Frosting and Icing

• Two of the most impressive aspects of decorated bakery items are the frostings and icings. Not only are they the perfect consistency, they hold their shape whether they're swirled into dramatic patterns or shaped into flowers, leaves and other embellishments. Buttercream is the best all-purpose frosting as it's good for smooth tops as well as borders, writing, and creating roses, drop flowers, sweet peas and figures on desserts. Royal icing has a thicker consistency appropriate for more three-dimensional decorations on gingerbread houses and cookies. Boiled icing is best for creating big, fluffy, cloud-like finished on cakes, cupcakes, and pies.

Decorating with Tips

• The most dramatic flourishes on baked goods are created with pastry bags and decorating tips. Invest in a good quality bag with a variety of tips and practice making decorations on strips of waxed paper before tackling baked goods. The tips have differently shaped openings to create leaves, drop flowers, roses, ruffles, basket-weave designs, shells and stars. Once you learn how to apply the proper amount of pressure to the bag and develop a rhythm to pipe evenly and repeatedly, the designs you can create are endless.

Using Transfer Patterns

• Using patterns to decorate dessert surfaces gives them a professional, finished touch. Patterns are available at bakery supply stores and through online sources. The pattern is taped to a flat surface such as the back of a cookie sheet or a counter top. Fill a pastry bag with piping gel and fit it with a plain tip used for writing. Carefully trace over the pattern with piping gel. Invert the pattern onto the top of a frosted cake or pie with a set, slightly crusted topping. Using a decorator brush, gently trace over the piping gel pattern. Slowly lift the paper and the pattern will transfer to the top of the dessert.

Decorating with Fondant

• Many popular cake decorating TV shows regularly depend on fondant to decorate their creations. If you want a wrinkle-free, perfectly smooth finish that you can easily shape into figures and baubles to add character to the cake, fondant is the perfect solution. It's a dough-like covering that is easy to manipulate and cut to fit. Fondant can be purchased at bakeries and bakery supply stores or you can make your own with unflavored gelatin, water, glucose, solid vegetable shortening, glycerin, confectioners' sugar, coloring and flavoring.