Edible cake decorating is a lot easier than you might think. You can buy all the materials you would need for edible cake decorating from any website, supermarket or catering store; you can add even the most elaborate decorations to your cake with very little difficulty; and you can probably do it all cheaper than you could if you went to a bakery and had them make one for you.
Let’s start with the basics. Edible cake decorating is as simple as rolling out a pat of icing and draping it over a fruit cake. Edible cake decorating, after all, is anything you can use to embellish a cake that you don’t have to take off again before you eat it: the moment you brush that thing with hot jam and roll the royal icing over it, you’ve started edible cake decorating.
The next step in edible cake decorating is to add frills. You’ve made your base with your gown of icing: now you want to define the edges, maybe, with some piped icing, or run around the cake’s base with a ribbon of fondant. Edible cake decorating, like anything artistic, is as much about what you don’t put in a what you do – a few simple edgings work far better than a fiendishly complicated patter squirted all over the sides.
Now: what about some colour? Once you’ve laid your foundations (usually, in fancy edible cake decorating, white), you’re at liberty to bring in highlights. Just (remember – edible cake decorating at its best is an exercise in restraint) not too many. A few silver balls, perhaps, or a single sugar flower. Don’t worry about having to make complex decorations like flower petals: most food stores sell heaps of edible cake decorating supplies, up to and including very fancy-looking centrepieces that just need a blob of icing or a little hot water to affix.
See? Edible cake decorating is (almost) as easy as 1 – 2 – 3.
