Does anything feel more special than being presented a cake with a special message written in icing on the top? We love adding this finishing touch to birthday cakes and other special occasion cakes, but making it look good can definitely be tricky. Here are a few tips that can help.
1. Write in Cursive - This tip comes from our baking instructor in culinary school. She explains that it’s much easier to control the flow of the icing from the piping bag in a single steady stream for cursive than to continually start and stop for print letters. It also just looks fancier and more elegant.
2. Practice Makes Perfect - Grab a thick marker and hold it in your fist like a kid just learning out to draw. This is similar to how you hold the piping bag. Write out your message few times on a piece of scrap paper so your hand learns the motion of making the letters. This also helps avoid the problem of writing the whole message only to realize you’ve misspelled something!
3. Trace the Message with a Skewer - Take a skewer or other pointy object and lightly trace your message in the frosting on top of the cake. This way you can position the message perfectly and will have something to follow once you actually start piping. The piped icing will cover up the skewer marks.
If you’re not comfortable with a piping bag and your icing is thin enough, it can also be easier to use a squeeze bottle or work with a kit like this one from Kuhn Rikon. As with all things, we encourage you to go for it and not worry about perfection!
What other tips do you have for writing on cakes?
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4. Practice with your actual piping bag on something other than the cake. You need to get used to applying the squeeze while writing. This especially applies to shortcut-stuff you buy in tubes, which can be very hard to squeeze out, making neat writing next to impossible. If you can't do a satisfactory job on a plate, you won't do any better on the actual cake!
Most people have problems figuring out where to start writing and how to size it so that you don't get to the end and end up squishing all of the letters just to fit it on the cake (or poster or whatever you're writing on).
If you're writing "happy", count the letters and find the one in the middle. In "happy", the middle letter is the first "p", so write that "p" in the center, and finish writing the word "happy" around it. Then it will be perfectly centered.
It's easy to mix up some frosting to practice with if you want to get good at it. You can cover a board with stiff plastic and practice away. It makes a huge difference!
I second the idea of practicing with the actual piping bag and icing before starting on the cake. I always write out each word on my counter a few times so I know exactly how I want to do it.
Flip the cake pan you baked the cake in upside down and practice on that. The perfect size and shape!
Make or buy some cheap frosting and practice with an actual piping bag on a piece of parchment, scrape it off and practice again! That's how we learned in culinary school - doing that over and over and over and over.
Melt some chocolate shell and practice with that too, once it dries, it'll peel right off and can be melted down again.
I don't know if I'm alone here, but I hate words on cake. Maybe it's because my German family never did it, but I just think, for the most part, it's tacky. I just like the simple elegance of the architecture of the cake.
Pipe your writing using melted chocolate onto a piece of parchment or waxed paper, then refrigerate until hard. As long as it's in cursive and isn't too delicate, it should lift off in one piece, and then can be placed directly on the cake.
Practice on the counter, absolutely. Or a piece of plastic wrap. Then you can recycle the icing back into your piping bag by wrapping it up into a bundle, poking a hole and squeezing it out.
Otherwise, a bench scraper is your friend.
I do agree with TheWholesomeHome - but I do have to admit it looks pretty cute on the cake shown above
great tips!!
I'm a cake decorator, and when I first started at my bakery, writing was a daunting task. I started by piping messages onto parchment paper, then I covered some cake boards with butter cream frosting and piped on those. Piping messages on frosting is a little bit different than just piping on parchment paper- you have to "lay" the message on top of the frosting which makes it easier to remove if there are any mistakes.
And if you don't have any pastry bags or tips, use a ziploc bag with the tip of the corner cut off! I especially like using ziploc bags for chocolate work since I can store the chocolate in it and microwave it when I need it.
Great tips all. A great one to help hide any nasties when you do write on a cake though- there's a reason so many decorators write with overly flourished cursive on cakes. That picture, see how many letters are swirled on ends and things? It hides mistakes or imperfections and gives your hand and brain a second to not worry. Light touch the tip of the bag to the icing once you stop squeezing and lift. The line hsould end clean. Another great tip many don't think off- especially initially- dont write in less than a size 4 or 3 tip. These are thick enough to have good control. Thinner and it may look fancier, but its easier to break your line of icing from a bubble, or inconsistent squeezing.
No matter what though- even pro decorators- we still screw up and end up using an offset spatula to gently swipe the frosting off, smooth the icing below once the color is removed and try again.
I appreciate finding this article-- so many great tips for someone who's never done this before, especially the drawing-with-a-toothpick tip. And there are so many tips in the comments as well.