Here are nine ideas of ways to decorate a cake with berries, making it beautiful and delicious!
To mix berries into your frosting, simmer fresh or frozen berries with a bit of sugar. Use medium low heat to cook them gently until they soften and thicken.
Blitz the cooked berries in a food processor or blender unit smooth. You can strain them through a sieve if you want to remove the seeds. Let the mixture cool completely and then stir it into your frosting.
This is my 4 Minute Buttercream mixed with cooked berries. Add the cooked berries instead of the milk in the recipe to give the frosting amazing colour and flavour without making it too runny. I think the flecks of berry make it look delicious, too!
There are lots of ways to decorate a cake fresh berries. If you don’t smooth the top edge of the frosting you’ll leave a wall around the cake. This will hold a pile of berries in place.
If the frosting has set it won't be sticky anymore so the berries may move if you move the cake. To attach the berries, spread some fresh frosting onto the top of the cake to act as glue.
Add berries to piping for some extra height and colour. If you’re using buttercream, make sure you do this immediately after piping. If you wait too long and the buttercream sets, it will crack when you push the berries down. This is my Lemon and Blueberry Cake and it's heavenly!
Another fun way to use berries on top of a cake is to place them between swirls of frosting. For even spacing around the cake, start by pushing the berries into the frosting on the top of the cake. Arrange them opposite each other to guide you so that there’s the same distance between each berry. Then pipe your swirls or ruffles or whatever in between the berries.
If you count as you pipe back and forth, all of your piping will be the same height. The berries add a burst of colour to this lemon cake.
Berries make a nice border around the bottom of a cake. If your cake is a tier cake you can place berries around the bottom of each tier to decorate them.
I teach every step of preparing, assembling, frosting, decorating, storing and transporting tier cakes in a MiniCourse. If you join my Club you'll get access to every MiniCourse on my cake school!
Use berries as cake toppers instead, spacing them around the top of a cake. Using a bit of fresh frosting to attach each one if the frosting on the cake has already set.
You might choose to use the berries to mark slices, so that each slice has a berry on top!
This one is the most time consuming but also the most dramatic! Press berries into the sides of the cake, starting at the very bottom and working your way up. Place the berries in the same order, for example: blueberry, blackberry, raspberry. Then offset each berry by one berry in the next row. You'll end up with diagonals going all the way up the cake.
If that last one seemed a bit over the top, try placing berries as accents on the cake. Make clusters or groups of different types of berries to create a variety of colours and shapes and sizes. You may need to pipe or spread fresh frosting to stick the berries to the cake.
To create some bright texture on your cake, spread some jam or cooked berries around the bottom of your cake. I like to do this straight after frosting the cake, before the frosting sets. Use your offset spatula to spread the jam upwards in diagonal strokes around the cake. Overlap each stroke slightly so that there aren’t any gaps between them. You can use the back of a spoon for even more texture!
I hope you've seen some ideas you like! Tell me in the comments which is your favourite!
You can also watch my video tutorial on 9 ways to decorate a cake with berries:
