How to become an expert on cake decorations - Cake Decorating Tips

One of the best things about cake is that it's fun. Think about it: they're colorful, they're always at parties, and they're always the center of attention. Cakes are one of the few, if not the only, dessert that marks a special occasion. During these events, you may notice that a cake is spruced up extra nicely and it usually has a more elaborate design. While you may marvel at the complexity and effort of the cake decorators at achieving the look and design, did you know that you could also create something as beautiful. There are a lot of cake decorations that are simple to do at home but are pretty enough for a party.

One thing you should consider when you are going to decorate a cake is the color of the coat. Is the icing going to be white? Or is it chocolate cake covered in fudge? By knowing the base color, you can work your color palette in terms of the cake's design. You could figure out what kind of icing you'd make or buy as well as the accessories you would add to accentuate your design.

One basic cake decoration is feathering. With a couple of colors of decorating gel, paint thin lines across your cake. Note that you can use just one color or could go multi-color. However, if you're going for feathers, it would be nicer if you had two colors of lines. After you draw lines with the gel, use a paring knife and carefully draw a line across the lines. Start from the top and work your way to the bottom. After one line, wipe the tip of the knife and repeat until you've drawn lines all over the cake.

Another simple cake decoration you could try is the lattice. With an icing bag, squeeze a contrasting color on the cake. You should do this in such a way that the line goes diagonally across the cake. Make a couple of lines that are around one fourth of an inch apart. After finishing a set, do another one that runs against the first set. This should make a design that looks like a basket weave of sorts on top of the cake. With a couple of berries or nuts, you could turn the cake into something really special. Use berries, buts, or any colorful fruit as design around the cake or for something a bit more cutesy, you can stick a clump of these on just one side of the cake.

You could also use chocolate to decorate your cake. You can make curls of chocolate by using a potato peeler. Take a bar of chocolate that was stored in room temperature and then just shave off chocolate. This could look pretty on top of a white or cream-colored cake. You could also place some colorful berries or preserved fruit along with the curls so your chocolate cake decoration has more color.

These ideas are fairly simple, right? You can try these the next time you bake a cake and see if you could do them. Better yet, you could let your ideas go wild and do something of your own!