Effortlessly Decorate Frosted Cakes With The Brilliant Paper Towel Hack

Cake decorating has come a long way in the past couple decades, as evidenced by the plethora of baking shows and mind-blowing techniques you can find on TikTok. For many people, achieving a super-smooth finish or a detailed Van Gogh reproduction is more time and effort than the cake is worth — let's get to eating already! Yet it's also fun to do more than simply spread frosting over the cake like so much peanut butter. Fortunately, there are a few tricks to create interesting frosts without a lot of effort. One way is decorating with a spoon and a bag to create decorative scallops. Another hack involves a simple paper towel.

The paper towel decorating trick goes back at least a half century. This makes sense, since the kitchen paper towel was introduced in 1931 and really took the United States by storm in the 1950s. What makes the technique work is the fact most paper towels feature intricate embossed patterns, which transfer with a little pressure to your frosting. It has the added benefit of smoothing out the cake's frosting for you, so you don't need to perfectly frost the cake in the first place to get the extra design elements from a towel.

The technique is simple. Take a paper towel and press it lightly but firmly into chilled frosting. Repeat the pattern across the top and sides of the cake, and you'll have miniature swirls, florets, diamonds, or whatever repeating lace-like filigree the paper towel might imprint. A few simple steps will ensure success.

First, spread a thin crumb coat over the cake and allow it to chill. It prevents loose crumbs from catching on the paper towel and fills small divots in the cake. It also ensures the main frosting layer sticks well.

Apply one or more layers of frosting and get it generally smooth. Using a spatula designed for cake decorating, like the OXO Good Grips offset spatula, gives best results. Chill 30 more minutes to develop a slight crust. Of course, you're going to want enough frosting to adequately cover the cake. Use a sturdy, lint-free towel; this isn't the day for flimsy dollar store versions. Gently press the embossed design into the top and sides of the cake, et voila.

This works best with a crusting buttercream frosting that firms up after chilling in the refrigerator thanks to a blend of butter and shortening used in the recipe. Soft frostings (like whipped cream frostings) may not imprint well and can stick to the paper towel. If the frosting is sticking to the towel, consider chilling longer, or adjusting the moisture levels in your frosting. A light sprinkling of powdered sugar can also prevent sticking.

There's a hack within the hack when it comes to using paper towels. A handful of brands produce smooth towels with no embossed pattern (Viva is probably the most prominent). If you've mostly smoothed out your frosting, you can use the featureless towels to help achieve that extra-smooth surface that some people have mastered using a wet spatula, fondant scraper, or other techniques.

The trick here is employing a fondant smoother, like the Ateco 1301. It looks something like the flat tool used to smooth concrete. Using an offset spatula or fondant scraper, get your frosting as smooth and level as you can. Then when you've gotten it as far as you feel you can, it's time for the towels. The nice thing is, your super-smooth cake doesn't have to be baking show-perfect just yet. A few little bumps and wobbles on top will be easily taken care of.

Take a full-size smooth paper towel sheet (we don't want select-a-size half towels here) and check to see if one side is softer. If it is, place that side down against the top of the cake. Take your fondant smoother (or your flat hand, which is less accurate) and run it across the top of the paper towel, using light even pressure and small swipes, ironing out all bumps. You can work the sides in a similar way in pieces. As with any technique, practice and patience will make perfect.