How to Decorate a Cake: Quick and Easy Ideas for Making Writings and More

A great protagonist of parties, events, birthdays and special days, the homemade cake is a real must. But how to make it beautiful and special even without having great pastry chef skills? In reality it is simpler than expected: there are many solutions that you can easily prepare at home to embellish your desserts, making them spectacular with a few simple ingredients, from cream or chocolate to sweets. Here is everything you need to know to decorate your cakes with simple ideas that everyone can afford.

1. Use Royal Icing or Frosting

If you have prepared a chocolate cake, or a cake with colored dough such as red velvet, you can use a covering made with royal icing or glaze: these are two types of very easy decorations, which are perfect for this type of cake because they create a nice color contrast. Royal icing is made with egg white, powdered sugar and lemon, the glaze is made without egg white and only with powdered sugar and water but in both cases you can leave them white or color them with food coloring before pouring them on the cake: the effect will be even more spectacular.

2. Prepare a Topping

Topping is a particularly fluid and creamy sweet sauce that in the world of desserts is used for many purposes, even to garnish for example ice cream cups or frozen yogurt. Versatile and delicious, you can prepare it in many different flavors and it is perfect for decorating with minimal effort any type of cake, from the classic bundt cake to the cheesecake. If you don't want to propose the usual chocolate classic, try the mou sauce topping or the delicious salted caramel.

3. Decorate With Cream

Whipped cream is one of the easiest and most popular cake decorations you can use: you only need a little to make a cake special and you can also use different techniques to decorate it based on your mastery of pastry tools. By inserting the cream into a piping bag, for example, if you are not very expert you can create tufts of cream all over the surface, while the more practical ones can try their hand at more complex designs such as whipped cream roses. Alternatively, you can use a spatula or a long knife with a smooth blade to distribute and spread the cream evenly over the surface and sides of the cake.

4. Decorate With Chocolate

Chocolate, just like cream, is one of the simplest decorations to make your cake special, but also one of the most versatile: you can use it melted and simply pour it on the cake, you can combine it with cream and obtain chocolate ganache, a smooth and shiny glaze ideal for decorating cakes. Or you can use it to obtain beautiful decorative writings. How? You have to insert the melted chocolate into the piping bag, previously print the writing you want and cover the sheet with baking paper, and then trace the writing that will be visible through the transparency with the chocolate. Place the writing in the freezer so that it solidifies perfectly and then your decoration is ready to be applied.

5. With Candies, Chocolates or Sprinkles

If you don't have time or desire to try your hand at elaborate decorations, this trick is for you: candies, chocolates, smarties and sprinkles are perfect decorations for cakes. You just have to cover the surface you want to decorate with cream, spreadable cream or jam to have a sticky base and then pour all the sweets you prefer on top.

6. Use Fruit

A great classic in tart decoration, fruit is ideal for immediately making your cake more colorful, but also tastier! All you have to do is slice or cut the fruit you have chosen (not necessarily just one variety, you can also mix them) and then decorate the cake by arranging it as you prefer, whether it's a spiral, a circle or following your inspiration. Also in this case it is important to create a base for the cake to stick to, which can be a custard, cream, chocolate or jam.

7. Powdered Sugar and… Imagination!

The simplest, fastest and cheapest solution to decorate your cakes is to use powdered sugar. You can simply sprinkle it on your cake, or you can opt for more imaginative techniques that, however, you can simply make with what you have at home. For example, you can use cutlery or even your hands as a sort of stencil to create decorations with powdered sugar. If you want to be a little more creative, however, you can create a DIY stencil using cardboard and cut it out according to the shape you want to give to your decoration (but there are also many ready-made ones): you will only have to place it on the cake and sprinkle with powdered sugar until you give shape to the design that will appear when you remove your stencil.