Cake simplicity- Your guide to making scrumptious cakes the simple way.

Have you ever seen some cakes and thought, Wow! how did they do that. You possibly didn't even think you could turn your home made cakes into such a masterpiece. Well think again, all you need is time, patience and interest. If you love to bake and you want to try taking it to the next level, well you've come to the right place.

I started out baking cakes just for the family and to pass time, then I became interested, I wanted to know how to decorate cakes but finding the information and using it was not always easy. So with that experience, I want to make things simpler for cake decorating enthusiasts like myself.

OK, so you've baked your cake and want to make it look nice. Your mind goes blank, don't worry, it happens to all of us. The simplest and most beautiful creations are made with fruit, yes fruit. You can get fresh berries if they're in season and put them on top of the cake. To make them stay you'll need to add a glaze first. The one I use is the apricot glaze, it can be found in the baking isles. In a saucepan, add 2 tbsp to 1 1/2 tsp of water, stir until you get a syrupy texture, let it cool and glaze the cake, put your delicious fresh fruits on, enjoy.

The same apricot glaze can also be used on cakes to help fondant or rolled icing stick to cakes. Or you can make ganache as well as butter cream to put over the cake. Rolled icing is heavy and is usually used on more dense cakes like fruit or pound cakes. I would not recommend using it on sponge cakes as they are light and will crumple under the weight.

Cakes covered with butter cream are absolutely indulgent. They taste really great and you can make them look equally as good. I found a great video that demonstrates just that by Liv Hansen, Professional Baker and Author; http://www.howdini.com/howdini-video-7073794.html

She really makes it look effortless and the result is beautiful, so when decorating a cake always have an idea of what you want the finished cake to look like, make a sketch if possible and don't over do it be putting too much on the cake as most times less is more.

Butter cream is a fool proof icing. It's quick to make and delicious on sponge cakes. The cake shown here is a sponge cake covered and decorated using butter cream icing. There is a basket weave design on the side of the cake, which is made using a icing nozzle or tip. The top edges are decorated using 3D or 1C tip, pressing down and making a circle anti clockwise to make the shapes shown.

The swirls at the top enclosing the centre of the cake were made using the icing tip 1B, or you can use a icing bag snipping off a small bit at the end to make a small hole. In a anti clockwise circular motion, make semi circles over lapping, going all around the cake.

The writing was done using a star tip, you can write by just piping the tiny stars to form the letters on the cake.

Butter cream cakes can be kept outside the fridge for up to two days provided that the room is cool so around winter time is ok. Do not expose it to any heat as the icing will melt. I recommend keeping it in the fridge and consuming it within a week or so.

There are so many things you can do with butter cream icing and a few icing tips. Have a go.