Cake Decorating Ideas

Decorating your own cake instead of buying a cake from a bakery can be a really fun way to save money, as well to create something unique that you might not be able to buy in a store.

When coming up with cake decorating ideas, try to create design using the standard pans you already have instead of buying pans in various shapes. This will help you avoid having a "princess" pan and a "Christmas Tree" pan rusting in your basement after being used once or twice!

Make sure that you have the basics of cake decorating before you begin. At the very least, you'll need a few different pan sizes, a couple of icing bags, and some decorating tips, as well as food coloring. The best kind of food coloring for cake decorating is the concentrated paste that can be found in most craft stores because you need less of it to achieve a dark color.

Boxed cakes can be very quick, easy shortcuts for beginners and the results are usually delicious. When choosing a frosting, it's usually better to use homemade frosting for cake decorating since one can manipulate the consistency and colors better than store bought.

Consider making a white frosting using only shortening (no butter) which will hold up better on a decorated cake. If you have an idea in your head of what you'd like to make, sketch it out on paper first, or search on the internet for some ideas and then go for it! Decide what cake pans you'll need to achieve your desired shape and bake your cake in those pans.

If you've just begun cake decorating, a great way to start out is to use the "star" tip on your decorating set to fill in the design as you like it on the cake. That is a good (and relatively fool-proof) way to achieve a uniform result. Once your cake is decorated and you're ready to cover it with plastic wrap, use some toothpicks to elevate the plastic wrap off of the surface of the cake to avoid having the frosting stick to the plastic wrap.

When I've made a cake, I like to take a picture of it and write a few notes on the back of the picture about what pan sizes I used and what frosting I used to achieve the design. This way when I look back in my cookbook I don't have to guess my method.

Regardless of how the cake comes out, friends and relatives will appreciate the effort put into the cake, and the more cakes you make, the better you'll get at cake decorating ideas!