Youve baked the perfect layer cake and given it a professional-looking frosting job. Now all thats left is the decorating step. Many home cooks think a wonderfully decorated cake comes from only one place: a bakery. But with our simple ideas, youll be surprised at just how easy it is.
HOW TO DECORATE A LAYER CAKE
A. Give the frosting texture: One of the simplest ways to decorate a cake is to give the frosting some texture. To create billows, press the back of a soup spoon into the frosting, then twirl the spoon as you lift it away. To make wavy lines or a stripe pattern, simply drag a cake comb (or a fork) around the sides of the cake.
B. Adorn just the bottom edge: For a simple, elegant look, consider pressing toasted nuts, flowers, fruit, sprinkles, candies, or cookies into the frosting just along the very bottom edge. This is also a great way to cover up a messy bottom edge.
C. Cover the sides completely: Covering the sides of the cake completely with crushed candies not only looks festive, but is also a great way to cover up a less- than-perfect icing job. Instead of crushed candies, you could use sprinkles, toasted nuts, coconut, chocolate shavings, crushed cookies, or even fresh flowers.
D. Mark each slice: Marking each slice with a small garnish is both a practical and attractive decoration idea. The garnish can either represent the flavors inside the cake (such as fruit, nuts, or chocolate-covered coffee beans) or simply be decorative (such as fresh flowers or sprigs of mint).
E. Cover the top completely: If youre not going to write a message on the top, covering it with a garnish can cover up a less-than-perfect icing job or make a short cake look taller and more impressive. Instead of chocolate shavings, you could use fruit, fresh flowers, or shaved coconut.
F. Pipe decorations onto the cake: If you have a pastry bag, piping can turn a homemade cake into a professional-looking cake. It can be as simple as a row of pearls lining the bottom edge of a cake or as fancy as the swags and rosettes pictured here.
Ready to decorate? Our recipe for Red Velvet Cake is a fine place to start.
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1. Knead the dough by hand: With no liquid or egg to help hold the dough together, we found it necessary to knead the dough by hand for about 3 minutes before shaping. The heat from your hands melts some of the butter, helping the flour to absorb it. This light kneading also makes a crumble-free dough.
2. Make a big cookie: Press the dough into a round disk, then place it on top of a large piece of parchment and roll out into a 9-inch circle, about inch thick. Using your fingers, flute the edge. We bake the shortbread like one big cookie rather than in a cake pan because it browns more evenly and looks great.
3. Poke and score: Use the tines of a fork to poke holes in a circular pattern all over the dough; be sure to poke all of the way through to the baking sheet to prevent the dough from puffing as it bakes. Using a small knife, score the dough into 16 even wedges. (Dont cut all the way through the dough.)
4. Give it a rest: Refrigerate the dough for 20 minutes. Doing this allows the dough to relax so that it doesnt shrink in the hot oven.
5. Sugar, then bake: Sprinkle the granulated sugar evenly over the dough. Bake until the shortbread is pale golden brown. Sprinkling with sugar before baking gives the sugar time to melt and caramelize, giving better color, texture, and flavor to the shortbread.
6. Cut it while its hot: After removing the shortbread from the oven, use a chefs knife to cut it into wedges along the scored lines. Let the shortbread wedges cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before transferring the wedges to a wire rack to cool completely. If allowed to cool completely before cutting, the shortbread will be very hard and brittle, and will break into uneven pieces.
1. Beat the butter and sugars together: Beat the butter and sugars together with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 6 minutes. When the butter-sugar mixture has the right consistency, you can beat in the egg yolks and vanilla.
2. Slowly add the flour mixture: After the egg yolks have been incorporated into the butter-sugar mixture, turn the mixer to low and slowly beat in the flour mixture until just incorporated. If using a hand mixer, it can be tricky to add the flour and mix at the same time; if so, just add the flour in small batches, stopping the mixer as needed.
3. Divide the dough and roll into logs: Transfer the dough to a clean counter and roll it into a 2-inch-thick log (the length of the log will depend on the specific recipe). If the dough is sticky and hard to roll, simply chill it for a few minutes.
4. Twist and chill: Transfer the log of dough to a sheet of plastic wrap, and wrap tightly. Twisting the ends of the plastic wrap helps the dough keep its shape. Try to square off the ends as much as possible. Chill the wrapped dough in the refrigerator until firm, about 2 hours.
5. Slice the dough thin: Once the dough is firm, slice it into -inch-thick cookies. If the cookies are too thick, they will not bake properly. Give the log a little roll between slices to help keep it round.
6. Bake a lot at once: Lay the cookies on large parchment-lined baking sheets, spaced about inch apart. You can fit a lot of icebox cookies, about 24, on the same baking tray because they dont spread much.
