Birthday Cake Design: Decorating the Cake

If your birthday cake design calls for some fancy decorating or writing, you have a few options. The easy way out is to use the small tubes of gel icing that you can pick up at any grocery store. Using prepackaged icing, you can easily create pretty colorful designs or lettering without much fuss. However, if you want to get in touch with your artistic side, there are more creative alternatives. Do you want icing that is your daughter's favorite shade of blue or the exact gray of Babar's skin? Using a simple recipe online or one from a cookbook, whip up some simple icing. Next, create that shade you're looking for using food coloring. Using a spatula, take a sandwich baggie and fill it with the frosting. Then, seal the top of the bag. Next, snip a small corner off of the bag and squeeze the frosting out to make your designs and/or lettering. *If you need to, practice on a graham cracker or piece of wax paper. But remember, you're making a family birthday cake and no one expects it to look like a Monet painting!