5 Simple Ways to Design Cakes Without Using Tools

Five simple cake decorating techniques for those who don’t have cake decorating tools. These cakes are adorned using simply what you have on hand.

I’m a little fascinated with caking tools. Most individuals, I’m sure, don’t have an armory of cake decorating equipment in their kitchen like I have. Even if you do, there are times when you simply want to work with what you have on hand.

Therefore I’ve come up with some simple cake decorating ideas that you may use even if you don’t have any equipment.

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This one seems to be the simplest and shortest of the five. You may tint your buttercream with food coloring or leave it white, like I did.

The first thing to do is ice your cake. If you don’t have an icing spatula, you may smooth the buttercream with the back, straight edge of a big knife and then wipe off the bottom of your cake plate with a paper towel.

Fill a freezer bag halfway with your frosting. Twist the bag and push the frosting into one corner. Snip a corner off your freezer bag.

Squeeze out some icing and make sure you’ve cut enough of the freezer bag off.

Squeeze out little dots along the cake’s bottom border.

Make swirls around the top border.

Finish with some sprinkles and you’re done!

You should begin with your iced cake for this dessert. Score vertical lines all around with a very clean ruler or long knife to create a piping guide.

Fill your ziplock freezer bag with the ingredients and snip off the corner as we did for the bakery style cake above.

Make sure the top seam of your ziplock is up and the bottom seam is down before you begin piping your zigzags. You don’t want them to be flat (horizontal to the cake).

Just pipe zigzags all the way up between each line you scored. You’re just shifting your piping bag from left to right.

Continue until you reach the top of the cake.

Next, for the border, pipe little dots around the top edge of your cake.

You may then decorate the top with sprinkles or candles. Mine was kept basic.

Begin with the decorated cake. It does not have to be beautiful. Ruffles would be used to conceal it.

Fill your ziplock freezer bag halfway with frosting and cut off one corner. Make sure the freezer bag seams are at the top and bottom before you begin piping. Each ruffles will be pipingd by you. Each ruffle is shaped like a closed U.

Pipe one, then move to the right to pipe the next. Begin from the bottom and work your way around the base. Then you’ll go on to the row above that.

Pipe your U right over the one below it, overlapping slightly such that the bottom of the U covers the pointy portion of the ruffle under it. It’s not going to look nice at this stage, but keep going.

After you’ve ruffled all the way around the cake, pipe some dots around the top. I also topped it with white and transparent sprinkles.

To begin, combine four distinct colors of frosting. One of the colors will be your foundation coat, so create enough for the whole cake.

Remember that this will be the dominating color you perceive.

Now frost your cake with that base color. At this stage, don’t even bother trying to make the frosting seem attractive.

You want to use a lot since some will be removed throughout the smoothing and texturing process, and you don’t want your cake to show through.

Don’t allow the base layer crust overcook, and don’t put it in the refrigerator right now. During the following phase, this layer must remain smooth and workable.

Now, simply slop the other colors you blended into the cake in random patterns. Don’t forget about the top. At this point, it will not be pretty. Don’t be alarmed.

Smooth over the edges and top with an icing spatula or a big knife. You don’t have to worry about having it perfectly smooth. In the following phase, we’ll be texturing it.

Take a teaspoon, ideally one with a sharp tip. Drag the spoon tip around the cake (the back of the spoon should be towards the cake).

Begin at the bottom, work your way around, and when you get back to where you began, tilt it up and continuing going around.

If you don’t wipe the spoon down regularly, the buttercream will pile up and create huge clumps.

Swirl the end of the spoon around the top of the cake. When you’ve textured the cake, go back over some of the locations where the frosting clumped up and texture those areas until you’re satisfied with the results.

It will end up looking like this:

To begin, ice your cake.

Here is when things become extremely nasty. Fill a basin halfway with sprinkles. Take a handful of sprinkles and gently press them into the cake’s foundation. Just create a random pattern. Sprinkles will splatter everywhere.

For this one, I stood over the sink, holding the cake with one hand and gathering sprinkles with the other.

After adding the sprinkles, wipe the cake board with a pastry brush or paper towel.

Place a cookie cutter on the top of your cake where you want your design to be. I placed sprinkles into my cutter using a teaspoon and softly wiped them down with the back of my spoon.

Lift the cookie cutter straight up and away from the cake. There may be a few stray sprinkles, but you can brush them away with a pastry brush or dab a little buttercream on the end of a spoon and lightly contact the sprinkles; they will cling to the spoon.

Put some buttercream in a freezer bag, snip a corner, and pipe big dollops across the top of the cake.

Hold the piping bag straight over the top of the cake, not touching it. Squeeze the bag to allow the dollop to form, then release the bag and pick it up.

You may either pipe a pearl border or keep it simple. I enjoy the buttercream dollops because, well, what’s wrong with a little more frosting on your cake?

That’s all there is to it! Five methods to adorn a cake with no cake decorating equipment. There are several possibilities available here. You may combine methods from any of these to make your own variants. Have a good time!