Ask Nancy

There are a few ways to decorate this type of detailed cake. Our favorite is to take colored icing and pipe the colored icing onto the details of the cake only – for the Jack-o-Lantern, we would just fill in the eyes, nose and mouth. Piping the icing with a small round tip, then smoothing it with your finger which has been dipped in cornstarch, allows you to follow the detail more easily than if you tried to spatula ice that small an area.

Another way to decorate these cakes is to thin out the concentrated icing color with a very small amount of water, or with clear vanilla extract, and paint the cake details.

Have fun!