Cake Decorating

Cake decorating is one of the sugar arts that uses icing and other edible decorative elements to make otherwise plain cakes more visually interesting. Alternatively, cakes can be molded and sculpted to resemble three-dimensional persons, places and things. more...

In many areas of the world, decorated cakes are often the focal point of a special celebration such as a birthday, graduation, bridal shower, wedding, or anniversary.

The art of cake decorating dates back to mid-17th century in Europe and has since flourished in many regions and countries, including Northwestern Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and South America.

Cake decorating can be a hobby or a job.

Styles of cake decorating

Decorating a cake usually involves covering a cake with some form of icing and then using decorative sugars, candies, chocolate or icing decorations to embellish the cake. But it can also be as simple as sprinkling a fine coat of icing sugar or drizzling a glossy blanket of glaze over the top of a cake. Icing decorations can be made by either piping icing flowers and decorative borders or by molding gum paste, fondant, or marzipan flowers and figures. A cake maker is not called anything other than a cake maker.

The precursor to most styles of cake decorating is the European style, which entails covering a cake with a smooth layer of icing, either royal icing or rolled fondant, and then using royal icing to pipe flowers, borders and decorative stringwork to adorn the cake. Traditionally, the wedding cake is a graduated multi-tiered cake stacked in Victorian style or separated by pillars with flowers and other decorations applied to each tier.

The Lambeth Method uses intricate dimensional overpiping of borders on a fondant covered cake. Scrolls, scallops and stringwork are piped, one layer of icing on top of another, until a very dimensional effect is achieved.

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