look.

You can decorate your cake with 3-D figures ranging from babies for shower cakes, safari animals for a zoo cake, penguins for a snowy winter scene, farm animals, landscape figures like trees, ponds, fences. Fondant can also be used to make flowers. Well you're pretty much unlimited. Attach the cut-outs with a little water, icing, or piping gel.

If you need a stand-up figure, you may want to consider adding some gumpaste to the fondant. If you don't know, gumpaste is a "dough", which when it gets dry gets hard. It can be purchase at your local Super store, party supply stores, or online.

My advice is to start out simple. Continue to progress whenever you can. The more you practice, the better you get. Practice piping swags, letters, scrollwork. You don't have to make a cake to do this. All you need is a paper plate or a sheet of either parchment or wax paper and a piping bag. When you are finished, you just wipe the icing back into a ziploc bag or container. If you won't be practicing for a while, you can always just toss it in the freezer until you are ready to use it again.

You can make roses out of icing, fondant, gumpaste or royal icings.

These are just a few techniques and ideas that can get you started. You can find many basic decorating techniques on Wilton