Cake Decoration – A Beautiful Art

Cake decoration is the technique of decorating the cake with the help of icing and putting other edible items on the top of the cake to make it look more decorative and interesting. Cakes are today molded and sculpted to resemble three-dimensional persons, places and things and this all comes under the art of cake decoration. Cakes are made on any special occasion be it a birthday, marriage ceremony, wedding, festival, holidays, etc. And hence Cake decoration becomes important.

There are different ways of cake decoration, decorating top of the cake, or sidewalls of the cakes and many more. But it is important to know that the decoration on the cake is completely done by edible items, which can be consumed and which is not harmful to health if eaten. With the passage of time, cake decoration has evolved as a form of art and today a lot of decorating techniques are available. With the growing importance of Cake Decoration, many courses, offline and online, are available today for learning the technique of cake decoration. But to completely know about the Cake decoration, we need to know about the history of the cake decoration.

History – 

The art of cake decoration started in the 1700s, but only after the coming of the temperature-controlled oven and the baking powder in around 1850s made this art famous and a lot of people started to practice it. And then, with the growth of technology the art of cake decoration got more developed. Now cakes are available in different shapes and different colors. Designs can now easily be made upon cakes.

There is a rumor about the cake decoration that the art of cake decoration started from a French Bakery in the 1840s when Baker wanted to increase the price of cakes. But there are many more opinions famous about the origin of Cake Decoration. But it can be said positively that the art of Cake Decoration started somewhere in Europe. From the starting of 20th century, Decorated cakes can easily be seen in markets around in Europe and America. Now a lot of equipment and machines are available for decorating cakes, but in the older times generally, a rotating tray was used to decorate the cakes.

Types – 

There are different types of cake decorations available nowadays in the market. Almost all of the decoration is done using various edible items which can easily be consumed. Sometimes some food-safe plastics and ribbons are used to decorate the cake and these items can easily be removed after cutting the cakes. The various types of cake decoration available are:

1. a) FONDANTS –  Fondants are also known as sugar paste or ready roll icing, exists in many different colors, and it is usually easy to handle once prepared properly. It must be rolled out with cornstarch to avoid sticking to any surface and to smooth it out. Generally, fondants are used to cover whole cakes, but sometimes they are used to create small showpieces on the top of the cake.

   

2. b) ROYAL ICING – Royal icing is a sweet white icing made by whipping fresh egg whites (or powdered egg whites, meringue powder) with icing sugar.

   

3. c) MARZIPAN is often used for modeling cake decorations and sometimes as a cover over cakes, although fondant is more preferred.

   

4. d) GUM PASTE also known as florist paste, is an edible, brittle material that dries quickly and can be sculpted to make cake decorations such as flowers or molded designs.

   

5. e) MODELING CHOCOLATE is a chocolate paste made by melting chocolate and combining it with corn syrup, glucose syrup, or golden syrup. The chocolate is formed into a variety of shapes and structures that cannot be easily accomplished with other softer edible materials such as buttercream frosting, marzipan, or fondant.

   

6. f) EDIBLE INK PAINTING is also used in decorating cakes. After breakthroughs in non-toxic inks and printing materials in the early 1990s, it became possible to print images and photographs onto edible sheets for use on cakes. Originally introduced as a specialty service provided by bakeries, this technology can now be used by home consumers using specialized paper, ink, and printers.

   

Present Scenario – 

In today’s world, an oven can be found in every house which have made it easy for everyone to make a cake in the house. With the coming of the internet, learning new recipes and decoration methods have become very simple. So, now anyone can just learn cake decoration easily. Nowadays, cakes are almost part of every ceremony. Large no. of designs of cakes are available in the markets. Cakes with photos, cakes having superhero designs, multi-story cakes are very common in the market nowadays. And, this all is due to the growth of the art of cake decoration. Today many types of equipment and ready-made items are present in the market which makes cake decoration easy.

Conclusion – 

Cakes are today part of every special occasion. And nowadays, different cakes are available for different occasions. This growing importance of Cakes has made Cake decoration an art. Now, with the coming of the internet, it has also become easy for anyone to learn Cake decoration. Cake decoration has also increased the price and demand of Cakes. A large no. of equipment and many ready-made items are available in the market which has made Cake decoration easier than ever. A large variety of cakes, Cakes in different shapes and sizes are just available because of the growth of the art of Cake Decoration. Cake Decoration has evolved into an art today.