Writting on Cake - how do you do it?

[cuteable]

I have made a few cakes for birthdays but I have struggled with the writting part. How is it done? I know I can pipe using stiff peak royal icing but how do you make it neat? Do you score the letters first ?

Is there also stensils that can be used - i.e. how do they do with writting in the Gruffalo cake here: Gruffalo Cake

I would love to go to a cake decorating class but the one near me is at a silly time and fully booked at the moment so Im trying to learn myself.

I have cutters and tappits and do any writing as such with fondant so I'm hoping someone can enlighten us both :)

Whats Tappits and how are they different from cutters? Im totally clueless Haha!

We buy sets of writing icing pens from tesco...the peasant's answer I'm afraid, not the most professional look, but good enough for a home made DCs birthday cake! There's own brand or ones by Cakecraft. You can get large tubes of one colour, with different nozzles, or sets like 4 glitter colours, or 4 shades of pink. The writing on that gruffalo cake you linked to looked like it had been cut out of roll-out icing with stencils perhaps? Which begs the question where you would find such small stencils...

I'm new to cake decorating too, to me it seems that's just a brand, on ebay there's hundreds all different fonts.

Ah thanks!! I will go have a look and might have to buy some cutters