Cake Icing Tips

Many will agree with me when I say that the cake is one of the best creations of mankind in the field of food. It makes the perfect choice for a dessert, in fact, it may be called the 'king of desserts'. A beautifully crafted cake icing makes the cake even more tempting and is the main cause for people, specially children, devouring it to their heart's content. Hope you find some useful cake icing tips as you read along.

A cake icing is a sugary paste that is topped on a cake to make the cake more appealing and more palatable. Icing, also known as frosting, is the best part of cake decorations. There are many types of cake icings such as butter cream icing, whipped cream icing, ganaches, glazed icing, etc. Out of these, butter cream and whipped cream are the most preferred and widely used icing recipes for dressing birthday, Christmas and anniversary cakes i.e. for decorating special occasion cakes.

Tips for Icing a Cake

• If you want your cake icing to be soft and smooth, use butter cream or whipped cream as frostings. Since both form a soft icing, it is easy to spread them evenly on the cake surface and also to fill the intermediate layers of the cake (in case you are making a multi tier cake).
• For the actual icing procedure, let the cake cool well before applying the icing over it. Place it on a wire rack so that it gets cooled from all sides.
• Brush away the crumbs with a pastry brush.
• Place the cake on a cake stand and start icing the surface, one layer at a time.
• Use an offset spatula for spreading, so that your hands remain clean and the icing spreads evenly.
• Place one cup of icing in the center of the cake and spread it with the spatula towards the edges, keeping a margin of half inches along the circumference(so that when you place the upper layer, the cream spreads due to the pressure).
• Now, place an unfrosted layer bottom side up (so that the top surface of the cake looks flat, smooth and even) on the frosted layer and apply frosting in the same way.
• Apply the frosting along the sides with the spatula by rotating the cake stand. Seal the cake from all sides so that no crumbs fall loose.
• After the side is sealed up well, apply another coat of icing on the topmost layer in the same way as above and spread it evenly to make a thick, flat coat of icing.

To decorate the cake further, you have to make use of cake decorating icing tips of various designs for drawing artistic designs over the surface and around the cake. Following is a list of the names of the cake icing tips, that can be attached to a pastry bag, and a description of what kind of designs they help produce.

Drop Flower Decorating Tip: Creates a multi-petaled flower shape icing at a single go. Numerous shapes and sizes are available.

Closed Star Decorating Tip: This tip helps in making designs that look like the points of a star that are closed in together. There are many different types in this one too.

Basketweave Decorating Tip: Creates wavy patterns of icing that are usually used for border decorations.

Round Decorating Tip: Round shaped icing designs can be created with this tip.

Leaf Decorating Tip: As the name suggests, it is used to craft leaves around flowers. Different shapes and sizes of tips are available.

Multi Opening Decorating Tip: These tips have multiple openings for drawing repetitive kind of designs. Like for drawing concentric circles you can use a tip that allows parallel lines to be drawn simultaneously.

Open Star Decorating Tip: This tip helps to draw star-shaped or flower shaped designs.

Petal Decorating Tip: Used for drawing a single flower petal, one at a time.

Ruffle Decorating Tip: This tip is used for crafting multi-layers design simultaneously.

The above cake icing tips make it very easy to decorate the cake artistically. You can create larger designs by using these tips. The main point that has to be remembered while making a cake, specially while icing it is, to never panic. It becomes easier to make a cake if you enjoy and have fun while doing so.