It is becoming more common for people to decorate cakes themselves, rather than paying out for an expensive professional to do it for them.

So how do you go about decorating a cake? Well the first thing you need to do is to work out the design you want to use. To do this you need to have some knowledge of the person the cake is for. If it is an adult, then what sort of things are they interested in?

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.

All you would need to do is to cover the cake in icing, color it a water color and then make a basic boat from either marzipan or icing which can be colored. You can buy a small figure to put in the boat, and give him a rod that you will be able to make out of many household objects.

Ladies love flowers, so if your cake is for a women, then this would be a good starting point. You could go as simple or as intricate as you wanted to.

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.

For a sports fan you could try and make your cake something to do with his favorite sport. A soccer cake, rugby cake, cake based around fishing or golf are all quite easy to think about ideas to make so they will look nice.

If you are decorating a cake for a child you can easily make a really simple cake by just using a swiss roll and decorating it to be a caterpillar, a snake, a train and probably lots of other things. Just a little imagination and some time and you will be surprised at what you can do with a swiss roll!

Just use your imagination and whatever skill level you are at, and you will be able to make a great cake.