Cake Decorating Tips That’ll Take Your Dessert To The Next Level

These cake decorating tips will make any dessert look better! Check out this post and learn simple ways to create beautiful cakes and desserts.

Cake Decorating Tips You Ought To Know

1.  Remember, buttercream is gold

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If you're a novice at frosting, you might want to start off with basic buttercream. What's great about buttercream is it's very simple to make and its versatility is priceless. Depending on what you need it for, you can quickly adjust its consistency and flavor and use it to cover a cake, glue layers of cake together, and pipe decorations.

2. Freeze the cake

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When you let the cake chill for a bit, decorating it will be a breeze—its surface will be firmer and it won't crumble. Decorating and frosting will be easier because it will hold its shape. Freezing a cake for a few hours, even weeks, will potentially make it moister and more delicious as well.

3. Invest in a turntable and bench scraper

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Any cake decorator out there knows how important turntables and bench scrapers are. They simply make things insanely convenient. If you don't have a turntable and a bench scraper, you're going to have to work extra hard turning that cake around and giving it a smooth finish.

4. Know the different types of piping nozzles

Know the nitty gritty of piping tools! Here are some types of piping nozzles you should know about:

• Round nozzles have round, plain tips and they're used to pipe smooth and rounded swirls, make lines on borders, add dots on details, and write letters, among others.
• True to their names, closed and open star piping nozzles have star-like tips. They're used to create small stars, shells, flowers, and other shapes with a ruffled texture.
• Leaf nozzles have V-shaped tips and, as the name clearly suggests, they're used to make leaves.
• The tip of a petal nozzle is like a teardrop, with one roundish end and the other tapered. They're used to make petals and delicate ruffles.

5. Lace the cake with icing sugar

You don't exactly need fondant or icing to create a lovely lace pattern on the cake. Keep things lowkey by simply dusting the cake with powdered sugar or cocoa. To do this, lay a piece of lace across the cake. Place the powdered sugar or cocoa into a sieve and hold it over the cake. Then, sprinkle the surface. Once you carefully remove the lace from the cake, you should be able to see this gorgeous pattern.

6. Make decorating easy with scallops or petals

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If the cake is covered in sugar paste, you can use crimpers with a scalloped tip. You only need to gently squeeze or pinch the edges of the cake to create the scallop-like shapes or petals. To completely cover the cake with this design, simply put the frosting of your choice in a piping bag and pipe medium-sized knobs on the surface. Then use a spoon to gently press and swipe the knobs.

7. Top the cake with chocolate and sweets

Covering a cake with chocolates and sweets is one way to decorate it quickly! You can use pieces of KitKat to cover the sides of the cake or Reese's cups to line the edges. The possibilities on what you can do with sweets to decorate your cake are practically endless. Cover the cake first with a buttercream frosting to keep the pieces from falling.

8. Or, top it with miniature toys

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You know, you can't go wrong with miniature toys, especially when you're decorating a cake for birthdays and Halloween. Toys just elicit a child-like charm on cakes, making them more vibrant, fun, and special. They help you get things done more quickly as well. Say, for example, you're making a firefighter's birthday cake. Instead of making a fondant firetruck from scratch, you can make a super delicious cake, with a simple frosting, and place a firetruck toy on top.

9. Cut out shapes with marzipan

Marzipan is much like fondant when it comes to function—both can be used to cut out and form shapes. It is usually made out of almond paste, almond meal, or ground almonds, along with sugar, honey, and almond extract. There are plenty of things you can do with marzipan to decorate your cake. One easy way is to cut out shapes from it using a cookie cutter and place the cutouts strategically on a frosted cake.

10. Go classy and dainty with flowers

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A simple cake with a white or pastel-colored frosting will be more elegant when you place real flowers on the surface. But make sure you're using fresh and healthy flowers—you don't want the edges of the petals to be brown or wilted. Also, remember not to go overboard with the flowers as well.

11. Make the cake refreshing with real fruit

Putting real fruit on a cake makes it prettier, more refreshing, and certainly more mouthwatering. Imagine a strawberry cheesecake without actual strawberries on top or a Black Forest cake without cherries. It doesn't seem right, does it? Fruits just give life to cake and strips off the overly commercialized look.

12. Use desiccated coconut

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You can use desiccated coconut to get a snowy and fluffy effect on the cake's surface. A simple lemon or chocolate cake will look extra pretty with just plain frosting and desiccated coconut. Not only does it look good, it is a healthier alternative to sprinkles made from sugar as well.

13. Cover the cake with nuts

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One simple way to decorate a cake, without doing much, is to put nuts on it. They look good on a frosted or unfrosted cake and you can either crush them or use them whole. We don't know about you, but a cake with nuts on it has a rustic but elegant look that screams grown-up sophistication.

14. Ombre is in

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Ombre frosting on a cake is quite popular these days. The gradual transition of colors on the cake just honestly makes it more appealing. If you want to try this, you can start practicing on a small cake and make a white frosting and separate them in three or four bowls. Then use food coloring gel to color the buttercream, making sure the amount of food coloring varies in each bowl. Pipe the one with the darkest color at the bottom of the cake, with the lightest one at the top, or vice versa.

15. Leave the cake bare

Sometimes, a cake with the littlest touch of decor is the loveliest of all. And, this technique is quite popular these days, too. A multi-layered cake can have a rustic charm when left exposed, with just fresh fruits or flowers and ganache as decoration.

Get more cake decorating tips in this video by Everyday Food:

A home cook or baker can make any cake look attractive with the help of these cake decorating tips! Just learn the basics, like how to make buttercream frosting and do some simple piping techniques, and buy a few essential tools. But what's really important is your creativity; so, let your ideas fly! We hope these cake decorating tips will help you make plenty of beautiful desserts in the future.

Which of these cake decorating tips have you tried? Let us know in the comments section below!

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