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Home » Blog » Cake Decorating

5 Easy Ways to Decorate Cakes Without Tools

Updated: Mar 2, 2021 · Published: May 16, 2016 by Kara · This post may contain affiliate links · This blog generates income via ads

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Five easy cake decorating tips you can use to decorating cakes without cake decorating supplies. These cakes are decorated using only the supplies you have on hand.

I’m kind of obsessed with caking tools. I assume most people don’t keep an arsenal of cake decorating supplies in their kitchen like I do. Even if you do, sometimes you just want to work with what you have handy.

cakes with no tools title graphic

So, I’ve come up with some easy cake decorating ideas, so you can decorate your cakes even if you don’t have any tools.

5 Easy Ways to Decorate Cakes without Tools pin graphic

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. You can see my policies linked in the website footer.

Jump to:
  • Supplies You’ll Need:
  • The vanilla bakery-style cake:
  • The pleated cake:
  • The Ruffle Cake:
  • The Textured Watercolor Cake:
  • The Sprinkle Cake:
  • Other Posts You Might Like:

Supplies You’ll Need:

  • A baked layer cake (You can find a super delicious vanilla cake here and a really good chocolate cake here.)
  • Frosting (I used my favorite vanilla bean buttercream. You can find the recipe here.)
  • Large knife (you can use the straight, back side of a large knife to smooth the icing if you don’t have an icing spatula)
  • Gallon size freezer bags (you can use quart size, you’ll just have to refill it with icing more often.) Also, you really need to use ‘freezer bags’ and not the regular bags. Those are just not tough enough and you’ll end up with an icing blowout. Take my word for it 😉
  • Sprinkles (If you don’t have them, don’t panic. Another option is cookie crumbs)
  • Food Coloring (If you don’t have this either, it’s okay. All of these cakes will still look great)
  • A teaspoon
  • A cookie cutter
  • Vacuum cleaner (because sprinkles be goin’ crazy)

The vanilla bakery-style cake:

Easy Bakery Style Cake

I think this one is the easiest and quickest of the bunch. You can use food coloring to color your buttercream, or just leave it white like I did.

The first step is to ice your cake. If you don’t have an icing spatula, you can use the back, straight edge of a large knife to smooth your buttercream and then clean up the bottom of your cake plate with a paper towel.

smooth your buttercream

Next, take a freezer bag and fill it with your icing. Push the icing into one corner and twist the bag. Cut off the corner of your freezer bag.

Squeeze out a bit of icing and make sure you have cut off enough of the freezer bag.

Icing bag from a ziplock

Squeeze out small dots around the bottom edge of the cake.

bottom border

Squeeze out swirls around the top border.

top border of easy cake


Add some sprinkles to the top and voila!

Easy Bakery Style Cake

The pleated cake:

Easy Pleated Cake

For this cake, you want to start with your iced cake. Take a very clean ruler or long knife and score vertical lines all the around to give you a piping guide.

piping guide

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

Before you start piping your zigzags, make sure the top seam of your ziplock is up and the bottom seam is down. You don’t want them flat (horizontal to the cake).

Now just pipe zigzags all the way up in between each line that you scored. You’re just moving your piping bag from left to right.

Don’t stop until you get to the top of the cake.

Zigzag pleats

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

top border pleated cake

You can then add some sprinkles to the top or candles. I left mine simple.

Easy Pleated Cake

The Ruffle Cake:

Easy Ruffle Cake

Start with your iced cake. It doesn’t have to be pretty. We’re going to cover it up with ruffles.

iced cake for ruffle cake

Next, fill your ziplock freezer bag with icing and snip off the corner. Before you start piping, make sure the freezer bag seams are at the top and bottom. You’ll be piping individual ruffles. Each little ruffle is like a closed ‘U’ shape.

Pipe one and move to the right and pipe the next one. Start at the bottom and do a row all around the base. Then you’ll start on the row above that.

Pipe your ‘U’ directly above the one below and overlap a bit so that the bottom of the ‘U’ is covering the pointed part of the ruffle below it.  At this point, it’s not going to look super pretty, but just keep going.

Piping the Ruffles

Once you’ve gone all around the cake and it’s covered in ruffles, pipe some dots around the top. I also sprinkled some white and clear sprinkles on the top.

Easy Ruffle Cake

The Textured Watercolor Cake:

I love this one because it’s hard to mess up. You can use whatever colors you want and with the texture we create on the cake, you don’t have to worry about getting your buttercream smooth and there’s absolutely no piping at all with this one.

First mix up about four different colors of icing. One of the colors will be your base coat, so make enough of that one to ice your entire cake.

Remember, this color will be the predominant color you’ll see.

Now take that base color and ice your cake. Don’t even try to make the icing look pretty at this point.

