Icing Technique

   

This shows the type of flower and scalloped edging I'm going to use on the cake.

I'm making a birthday cake for my friend's birthday party this weekend.  I've made plenty of cakes before, even a few fancy looking ones (the anniversary cake comes to mind), but I've always avoided using icing to decorate the cake.  This is for two reasons: 1) I often run short on time and don't decorate at all or 2) it seems so intimidating...I mean seriously, you make a whole cake, frost it nicely and then start squeezing complex, colored decorations all over it, if you mess up it could ruin the look of the cake.  But I've decided to plan in advance so as not to run out of time and get over my fears and actually decorate this cake like a birthday cake should be decorated--with shell borders and lots of buttercream flowers.  

In an attempt to get over my fear of decorating a cake with icing (rather than sticking a marzipan flower on top or just using a fun frosting technique to make it look pretty without fiddling too much) I bought a few tubes of ready to use decorating icing.  The brand of icing I get (Wilton) can be used with my nice metal icing tips attached, so they are perfect to use for practice.  Plus, no fussing over making icing and no cleaning up pastry bags.  Here are my attempts at icing decorations.  You'll notice I have not tried to make those beautiful, large, icing roses that are a staple of store bought birthday cakes.  This is not because I have something against them, but because they are quite difficult (and I thought I was starting out with enough for now) and because I don't have any flower nails (what you make the flower on before you transfer it to the cake. 

Hopefully, I'll be able to do this as well on the cake (in a nice design of course).  Oh, by the way, I have yet to determine if I will write on the cake, my inclination is not to, because I don't have the best handwriting with a pen and I'm not terribly steady with the icing writing tip yet.  

The flower in the center is meant to be a pansy...I think it's recognizable as such!