Decorating cakes

[Ruqayah]

Hello,
Does anyone have any creative ideas for decorating a cake? I've seen some recipes where people use actual roses but they do something to them (frost them or something, not sure) and put it on cakes etc....but it's still not edible coz of the pesticide. I was thinking of getting some roses from the garden and doing something creative with them. Anyone know how to do this/what to do?

I was also thinking about decorating a cake by melting chocolate and then just pouring it in zig zaggy lines over the cake....but I'm not sure if it would be better to use milk chocolate or dark chocolate? Sorry if my questions are silly, I don't know much about cooking (but I'm trying to learn!!!). I wish there was a beginners section on this forum

Any other ideas for decorating cakes would be very useful. I realise it depends on what kind of cake you're making, but I haven't even decided yet so feel free to throw out any suggestions!

[GhettoRacingKid]

Well what kidna cake are you making?

what is the occiasion?

For the chocolate you can use either dark or milk but becuase of the fat content of the milk chocolate you might have problems.

Stick to either dark or bitter sweet. mix it with a littel corn sryup and oil and it will give you a nice shine.

[gulab jamun]

The possibilities are endless when decorating cakes. It sounds like you're making a fancier cake. I've never done anything fancy, but can throw out some general ideas that may (or may not) help ...

Well, you could use dark chocolate and drizzle over. Take a saucepan and fill with some water, and put this over a medium flame. In a separate bowl, put the chocolate (broken into small pieces) and put this bowl into the saucepan. Stir with a spatula to melt. You could consider adding a little heavy cream to the bowl to make the melted chocolate less thick. Use good chocolate with no hydrogenated oil.

If you bake a cake and frost it, you can use chocolate chips, M&Ms, or various other candies to create a border around the top of the cake. If you check the baking section of your local grocery store, they should have an assortment of candies, sprinkles, etc. that you could use for topping. You should also find these frosting tubes + decorative tips, which will allow you to create a fancier border.

There is edible gold shimmer. You could also get dragees or pearls for decorating, but I don't know how safe it is to consume the dragees with actual metal. You can use non-metallic sugar pearls, though.

Check out the following link...
Edible Dragees > Edible Pearls at Fancy Flours



If you go to the following link, you can find gum paste flowers, which could make your cake look fancy...

Gum Paste Flowers for Cake Decorating





Another idea to making a fancier cake is to simply use a different type of baking pan. That way the cake itself will have a unique shape instead of the typical square or round pan.

Aside from that, you can type in "cake decorating tips" into Google and find all kinds of stuff.