You want to put a lot on because some will be taken off during the smoothing and texturing and you don’t want your cake peeking through.

Base icing the textured cake

Don’t let your base layer crust over and don’t put it in the fridge right now. This layer needs to stay smooth and workable for the next step.

Now take your other colors you mixed and just glob them onto the cake in random patterns. Don’t forget the top. It won’t look pretty at this point. Don’t panic.

Step 2 of watercolor cake

Take your icing spatula, or large knife and smooth around the sides and the top. You don’t need to worry about getting it super smooth. We’ll be texturing it in the next step.

Smoothing the watercolor cake

Take a teaspoon, preferably one that’s more pointed at the tip. Use the tip of the spoon (the back of the spoon facing the cake) and drag it around the cake.

Start at the bottom, go around and then when you meet back to where you started, angle it up and keep going around.

You’ll need to wipe off the spoon frequently, or the buttercream will build up on the spoon and form large clumps.

Do a swirl on the top of the cake with the end of the spoon. When you’ve textured the cake, go back over some of the spots where the icing clumped up and texture those areas until you like what you see.

It’ll end up like this:

Watercolor Cake Sides
Watercolor Ccake Top

The Sprinkle Cake:

I used chocolate buttercream on this one, but you can use any color. You’ll need a cookie cutter…any shape you want. I think someone’s initials would be super cute.

First ice your cake.

Base icing the sprinkle cake

Here comes the really messy part. Pour your sprinkles into a bowl. Grab handfuls of sprinkles and push them lightly onto the base of the cake. Just make it a random pattern. Sprinkles will go everywhere.

I stood over the sink for this one with the cake balanced on one hand and grabbing sprinkles with the other.

After you’ve added the sprinkles, you can clean off the cake board with a pastry brush or paper towel.

Sprinkles around the base

Grab a cookie cutter and place it on the top of your cake where you want your design. I used a teaspoon to put sprinkles inside my cutter and then I patted them down very lightly with the back of my spoon.

Shaped sprinkles

Pull off the cookie cutter by lifting it straight up  and off the cake. There may be a few rogue sprinkles, but you can brush those off with a pastry brush, or get a little buttercream on the end of the spoon and barely touch those sprinkles…they’ll stick to the spoon.

Now you can put some buttercream in a freezer bag, cut the corner and pipe some large dollops around the top of the cake.

Hold the piping bag straight over the top, not quite touching the cake. Squeeze the bag and let the dollop build, then stop squeezing and lift the bag up.

top border on sprinkle cake

You can pipe a pearl border or just leave it plain. I like the buttercream dollops because, well, there’s nothin’ wrong with extra icing on your cake, right?

Top of the sprinkle cake
The sprinkle cake

There you have it! Five ways you can decorate cakes with absolutely no cake decorating supplies. There are so many options here. You can use techniques from each of these and create your own versions. Have fun!

Other Posts You Might Like:

  • How to Store a Cake
  • Common Cake Decorating Terms and What They Mean
  • Favorite Cake Books

Don’t Forget to Pin it for Later!

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    Filed Under: Cake Decorating Tagged With: birthday cakes, buttercream tutorials, cake decorating tips

    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    1. Jennifer

      September 18, 2016 at 11:26 am

      This is great! I’m just learning to decorate, these will be some fun things to try! 🙂

      Reply
      • Kara Jane

        September 18, 2016 at 6:40 pm

        Thanks and glad I could help! I like trying to figure out how I can use what I have instead of buying tons of cake decorating supplies. That really cuts into the pocketbook, ya know?

        Reply
      • Debbie

        September 24, 2021 at 8:22 pm

        I’ll have a great time 🥰❤❤

        Reply
      • Debbie

        January 13, 2022 at 11:22 am

        That’s true I love her designs

        Reply
    2. NickHarry456

      March 26, 2019 at 4:25 am

      Actually I want to decorate my cake but i can’t. This post help me a lot. Thank you so much for helping me. keep sharing such types of information. I really appreciate you.

      Reply
      • Kara Jane

        March 26, 2019 at 2:25 pm

        Oh I’m so glad it helped!

        Reply
    3. Millie David

      October 30, 2019 at 12:01 pm

      Thanks Kara for sharing this post. I have just shared it with one of my friend.

      Reply
    4. margretta

      January 23, 2021 at 4:44 am

      now i am able to decorate my cake thanks.

      Reply

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    Hi, I'm so glad you're here! Cake shows up at our most important and happiest moments in life, like birthdays, weddings, baby showers and holidays. It's also for those everyday moments...it makes them even better. Put simply, cake just makes us happy! I love trying out new cake flavor combinations and decorating ideas. Have a look around and I bet you can find a cake recipe or tutorial for any of life's big moments and those everyday moments too. Click here if you want to learn more about me!

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