What's the easiest cake decoration?

[doggybootcamp]

10yo dad is a brilliant baker but hasn't decorated any cakes before.
She's like to make a special 'big' birthday cake for her uncle.
Please share the easiest/ simplest way to start, ideally with an outcome that far exceeds the skill level used?! Any help would be great!

I'm going for smarties and chocolate buttons! Easy and they taste nice!

Cadburys fingers or kitkat round the sides work well. Then you can buy some good ready made fondants nowadays. She could try some basic modelling with coloured fondant

Buttercream all over and then stick chocolate fingers round the outside, cover the top in sprinkles or smarties. Or smarties/sprinkles up the sides too if the cake is taller than a chocolate finger.

Dusting of icing sugar qith or without fresh flowers

Buttercream icing. Then stick anything on top - chocolate buttons, fruit, little toy figurines.

I'm not a baker but this was how I decorated my kids birthday cakes when they were little and I could be bothered!

Buttercream icing and a palette knife. Make sure the icing isn't too stiff otherwise it can take off bits of cake when you move the palette knife. Chocolate buttons or similar. I'm sure he'll love it!

Try a chocolate finger cake. Cover the cake with buttercream and press the chocolate fingers into it. Then place or sprinkle Smarties (or anything you think will look and taste good) on top. If the fingers are taller than the cake he can put as much as he likes on top and it will spill like a piñata when cut. If the fingers are shorter than the cake he can make a mosaic with a single layer of smarties.

Sorry, she.

Melted chocolate on top or glacé icing is easier than buttercream

Buttercream or melted chocolate with sprinkles, crumbled flake chocolate or strawberries with chocolate drizzled over as well.

My really easiest is to arrange leaves from the garden on the cake then sift a thick layer of pure icing sugar over it. Remove the leaves carefully and you are done.

Betty Crocker Chocolate fudge and Cadbury's Flake or Maltesers (or both 😁)

Make a paper cut out of the recipient's initial (or name if very short). Place it on the cake and gently sieve icing sugar over the cake. Very carefully remove the paper template.
You can use this idea at Christmas too with holly leaf or angel shapes.

Make glacé icing with icing sugar and lemon or orange juice, don't make it too stiff. Spread over the top of the cake, don't worry if it drips down the side a little as that's part of the charm of glacé icing.

Carefully cut open a small bag of Maltesers or chocolate drops etc. Secure a drinking straw inside the empty bag, leaving a "stem" protruding. Use the "stem" to fix the bag onto the cake. Arrange the sweets on the cake so they seem to have spilled out of the bag. You can fix the sweets in position with icing or spread the cake with buttercream as a first step.

Water icing , one white layer, trail a coloured later in concentric circles or straight lines. Drag a cocktail stick/knife edge across or from the middle out for the circles to make a feathered effect or webbed effect.

Butter icing and add a selection of chocolate and sweets on top in a haphazard way,Maltesers, buttons, crumbled flake, revels. Gold spray to high light.

Easiest cake ever -

www.sundaybaking.co.uk/2013/03/31/pigs-in-mud-cake-mississippi-mud-cake-recipe-with-kit-kats/

These are amazing, thank you! She is a really lovely little baker and we regularly get requests from the neighbours who pay for her bakes (her scones are the best I've ever had!) so I think this is the next challenge for her!