Easy Icing Recipes for Cake Frosting and Decorating

Choosing the right icing recipes for your cakes is a matter of taste and function. Some frosting recipes work better for covering the outside of the cake than for decoration.

Another consideration is the temperature. Some won't hold up under warm weather conditions.

Also,consider the audience when making your selection. Some adults consider buttercream too sweet, yet kids most kids love it.

Decorations, like roses,require a firm consistency.

Buttercream Icing Recipe - Very sweet; good for kids; holds up in warm weather; use to frost cake or pipe decorations.

Chocolate Frosting - Good for frosting and piping,appeals to most.

Fondant - very sweet; great for covering cakes & creating dramatic decorations;preserves cake freshness.

Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe - Great for carrot cake, cheesecake and red velvet cake, can be used for simple piping. 

Peanut Butter Icing - scrumptious,peanut-flavored icing that doubles as chocolate-covered peanut butter balls recipe. 

Royal Icing - Very sweet; used to create all decorations and to cover boards;hardens and lasts for months. 

Chocolate Ganache - appeals to most, glossy cake covering.

Boiled Icing - soft,fluffy icing made from egg whites and sugar syrup. Has a marshmallow flavor and texture. 

Fudge Cake Icing - 2 delicious,rich fudge icing recipes. Ideal for chocolate cakes and cupcakes. 

Whipped Cream - perfect accompaniment to any cake. Both the traditional recipe and a piping recipe. 

Icing Cream - A light, fluffy cross between whipped cream and icing that works both for cake frosting and cake filling. 

Gum Paste - similar to fondant. The addition of gum tagacanth gives this icing medium the flexibility to create beautiful icing flowers and figures.

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Icing the Cake

When covering the outside of the cake, your best bet is to use icing recipes that spread smoothly. If the icing is too thick, you will create crumbs and sometimes lift pieces of the cake right up.

Most icings can be thickened for piping by adding confectioners sugar and thinned for spreading by adding milk. When frosting the cake, glide a metal spatula back and forth on the cake to avoid lifting crumbs into the frosting. It can take a bit of practice to achieve a smooth finish.

The flawless cakes you see are often covered in royal icing. While perfect looking, you may not want to bite into hard icing. You can come pretty close to perfect with buttercream icing by using a baker's trick: 

• Place a cardboard round inside the ring of a springform pan - the same size as the layer was baked in.
• Ice all around the sides of the cake pan, about 1/4-inch thick.
• Place the cake layer in the pan and place in the freezer until firm.
• Put the pan on top of a cylinder, can, or bowl that is smaller than the pan.
• Use a blow dryer to warm all around the outside of the pan.
• Slide the sides of the springform pan down to reveal a perfectly iced cake.

Coloring Icing

Serious decorators choose paste or powder food coloring. Liquid food color won't give you the intensity or the versatility of the other two. It only takes a little dab of paste food coloring to go a long way, so start with a dab.

You can always darken the color by adding more, but if you add too much, you will need to add more icing to dilute the color. Your cake will look best if you stick to the same intensity for each color you choose.

If you start with pastel shades, continue throughout for your cake. If using deeper colors, maintain the brightness for all your decorations. Powdered icing color can also be used to paint the outside of a cake that is covered in fondant. Once applied, however, you cannot remove it.

You may prefer to paint a fondant applique and apply it to the cake, so to avoid making a mistake you cannot fix.

This list of Icing Recipes and tips will continue to grow. Subscribe to our e-zine to keep up-to-date.