Lots of adults like to have a go at decorating cakes for their loved ones birthday, or special celebration, but sometimes are a bit short of cake decorating tips and ideas.

Really to come up with a cake decoration that will suit the person, you need to have a think about what they are interested in. This will give you a good starting point. You obviously have to match this with your skill level though, otherwise the cake design will not work and you will just get very frustrated.

Often if the cake is for a man, you will know of a particular sport he likes, or a hobby that he has which he really enjoys and then you can start to think about how you could make a cake from these ideas.

If the person the cake is for is a sports fan of any kind, then it will be quite easy to locate a design to suit. For example if he is a keen soccer player then you could decorate a rectangular cake, coloring the top the color of the pitch. Then make a small ball out of marzipan or icing and color it to suit. You will be able to buy some small figures to be the players, or if you are creative you could make some in his favorite team colors. If this all seems too daunting then just do the pitch with a couple of bought goals and mark all the other things in icing pens.

If the adult is keen on gardening, then decorating a rectangular cake as a lawn with flower borders, or a vegetable garden with little bunches of carrots (made with marzipan).

Just ice a round cake and decorate with bought flower decorations for a simple to do cake, or you can make your own flowers with icing and then add these to the cake top and perhaps round the sides. You could leave enough space to write a message in an icing pen.

What about a child’s favorite tv or comic character? These can be quite easy to do. You can even find cake molds in the shape of the more popular characters, then all you need to do is to ice it in the correct colors.

For a young girl, you can make a beautiful princess cake in the shape of a castle. Use a square cake as your base and then cut a swiss roll (or two) up to make the turrets. Cover the whole thing in icing and decorate with silver balls. Any young girl will love this idea.

For a little girl how about decorating her own castle. Just use a square cake as your base, add four turrets which can be cut from swiss roll, ice the whole thing and then decorate with lots of pretty things.