From fresh fruits to sugar-frosted flowers, the look of fruity and flowery garnishes add a completely new dimension to your cakes, which can be used for added color and hues, a contrasting texture or simply to indicate the flavor of the filing or of the cake itself. The addition of these simple items to decorate your cakes is sometimes one of the simplest yet worthy ideas you can possibly do, especially if fruits and flowers are readily available in your locale.

Let's have a look at some the easiest ways to adorn your cakes with these eye soothing decors.

Fruit

Fresh berries when used as decorations are a colorful, flavorful addition to any cakes on your dessert table. They can quite easily be piled up on the top of the cake, instantly giving a delightful look and taste. Whether the fruits or flowers used are plain, sugared, or glazed with syrup, the additional taste they provide can sometimes make the difference between an ordinary cake and a cake that will be loved by those that lay their eyes on them. The use of blueberries or even whole strawberries placed around the outside of an ordinary chocolate cake is likely to give a refreshing fruity flavor and add a touch of color. This is especially true if they're livened up with a few fresh mint leaves or a few gratings of lemon peel.

The use of kiwi fruit slices, orange sections, strawberries and sometimes grapes are ideal for arranging on top of a cake and then glazed over with a sweet sugar or maple syrup, or melted jelly.
Sliced fresh figs or dates with the seeds removed coated with scoops of freshly whipped cream and decoratively arranged on the top of a sponge cake makes for an artistic looking cake.

Tips on how to use fruit as decoration for cakes

    * Frosted whole fruits, such as seckel pears, figs, lady apples, and perhaps a bunch of grapes are fantastic decorations for late summer and fall cakes.
    * Cut fruit does not last as long as whole berries, ensure that you serve the cake within a few hours of decorating; this is to prevent the fruit from "weeping" into the cake or the cake's frosting.

Flowers

The use of flowers is a little different, you will need to ensure that fresh edible flowers are used since these are more than likely to be eaten along with the cake. These edible flowers make for a gorgeous decoration on frosted cakes, and in addition are easy to use. Simply start off with a simple frosted cake or even a plain cake lightly dusted over with confectioner's sugar ; then begin to pile on flowers like lavender, rose petals, sweet violets, calendulas, bachelor's and borage. These are all edible and gives a nice visually pleasing look. To further enhance the visual interest, the addition of a few scoops of whipped cream in the center of the cake will easily do the trick. The flowers can then be arranged in many various positions and locations on the cake, as you would do for any floral arrangement.

With flowers as decorations on cakes, simplicity is best as it would give a more natural look and taste to your cakes without having to look like your neighbor's garden.

A few simple Tips on the use of Flowers as cake decoration

    * Dust the flowers with superfine sugar ; this adds an elegant, sparkly effect.
    * Ensure that when using flowers for cake decorations that they are clean ; this means all the parts of the flowers, and make certain that they are pesticide-free and non-toxic.