Cake Decorating - Part One

Sandy Sheppard: The next thing I am going to show you is a simple flower spray, and for a flower spray of course, we are going to have some stems for those flowers. I am going to start off like with the writing. Touch your tip to the surface and lift it, and give it a nice curve. Flowers tend to have natural curves to them, if I was doing this on a round cake, I would probably follow the curve of the cake. Then again, give it another curve.

In art they tell you do things in odd numbers, so I tend to follow that, but not always. Now, I have got my main stems for my flowers, but most all plants have little branches off of them. Its a good place to cover up a little crack in your icing like I had there. So, I just add my little short stems or my little branches off the stems alternating, and there we are. Now, lets do that on a cake.

I like to write my message first on a cake because then it leaves me room for any of the other decorating, if I need to adjust my writing. Its easier for me to do it on the cake, when there is nothing else there.

So, keep your pressure nice and steady with that as you are writing and you will have better control. Happy Birthday tends to be the message used most often on cakes. There we go.

Since this is a round cake, I have a very nice area here for a nice curve okay. So, I am just going to add some stems on to this cake. There is room for my writing, so I will just put it right along that way. Then I am going to go back and add a few short stems alternating. You notice as I touch that and then I pull away I am easing off my pressure, as I pull away so that the line gets nice and skinny at the tip.