Until I took a pastry class, I had no idea how many cake decorating techniques there were. I always thought that decorating a cake was a pretty simple affair. When I was growing up, my mother loved to make cakes. She showed me a couple simple designs that you can use on a cake, and I copied her designs faithfully. I can make flowers, swirls, little ice cream cones, and of course all the letters in the alphabet. I was not the most artistic cake decorator, but I knew enough to make a pretty professional looking cake.

The cake decorating techniques that I was able to learn in this class, however, completely took me to another level. They absolutely blew me away. Cake decorating technique is basically an entire artform. It isn’t just a matter of making a cake look pretty. There are textural techniques, decorative effects, effects that are useful for drawing images of faces or backgrounds. Basically, anything that you could conceivably imagine someone doing to a cake has been done. The experts can make cakes so beautiful that it would be a shame to eat them!

Of course, it isn’t necessary to learn all of these cake decorating techniques if you just want to make cakes for your friends and family. As a matter of fact, only the top cake decorators know more than a few techniques. If you get a cake decorating kit, you can probably figure out all of the simple cake decorating techniques yourself. There are plenty of online guides to how to decorate a cake if you get stuck, so you need not worry about running out of ideas.

If you want to get really good at cake decorating techniques, you need to have someone to eat your cakes. This may sound obvious, but I know a lot of people who have struggled with this. If you’re passionate about decorating cakes but do not have a few friends who like the cakes that you decorate, you’ll end up putting on a lot of weight. There will be nowhere to put the cakes, so you’ll have to eat them yourself. It is amazing how quickly the pounds can accumulate when you always have cake about the house. If you don’t have friends who like cake, consider donating your surplus to the local church or perhaps to a homeless shelter. There are plenty people around who will be grateful for any food at all, never mind gourmet cakes!