Gwendolyn Shares Tips On How To Decorate With Tools From Home On AllRecipes.Com

Gwendolyn shares tips #9 and #10 on how to easily decorate a cake with tools you already have at home.
AllRecipes.com-12 Easy Dessert Decorating Hacks You Can Do With Household Items You Already Have From Pro Pastry Chefs

9. A putty knife can be used to smooth the frosting on your cake.

To make the frosting on your cakes as smooth as possible, take a peek inside your garage tool box. "You can use a putty knife as a bench scraper to smooth the sides of your cake when decorating," explains founder/president Gwendolyn Rogers of The Cake Bake Shop in Indiana. You'll want to make sure it's scrubbed clean first, of course.

10. Paint brushes add texture to frosting.

Rogers also encourages you to look through your art supplies (or your kids' art supplies) to find a key instrument for texturizing your cake frosting: a paintbrush. " To create texture on your cake, you can use a paint brush. The bristles on the brush give the cake texture as you pull it across the buttercream," says Rogers.

You don't need to make a special trip to a kitchen supply specialty store to create professional-level pastry decorations. Instead, try these 12 tips from pro pastry chefs, all of which can be done with items already found in your home.

Beautiful and intricate pastry decorations are a regular sight on Instagram, and while the option to buy artistic pastries at a shop or restaurant always exists, some enterprising home bakers feel the urge to fancy up their own creations. However, professional pastry tools can be pricey (and can take up valuable space in your drawers and cabinets), so we're happy to tell you that there's no need to make a special trip to a specialty store in order to make picture-perfect desserts. Instead, plenty of pastry decorating can be effectively done with tools that you can already find in your kitchen and home. We asked a group of pro pastry chefs to offer up their favorite pastry-decorating "hacks" that use regular household items, and they gave us these 12 easy tips that turn at-home dessert decorating into a very manageable (and fun!) task.