How to decorate a store-bought cake for a birthday or special day

Chocolate cake is always a winner. Chuckles are always a winner. Merge these two and you've hit it out of the ballpark.

First up, make a chocolate ganache. Use any chocolate of your choice and heat equal amounts of chocolate and cream in a saucepan. Keep the heat very low and use a spatula to combine the chocolate with the cream until you have a deliciously gooey ganache. Let it cool for a moment while you unpack any of our chocolate cakes, and open your bag or bags (no judgements here) of Chuckles.

Use your ganache as icing. You can pop it in a piping bag or just drizzle it over the cake using a spoon, going for the 'messy' look to hide any actual mess. Then pop your chuckles onto the parts of the cake that have ganache on it, using it to keep the chuckles from accidentally rolling away.

The hardest part about this cake-decorating hack is trying not to eat all the Chuckles before it's time to serve the cake.

SHOP CAKES & DESSERTS

SHOP DECORATIONS & TOPPINGS

When it comes to dessert, more is more, right? Right. So for this one, choose your favourite cake, cheesecake or tart, and top it with fresh seasonal fruit. If you've gone fo an iced cake – we particularly love a sheet cake – start by scraping off the layer of sprinkles but leave the icing. You can add a little extra icing at this point, or simply let the fruit do the heavy lifting.

Then choose your fruit. Depending on what's in season, you can top your cake with mixed berries, figs, sliced pears or even beautiful citrus or stone fruit. Once you've got your fruit sorted, don't stope there. Add an extra sprinkle of icing sugar, followed by edible gold or silver shimmer for extra glamour.

A 'naked' cake is a layered cake that has filling between the layers but either no or very little icing around the sides of teh cake, showing off the layers, the filling and the decorations on top of the cake. No doubt you've seen Pinterest images of boho-chic weddings complete with a flower-topped 'naked' cake. You can hack this look yourself, with minimal time and effort.

Start with this caramel cream cake. Depending on how many people will be eating it, you can just use one cake, or layer two of these babies with whipped cream or vanilla buttercream between them for a gloriously simple-but-impressive tower.

Now comes the art-andcraftsy part. Cut a piece of clean cardboard into a circle slightly smaller than the diameter of the cake. Cover the top of the cake in a thin layer of vanilla buttercream and place the cardboard on top of it, essentially sticking it into place. Then ice another layer of the cardboard, hiding it from view. The cardboard makes the cake easier to serve, and also makes sure that the flowers don't come into contact with the food you'll be eating. If you want to skip this step, you totally can, just use edible flowers instead of roses.

Grab a stylish bunch of roses – please not lillies or tulips, those can be toxic if accidentally eaten – give them a rinse in clean water ahead of time and when you're ready to use them, cut the flowers off their stems. Place them onto the top icing layer (on top of the hidden cardboard) and arrange them until you're happy with how they look, using more icing here and there if you need to, as glue.

When it's time tot serve the cake, simply slip a butter knife underneath the cardboard to remove it, and all the flowers, and proceed to cut and serve your cake as usual.