Frosting Tips — Creative Wedding Cake Ideas

Looking for some frosting tips and wedding inspiration? From tattoo cakes and airbrush designs, we’ve gathered a few of the latest trends in wedding dessert decor. For those feeling intimidated at trying their hand at these designer creations, we've coupled the trends with insider frosting tips to make your DIY wedding cake a piece of . . . well, you know.

Coming Up Roses

Made from over 300 roses, all handcrafted and shaded in various hues of pink and red, this wedding cake draws on one of this season’s most popular trends — ombre shading. It's achieved through simple variations in the icing's coloring.

Get a free ombre icing wedding cake tutorial from The Hungry Housewife. 

Frosting tip: When making frosting roses, icing consistency is the most important factor. If your flowers “wilt,” add more sugar or use an all-shortening frosting recipe. 

Frills and Thrills  

Combining two popular wedding trends — ruffles with tall and thin cakes — this wedding cake creates a whimsical, most vintage feel, as though a 1950s prom dress was transformed into an edible but stylish taste creation. 

To make your own ruffled wedding cake, with hints of the ombre trend, watch the video from Bonnie Bakes. 

Frosting tip: Making a ruffled fondant cake involves a frill cutter and the end of a paintbrush to lift up the ruffles.  

Coming Up Roses 

This simple DIY wedding cake from I Am Baker and featured on Emmaline Bride uses just a 1M frosting tip and a pastry bag to create lush frosted roses.   

Emmaline Bride has the free wedding cake tutorial. 

Frosting tip: Buy a grocery store cake, and have a friend frost cabbage roses in shades of your wedding colors a day or two before the wedding.

“I’ll stencil you in.” 

Better with rolled fondant than buttercream, stenciled cake offer a stylish but uncomplicated way to decorate your wedding cake. Hot fondant, royal icing sugar, chocolate or anything with a thin-enough consistency to go through the stencil’s cuts can be used to decorate a cake. 

For a beginner’s guide to frosting a cake with stencils, check out Cake Central’s free video. 

Frosting tip: Thinner frostings will create a more flooded look when using stencils.  

Looks Good on Paper  

A standard layer cake gets an easy makeover with paper wildflowers. Double-sided tape secures the decor. Customize the look by cutting silhouettes of books, buildings or other icons reminiscent of the bride and groom.

For more on using paper crafts to decorate your cake, check out Craft Stylish. 

Frosting tip: Three to four cups of icing is the preferred amount for 8-inch and 10-inch cakes. 

Screwed, Blued and Tattooed

Forget diamonds — tattoos are forever. If you're adding a tattoo motif to your wedding cake, consider using hand painting on fondant for tribal-inspired designs. For the biker couple inspired by old-school tats, consider the traditional sparrows with a heart-and-banner creation made from a fondant ornament. 

 

Frosting tip: Allow your cake to sit for a few minutes to develop a crust so that it’s not sticky when you decorate. 

The Airbrush Off 

For those with the money, an airbrush machine (often running about $250) can offer a layered sheen so that metal and gem colors like silver actually look silver instead of a wimpy gray. 

Get the basics of frosting your wedding cake with an airbrush machine from this Wilton video. 

Frosting tip: Airbrushing buttercream creates gradient lines and images while fondant, a smoother surface, makes for more defined graphics. 

Image credits (from top): Juliet McKee Photography, Juliet McKee Photography, Maisie Fantasie, I Am Baker, Designer Stencils, Jeffrey Rudell / Craft Stylish, Ian Johnson Photo and Over the Moon Baking