How to Write on a Cake

Cake Decorating Tips with Frosting Tubes, Gels, and More

Birthday cakes and special occasion cakes can be make all the more special with a special inscription written on the top. Most store bakeries will hand write a birthday or holiday greeting with the purchase of one of their sheet cakes.

For those of us on a budget, and having to make and decorate our own cakes this year, it's really not that hard to write a greeting or birthday wish with tinted icing. All that's required is a frosting tube with a writing tip. As the tube is squeezed, it forces the frosting through a tiny opening which can be used to write a special greeting. If you've used glitter glue sticks or writable paints for crafting, then you can write on a cake as well.

Here's three very simple ways of how it can be done:

Store bought icing tubes

In the boxed cake section of the grocery store, you'll find a shelf filled with all sorts of cake decorating needs. There's things like sprinkles, cake decorations, birthday candles, and an assortment of frosting tubes. Some of these tubes are labeled as "decorator frosting", other are called decorator gels.

Decorator frostings usually come in a wide assortment of colors, and are priced around $2. To write with these tubes, you will need a coupler ring set and a tip & nail set. These are also priced at around $2 a package, but can be reused again and again.

These frosting tip & nail sets usually have 5 different front tips in a package. The tip used for writing is cone-shaped with a single 1/16-inch opening. The tip and nail is attached to the frosting tube by means of the coupler.

Decorator gels come in a smaller package than the frosting tubes, and are priced around $1.39. The advantage with the gels is that the writing tip is part of the design. To use, you simply snip off the tip, and write as you would with a fabric pen.

DIY with homemade icing

Of course, after a couple of parties, you quickly figure out that pre-made decorator frosting and gels can get expensive. The cheapest method of all is just to make your own tinted icing, and apply it to the cake with an inexpensive cake decorator kit.