With so many thousands of posts on CC, this may have been thought of and posted, or maybe I'm lucky and have had an original thought. lol

I'm a self-taught cake designer. I remember some things from when my mother decorated cakes. I've picked up from the cake shows and then just trial and error. One of the hardest things has been trying to figure out how to get my image onto my frosted cake without messing up the icing. I've tried several different methods with no luck. Well yesterday I accidentally figured it out!!

My mom used to lay her pattern on her cake and then use a tool with a head like a needle and poke holes along the lines, thus transferring her pattern onto the cake. So I was trying that and the parchment paper was messing up my icing when the needle would have trouble poking through the paper. So I took the parchment paper off and laid in on something and poked the holes through, outlining my design. My thought being to make it easier for my needle to poke through on top of the cake. So I laid my pattern back on my cake and began to try to hit the same holes...yeah, not an easy task. I lifted the paper to see how I was doing only to see that the face of my design was completely outlined!! Didn't take me but a second to figure out what had happened. By poking the holes through my parchment paper first, I had left a positive imprint on the backside of my image; meaning the holes poked IN on the front, but poked OUT on the back, thus allowing the the outword dots to imprint the surface of my cake. So I laid the paper back down and gently rubbed over the entire surface leaving me an imprint of my pattern on my cake with little damage to my icing!!

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In short:
1. Trace your image onto a piece of parchment paper (you'll want the stiffer, yet giving, paper)
2. Use a needle, push pin, or other type of tool to poke lines in the paper tracing all your lines. (I did this over a piece of rubber shelf liner, so there was nothing stopping my needle from poking through completely)
3. Look at the back of your image, make sure that your holes are actually raised on the backside.
4. Gently position your image on the surface of your cake and then using your hand, gently rub over your image. The raised holes on the backside will leave a dotted outline on the surface of your cake!

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HTH someone else who may have been having the same problem!!

I've certainly never heard of that technique, but it sounds like a good one. Congratson figuring it out! Another one that I've used - it reverses your image, although if the image is dark enough you could probably do it on the back to avoid this - is to outline the image in either clear piping gel or melted chocolate. Turn the image over on to your cake (if it's covered in a crusting buttercream, let it crust first) and rub a little bit. Lift the paper off and there it is! The piping gel transfers to the cake surface. The chocolate, which you have to let harden again first, doesn't transfer, but leaves an imprint of the design.

Marianna46, I've tried the piping gel technique and wasn't very happy with my results. However, the chocolate sounds like a great idea. sounds like it would do essentially what I did with the needle. It would leave a raised impression to push into the icing. Bet that would work to transfer an image onto fondant too! The chocolate would withstand that little bit more pressure.

Thank you so much for sharing with with me.

Marianna46, I've tried the piping gel technique and wasn't very happy with my results. However, the chocolate sounds like a great idea. sounds like it would do essentially what I did with the needle. It would leave a raised impression to push into the icing. Bet that would work to transfer an image onto fondant too! The chocolate would withstand that little bit more pressure.

Thank you so much for sharing with with me.