On Handwriting

It is inevitable -- at some point you will have to write something on a cake.  If you have perfect handwriting then you're in luck and the worst you have to worry about is keeping it in a straight line.

However, if you're more like the rest of us, it can be a tricky proposition. I am lucky in that my handwriting with icing is somewhat better than my handwriting on paper. This is likely because I force myself to slow down and think about what I am doing when I write in icing.  A little piping gel mixed into the icing goes a long way to help with that, too as it gives a smoother line of frosting.

So you have to put words on a cake -- what are your options?

1. You can just go for it and write on the cake. 
2. You can use a letter press set (mine is all caps in normal printing, but I believe you can get message sets in cursive as well). The caveat here is that your icing has to have enough time to set up and get a hard crust, otherwise when you pull the letters out they won't have definition and you'll mess up the nice job you did making the icing smooth.
3. You can print out the wording you want in a nice font, place a sheet of wax paper over it, and trace the letters out and then transfer them to the cake. I strongly recommend using royal icing if you do this as it will set harder and stand up better to the transfer.
4. You can print the wording out reversed and do a piping gel stencil onto the cake and then trace over that with icing.
5. You can buy royal icing letters from the store and use those.

I tend to go for options 1 and 2, but have also done 5 in a pinch. It all depends on the look and level of perfectionism you're looking for. How about you? How do you write on cakes? The cake ninja is all ears.