Being a sweet tooth is no sin and
especially icing has made any and every cake, cupcake or cookie look and taste
even better. Icing actually makes it better - hence the saying, "the icing
on the cake. So what's the secret to the perfect icing?
Icing is the essential decorator's tool, making cakes appear beautiful and even more delicious. There are many different types of icing that can be used for decoration. Different varieties of icing, like buttercream, royal, poured sugar and glaze, all have different textures, flavours and uses in cake and cookie decoration. Fondant is also a type of icing. Many cake decorators use a combination of icings to embellish a cake to bring out the theme of the decoration.
The simplest icing is a glacé icing, containing simply icing sugar and water. This can be flavoured and coloured as desired, for example by using lemon juice instead of the water.
More complicated icings can be made by beating fat into icing sugar (buttercream icing), by melting fat and sugar together, by using egg whites (royal icing), and by adding other ingredients such as glycerin (fondant).
Some icings can be made from combinations of sugar and cream cheese or sour cream, or by using ground almonds (marzipan).
This article focuses on Royal Icing, Fondant Icing, Buttercream Icing as well as a few basics on the art of icing your Christmas Cake.