Once your cake is beautifully frosted with one of the many possible types of icing, you’ll want to add some finishing touches to make it unique and unforgettable. Such finishing touches add textural contrast as well as color, and can turn a relatively plain cake into an artistic masterpiece.

Fresh berries make for beautiful, colorful garnish for frosted cakes. Berries can be rolled in superfine sugar, glazed, or just used plain. Some good choices are strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries. Raspberries can also be used, but be aware that they are extremely delicate, and may become mushy very quickly. Their juice may bleed onto your icing as well. On a chocolate cake iced with chocolate frosting, an arrangement of mint leaves and fresh strawberries will add color.

Small whole fruits such as Seckel pears, figs, grapes, and crabapples are attractive when tastefully arranged on top of and/or around a cake. They can be used as is, or frosted lightly with sugar and egg white. Sliced fruit such as peaches or nectarines can be used, perhaps with a few spoonfuls of whipped cream; but you should serve the cake as soon as possible after the fruit is added, since it will discolor when exposed to air, and may also bleed onto the icing. Berries are a better choice than sliced fruit if your cake will not be served immediately after decorating.

Another way to decorate a cake so that it looks beautiful and unusual is to use edible fresh flowers. You may choose to frost the cake first, dust it with powdered sugar, or just leave it unfrosted. Some flowers that can safely be eaten are nasturtiums, marigolds (better in salads and cooked dishes than on cakes), violets, honeysuckle, rose petals (flavor is stronger in the darker colors), carnation petals (cut off the base of the petal, as it is bitter), fuchsia, and hibiscus.

It’s pretty and delicious to spoon a generous amount of slightly sweetened whipped cream on top of the cake, and then sprinkle with the edible flowers of your choice. You can dip the flowers in superfine sugar to give them an elegant, sparkly appearance.

Caution: be very careful to eat only flowers that are clean, fresh, and free of pesticide! Also, be certain you have correctly identified all flowers used as a garnish, and that they are truly edible.

More strongly-flavored cakes like spice cake, gingerbread, and carrot cake are appropriate for garnishes and decoration featuring toasted or candied nuts. You can sprinkle chopped nuts on top of the cake, or press them into the frosting on the bottom edge of the cake, for added flavor and texture.

One delicately-textured cake that nonetheless benefits from a garnish of toasted, sliced Brazil nuts is a coffee-flavored sponge cake with sweetened, coffee-flavored whipped cream used as a frosting. Try baking this cake in a tube pan, and press the sliced nuts into the whipped cream on the sides of the cake.

If you find decorating cakes intriguing and interesting, you might think about going into the cake-decorating business. Whether you live in the city or in the country, unusual and individual cake decoration is always in demand by people who entertain a lot, or who just love unique things. Birthday parties, weddings, anniversaries, graduations -- the list of events that may require decorated cakes is very long.

Most important of all is that you have fun with cake decorating. You don’t have to produce perfection: the cake will be eaten, after all, and is not meant to be admired for decades! Enjoy producing your finishing touches. Don’t be afraid to try new ideas, and your cakes will be the talk of the town.