How To Make Homemade Cake Look Expensive With Licorice

Candy pieces are quick tickets to pretty layer cupcakes that require no professional training to decorate. With a bit of culinary creativity, you can be on your way to placing bits of licorice and Twizzlers onto the surface of a frosted cake to create graceful designs fit for a black-tie affair and colorful presentations that will delight children at birthday parties. Since the flexible pieces make for easy assembly, all you have to do is create a sticky foundation of icing or fondant to set licorice candies in place and marvel at your resourceful ingenuity. 

Strips of licorice rope can be wrapped around the perimeter of your layer cake to create pretty linings or placed horizontally for a striped effect. Outline the concept for your design before you start to set strings of red licorice or press cut pieces of Twizzlers into the smooth surface of a frosted cake. Your advance planning can help eliminate the need to shuffle candies around and smooth frosting after the embellishments are moved.

Bendy pieces of licorice and torn-apart strips of Twizzlers can be shaped to create wavy designs or purposefully placed to portray specific figures, like the roots of a tree, the legs of a spider, or ribbons holding balloons made of candies and frosting, for example. Line up strips of licorice next to each other to make blocks of color, form rainbow patterns with different colors, or cut small pieces of Twizzlers to press into the tops of frosted cupcakes for a subtle decorative touch.

Packages of licorice and Twizzlers can be found in a range of flavors and finishes, so have fun experimenting with salt or sour-coated pieces that taste like chocolate or blue raspberry. Complement cake flavors with the candy types you choose, or turn up the volume of strawberry sponge cake recipes with strawberry-flavored Twizzlers. Once you begin to view the flexible candies as a kind of decorating tool and not simply snacks, your homemade baked goods are guaranteed to take on new forms — and most likely end up on the 'Gram.