Earlier this year there was a trend going around where people showed off tiny cakes. I became pretty obsessed with this trend, saving every possible beautiful image of a tiny cake decorated with little flowers and smoothed pastel icing. Totally understandable of course, when you take into account my insatiable sweet tooth and love for baking, mixed with my keen eye for beautiful things. 

Of course, due to this influx of eye candy, I attempted to recreate some of these recipes and well, in many cases failed. For example, on Valentine's Day, I added the slightest bit of pink food coloring to my cake mixture to give it a pinkish hue. Little did I know that my grandmother had given my mom a whole box of food colorings recently, which were probably made in around 1964 (seriously), and since I was baking this particular cake at my parent's house, this was one of the said food colorings, eons expired. Ultimately, my cake came out of the oven pink and inedible, due to the possibly poisonous chemicals I had added to the mixture. We ate mint chocolate and vanilla frosting for dessert that night. 

Another unfortunate circumstance was when I failed to close off my springform pan properly and the mixture leaked out covering my oven in cake dribble. Due to this I was left demotivated and dejected and abandoned my efforts, leaving the task of tiny cake making for another day. 

Over time, I have regained that motivation and after doing enough research, decided to give in to another attempt. My game plan was that, instead of focusing on baking a beautiful cake, I would instead focus on baking an ordinary cake and then transforming it into a beautiful one, using my exceptional decorating skills. (which are, of course, very average.)

And so, I searched long and hard for the simplest and easiest ways to decorate my cakes, while still giving them that aesthetic effect and making them worthy enough of being posted on Pinterest. Here is what I discovered...

Messy Frosting Actually Looks Great!

I always used to get incredibly frustrated with the way my frosting always came out messy and textured no matter how much effort I put into the spreading of it. How on earth do people make their frosting look so perfect? 

For someone of my decorating calibre, this is an impossible question to answer. So, why not use my inability to achieve perfection and make it look like I purposefully made it look like that. It can actually look great if you spread your frosting haphazardly.

Rustic but Professional!

Frosting your cake in such a way that the cake itself is still able to be seen through the frosting, has become a very popular way of decorating. Add the frosting in between the cake layers and then spread the excess around the edges to give it a rustic look. This is much easier than aiming for perfection, trust me!

Add little Flowers! (Make sure they're edible)

This is the easiest way to make your cake look aesthetic and beautiful without all the effort of using technique. But PLEASE make sure that the flowers you place on your cake are capable of human consumption. Not saying that you have to eat the flowers, just saying to make sure that if someone does, they won't die of poisoning, like Romeo and Juliet. You want your cake to able to be enjoyed aesthetically and consumed safely.  The method speaks for itself on how to do it, just place your little flowers on top of your frosting in the way that you seem fit. 

Embrace The Dribble!

The dribble is a common tactic used in cake decorating. I sound like a football coach, but seriously, embrace it! By using icing with less density you can easily create dribble on your cake without even trying. AND if you mess up, you can make it look like you intended to do that all along. No one will even know the difference. Glace icing is super easy to make, most recipes only require icing sugar and water. You can use this to add sweetness and give your cake a nice coating that adds decoration and makes the cake look more appetizing. 

When in doubt, just add berries!

Berries offer 3 great qualities to a cake. 

1) They're beautiful to look at.

2) They add lots of added flavor and taste amazing.

3) They add texture.

Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, whatever you choose they are sure to add a whole other level to your cake. You can even make berry coulis to drizzle over the cake or just add whole berries on top of your frosting, either way, you can't go wrong. 

Whatever you end up baking or whatever method you use to create your masterpiece, it is important to remember that simplicity is key. Decorating a cake is actually not too difficult if you cheat the system. From one cake lover to another, I hope your endeavors are fruitful, preferably better than my first few attempts at tiny cake making. I will continue to be obsessed with the concept and the many different ways of making cake look beautiful, while of course still using the easiest possible ways of recreating the aesthetic.