Cake Decorating

Rainbow Nonpareil Sprinkles - bright and colorful rainbow sprinkles make any dessert more cheerful! Use them on cakes and cupcakes, or stir them into batter to make funfetti desserts!

The #2 piping tip is a workhorse! This small round tip is very versatile, and as a result, it's one of my favorites. It's great for doing detailed line work like vines, makes beautiful petite buttercream dots, and is excellent for piping words. I also use it to outline cookies before flooding them with royal icing. I make sure to keep a number of these tips on hand, because I'm always reaching for them!

These decorating squeeze bottles are great for filling with royal icing, melted chocolate, or warm ganache. Use them to decorate sugar cookies, fill candy molds, or create gorgeous dripping ganache cakes!

Looking for a way to make your desserts stand out? Try this completely edible gold paint--it gives your baked goods a gorgeous, realistic metallic gold color! I usually use a food-safe brush to brush it onto my fondant, but it can also be used in an airbrush machine.

Piping Gel is a good all-around cake decorating ingredient. It can be tinted with food coloring or colored with luster dust, and can be used for piping, flooding areas for a stained-glass effect, or warmed and poured as a glaze on cheesecakes and mousse cakes. It can also be used as a glaze for fresh fruit (on tarts or cakes), eclairs, and danishes. Finally, you can use it to stick fondant decorations together as a sort of edible glue.

These white confetti sprinkles are great decorations on their own, but they're also great for making sequin cakes! Attach them to fondant-covered cakes with piping gel, then once it dries, you can leave it plain for white sequins, or paint them with luster dust for a gorgeous metallic sequin effect.

If you've ever struggled with wrinkled fondant on the sides of your cakes, you need a fondant smoother! This cheap tool makes achieving a seamless fondant look MUCH easier. I actually have two. I use one to smooth the top and sides of the cake, then I'll use both together to work around the top edge and get a really clean, sharp edge all the way around my cake.

These Terrarium Glass Globes aren't just for displaying plants--they're also great containers for making your own edible terrariums!

Leaf green petal dust is great for making fondant plants look more realistic. It adds a matte green color that looks very natural when brushed onto fondant and gum paste decorations.

Christmas Chocolate Transfer Sheets are an easy way to add Christmas sparkle to chocolates and other treats! Use them on dipped truffles or with acetate cake collars to make chocolate-wrapped cakes.

If you're going to be making fondant or gum paste characters or decorations, it's a good idea to pick up a set of fondant and gum paste tools. These specially shaped implements will make your life SO much easier--from cutting quilting patterns to forming flower petals, they're made to do a very specific job and they do it well! I like this set because it's affordable and has a nice range of tools available.

Piping couplers  aren't the most exciting kitchen tools to talk about, but they're one of the decorating staples that I reach for most often! These simple tools help attach your piping tips to a piping bag, and they make it very easy to switch tips multiple times using the same bag. I like the Ateco brand because the tips of the couplers are simply round--some other brands have notches or cut-outs in the tips that make it hard to use them to pipe by themselves. The Ateco ones can be used plain for piping cupcake swirls, or used as intended as a coupler.

This small star piping tip is #15 from Ateco. Its mini size makes it perfect for piping small flowers and other tiny decorations.

White Pearl Dust adds a gorgeous, subtle shimmer to any candy or fondant accent! This dust is completely edible and FDA approved, so you don't have to worry about serving it to your guests! Brush a little on your chocolate or fondant using a dry brush, and it adds a gorgeous, pearly gleam to any decoration.

White Sugar Pearls are small edible sprinkles that look just like pearls! They add a pretty and classy touch to any dessert.

I often like to make my own homemade fondant, but there are 2 colors I always prefer to buy, whenever possible: black and red. It is really hard to get a true black (or a true red) when making your own fondant at home, and you end up having to use so much food coloring, the taste and texture are both negatively impacted. So I'm a big believer in buying black fondant, both for flavor and simplicity reasons!

This Orange Color Mist is a quick and easy way to add a wash of orange color all over cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and more! I love how easy these color mists are to use, and they give a nice airbrush effect without the need to have an actual airbrush machine.

I like to make my own marshmallow fondant, but when I'm in a rush, or need just a small amount, pre-made fondant is the way to go!

This small leaf tip, Wilton #352, is one of my work horses! I use it for leaves, of course, but I also like using it for feathers, flower petals, and adding all sorts of great texture on cakes and cupcakes. It's the easiest leaf tip to use, in my opinion, and doesn't require a lot of finessing to produce pretty leaves. I have 4 or 5 just because I use it so often!

These Russian Ball Piping Tips are so fun to use! Just one squeeze of the piping bag will give you gorgeous cascades of ruffles on top of your cakes and cupcakes.

This 2D piping tip is a classic closed star tip. It's great for decorating cakes and cupcakes with rosettes, and is especially good at making flower petals and drop flower shapes. It's medium-sized, so it's not great for making big bakery swirls on top of cupcakes, but for mini cupcakes or cake decorating, it's a necessity!

Russian Piping Tips are the hot new way to decorate cakes and cupcakes! And with good reason--you can make whole flowers with just one squeeze of the piping bag! They're fun and easy to use, and can create really stunning designs in a short amount of time. This is a good all-purpose set: it has 7 tips, so you'll get a good variety of designs, along with 10 piping bags and a coupler so you can easily switch tips without making a mess.

This small star piping tip is perfect for making stars, rosettes, and many other frosting designs. It's one of my favorite tools for making mini roses on cupcakes, and is such an all-around useful tip, it's a necessity to have in your toolkit!

This Red Fondant tastes great and is very easy to work with! It is very hard to make a true red color when dying white fondant, so I always recommend to buy red fondant when possible. This brand has a bright red color, is supple and workable, and best of all, it tastes good too!