Fishnet Stockings Are An Unexpected Way To Add Style To Your Next Cake

It's shockingly easy to lose entire days — if not weeks or even months — of one's life to the pleasant abyss that is TikTok and Instagram cake-decorating videos. From pastel-hued Sanrio dreamscapes to rainbow drips to disturbingly realistic Crocs and pugs, there's no end to hypnotizing content for baking enthusiasts and anxious people alike to latch onto. Who can fret over life's incessant demands when a latex-gloved hand is smoothing a heap of frosting with an offset spatula?

If you're lucky, you might crawl out of a DessertTok/Sweetstagram hole with an accessible cake hack or two, which you can use to make professional-looking confections at home. One neat internet-bred decorating trick to put in your back pocket doesn't involve any fancy equipment, but it does require an old pair of fishnet stockings and some powdered sugar or cocoa powder. Here's how to turn the knitted legwear into your new favorite multipurpose accessory by using a pair to create intricate cake designs.

Secure a pair of fishnet stockings — make sure they're clean — to make a lovely latticed pattern on your next cake, or any other baked good that you'd normally top with powdered sugar. Once you have the hosiery, stretch it over a round ring (like a pastry ring mold) that extends beyond the perimeter of your cake. Congratulations! You just made a stencil. Finally, place it gently over the cake and sprinkle powdered sugar over it through a sifter. When you lift the stencil, you'll find that even the world's sharpest protractor can't hold a candle to the precise crosshatch pattern that bestows the top of your cake.

At this point, your cake is dressed to impress, but there's no need to stop there. If you're a fan of checkerboards, you might try filling in alternate squares with sprinkles, or dots of frosting from a piping bag. Have fun with it. After all, it's your cake, and you can eat it, too. 

After mastering the fishnet method of cake decorating, you might ask yourself what other patterned materials could be used to fool your dessert guests into thinking you cut your teeth in a professional bakery. Staying on theme, another option is lace — and not the kind you see stuck onto the outside of multitier wedding cakes. The internet dutifully validates this fantasy.

It couldn't be easier to use lace fabric to take your cakes, tarts, and brownies from perfectly fine if unremarkable to looking like works of art. On Facebook, a Martha Stewart video detailing the process of decorating Scandinavian "princess cake" — made with raspberry jam, vanilla pastry cream, and whipped cream — calls for using a rolling pin to make an imprint of a lace doily in a sheet of marzipan fondant, which is then rubbed with powdered sugar to create a kind of etching. For this method, the texture of the fabric makes a better impression compared to, say, a paper doily.

You can also simply place some lace over your cake and sift powdered sugar on top. Just make sure the cake has cooled completely, and consider decorating as close to serving time as possible so that the sugar stays distinct and doesn't start to get hazy.