Icing Your Cakes

[JoyfulCook]

There is always something rather special about decorating your very own cakes. Its really the icing on on the cake as far as I am concerned. Sometimes the decorating takes a while and other times not long at all, but it finishes off the cake and is a beautiful work of art to bring out to your family and friends for special occasions. Have a go, its not really that hard and you will be delighted not only with your cake but with yourself as well.




Royal Icing
Decorator Buttercream Icing
Cake Decorating Icing

Buttercream Frosting (Decorator’s Icing)
Wilton's Chocolate Buttercream Icing, Decorator Icing/Frosting
Extra Special Buttercream Icing



S'more Christmas Cream Cake
Christmas Cake ( With Blitzed Fruit)
Elitetwig's First Time Guide to Ice a Christmas Cake.

Trimmed Christmas Tree Treats™
Christmas Snowman Cupcakes
Christmas Cupcakes

Hints and ideas plus sharing your own experiences are such a great help so please feel free to add to this thread.

[**Tinkerbell**]

Consistency is the absolute key to great decorating. The powdered sugar needs to be well sifted, and thoroughly incorporated. If you want decorations that stand up tall and are defined, you'll use a little more sugar and possibly more shortening than butter. If you want the body of your cake iced smooth, use a little corn syrup to thin the icing, without losing its integrity.
Just don't thin with corn syrup and then try to make your decorations with it.

Decorating takes practice, but there are a few techniques that will make you look like a pro in no time.
The cupcake swirl is made with the largest star tip available. The Wilton 1M star tip makes either a swirl or a rosette atop your cupcake. For a swirl you begin piping at the outer edge, working your way inward, and overlapping the last round slightly each time. When you near the top you will release the pressure on the decorating bag, push down slightly, and then pull straight up to create a single star at the top of the swirl.

This is my vegan decorator frosting that I created for use at the gluten-free bakery. We had a lot of customers that had to be dairy, nut and egg free as well. My vegan chocolate and vanilla frosting recipes allowed them to have custom cakes and cupcakes without risking an allergic reaction. Granted, they're made of mostly shortening and sugar, but when you live on a restricted diet like this, once a year you can afford to splurge without guilt.

Lorilyn's Dairy-Free Buttercream Frosting


To create a rosette you start piping in the center of the cupcake and work your way outward.

An easy, yet classy look can be achieved using a simple shell border (cake decorating 101) and the cornelli lace technique. Using a size 2 or 3 round tip you will make long squiggles all over the cake. They're totally random, and once the cake is filled in it looks amazing. There are a couple rules though. Keep the squiggles close together but never let them cross over each other. You can start and end at the edge of the cake. Try not to make them line up perfectly. Being a little messy, as opposed to over-constructed, is actually the trick.
Here I've done lace on the top only, and used tweezers to place pearl dragees between shells and around the sides.

Decadent Devil's Food Cake



There are lots of YouTube videos these days with instruction for all these techniques. Don't worry about making mistakes. Just scrape the decorations off, put them back in the piping bag and start over. Practice designs on waxed paper before you do it on the cake. Scrape that off and reuse it too! Most importantly, have fun! Your family is going to love anything that you decorate for them.