1. Cover the dough with filling: On a lightly floured counter roll each piece of chilled dough into an 11-inch circle about 14 inch thick. Over each piece of dough, spread a thin layer of filling. If you try to pack too much filling into the cookie (and many recipes do), the cookies turn out oddly shaped and burnt because the filling leaks during baking.
2. Roll crescent shapes: Using a knife or pizza cutter, cut each circle into 8 equal wedges. Starting at the wide end, roll up each wedge into a crescent-shaped cookie. There are several traditional methods for shaping rugelach; however, we like this method because its the easiest and makes the prettiest cookies.
3. Put the point underneath: With the pointed end on the bottom, lay the cookies on the parchment-lined baking sheet, about 2 inches apart, then freeze for 15 minutes. Pinning the point underneath each cookie will prevent them from unraveling as they bake.
4. Dont let them sit: Immediately after baking, transfer the hot cookies to a wire rack to cool. A bit of the sticky filling inevitably leaks out of these cookies during baking, and it will glue the cookies permanently to the parchment paper if the cookies are allowed to cool.
1. Cream the butter and sugar: Creaming the softened butter and sugar together with an electric mixer makes a light, delicately textured cookie with a rich, buttery flavor.
2. Add cream cheese for texture: Adding cream cheese to our cookie dough makes it sturdy while keeping it light and cakey, a perfect foil for the dense, sweet center of jam.
3. Roll the cookie dough into balls: Rolling the dough into proper balls, rather than just spooning the dough onto the baking sheet, keeps the dough from spreading during baking.
4. Make a first impression: Using a wet thumb (to prevent sticking), make a small indentation in the center of the dough balls. Dont worry if your thumbprint isnt perfect, the cookies will be re-indented after baking for 10 minutes.
5. Make a second impression: After baking the cookies for 10 minutes, the original thumbprint will be somewhat faint. To avoid burning our thumbs, we use the underside of a rounded teaspoon measure to re-indent the original thumbprint.
6. Jam it up: After reestablishing the thumbprints, fill them with teaspoon of jam and return the baking sheets to the oven to finish baking. Using a small zipper-lock bag as a piping bag makes filling all 48 cookies a snap.
1. After rolling the dough in an 18 by 9-inch rectangle, spread a 1-inch-wide strip of the filling about 1 inch above the bottom edge of the dough.
2. Loosen the dough from the counter with a bench scraper (or metal spatula) and carefully roll the dough into an even cylinder. Pinch the seam to seal.
3. Transfer the dough log to a parchment-lined baking sheet and shape into a ring. Make about 11 cuts around the outside of the ring using scissors, spacing them 1 to 1 12 inches apart.
4. Twist each piece of dough cut side up.
1. Gently stretch the dough into two even logs. Using a dough scraper (or knife), divide the dough into evenly sized pieces.
2. Drag the dough in small circles over a clean counter using a cupped hand, until the dough feels firm and round. It should feel like the dough is spinning underneath you but not turning over.
3. Use the palm of your hand to flatten each roll into a -inch-thick circle.
4. With a floured rolling pin, gently flatten out the center of each dough circle, leaving the edges thick. This should push the dough into an oval shape with a depressed middle.
5. Lightly brush the dough with melted butter, then fold in half and gently press the dough together at the edges to seal.
1. Halve the pears from stem to blossom end and then remove the core using a melon baller for a clean look.
2. After removing the core, use the edge of the melon baller to scrape away the interior stem of the pear, from the core to the stem.
1. Slice each halved poached pear crosswise into -inch- thick slices, then discard the first 4 slices from the narrow end. Do not separate the slices but pat them dry with paper towels.
2. Slide a thin spatula under one of the sliced pear halves and gently lay it in the center of the tart.
3. Working with the remaining pear halves one at a time, slide the spatula under each pear and press on the slices to fan them towards the narrow end.
4. Lay the fanned pear halves attractively around the tart, with the narrow ends pointed towards the pear in the center.
1. Drop spoonfuls of the chocolate randomly over the top of the batter.
2. Using a butter knife or small offset spatula, swirl the chocolate into the cheesecake batter.
Once your cheesecake is baked and cooled, you definitely dont want to risk messing up the gorgeous swirls youve painstakingly created. For neat slices, its helpful to clean the knife with hot water before slicing each pieceyou can do this at the sink or in a pitcher of hot water if youre cutting the cheesecake at the tableand wipe the knife dry before slicing. This prevents the cheesecake filling from sticking to the knife, which can make for quite a mess as you try to slice your third or fourth piece of cake.