Cake Decoration Art

                                                CAKE DECORATION

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

                                                  

Cakes are decorated to mark a special celebration (such as a birthday or wedding). They can also mark national or religious holidays, or be used to promote commercial enterprises. However, cakes may be baked and decorated for almost any social occasion.

                                                                                AS AN ART

Decorating a cake usually involves covering it with some form of icing and then using decorative sugar, candy, 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 sugar paste, fondant, or marzipan flowers and figures.

This has become a form of unique artistry, and ranges from a single layered cake, decorated simply, to a multi-layered 3 dimensional creation, that is decorated with edible ribbons made of sugar. Early construction methods of cutting shapes out of cake and piecing them together to create a structure have been superseded by preformed character pans, and the shaping of cakes out of fondant and different forms of marzipan.

Using this new form of fondant artistry should be used on a heavy cake consistency. It can, however, be used on the traditional cake mix purchased in a store. Fondant is heavier than traditional knife spread frosting. Pre-made fondant that is available in the cake decorating section in stores has little flavoring. A homemade fondant can be made quickly for very little cost, and tends to have a better flavor than the pre-made store bought version.

Whether using icing or fondant or marzipan to cover cakes, if a cake has multiple layers then in order to keep it from sliding it may need to be secured using dowels made from plastic straws, bubble tea straws, wooden chopsticks or wooden dowel .