Unless you’ve spent hours mastering a piping bag, decorating a cake is probably the most nerve-wracking part of making a cake. When you’ve spent so much time making the perfect sponge and buttercream, you want it to look as delicious as it tastes.
You don’t need to be a master froster to get your cake looking drop-dead gorgeous. These are five ways to get that wow factor (and all the compliments) without the effort:
Fake it if you can’t make it
Pro tip: Buy fancy macarons and stick them all around the outside of your cake. No one will know that your cake was actually wonky or unevenly iced!
Don’t decorate it at all!
Ever since Christina Tosi invented the famous Momofuku Milk Bar birthday layer cake, we’ve been obsessed with a cake undecorated cake. Why cover up all those gorgeous layers, anyway? Embrace them! Get the look by making an acetate/baking paper collar inside your cake tin, then layer the sponge, frosting and sprinkles. Refrigerate until set, peel off the acetate and voila!
Flower power
Let Mother Nature do all the work by choosing some really special flowers to adorn your cake. The trick to making it look chic and not dated is to choose your colour scheme carefully and go for out-of-the-ordinary blooms for something a little different. Remember to wrap the stems in foil before inserting them into the cake, and avoid flowers sprayed with pesticides!
Go for gold
Probably my favourite way to bling up a chocolate cake is to splatter it with edible gold paint, which is super easy to make! Mix 1 tsp edible gold dust (available at baking shops) with 1 tsp vodka or vanilla essence, then use a new toothbrush or paintbrush to fleck and splatter the cake with gold. The gold paint can also be used to dip or paint cherries, raspberries and macarons – the sky’s the limit.
Stroke of genius
The brushstroke cake trend we saw a few years back is still going strong, and for good reason. For little effort, you can maximum wow factor – especially if you choose a striking colour palette.All you need is white baking chocolate, edible powdered colouring (both available at baking shops) and a spoon to create this look.
WATCH – here’s how to do it!
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