It takes skills to ice a cake to sleek perfection. There's a lot of smoothing and fussing and filling and re-doing and tweaking. Screw that. Smooth and perfect is for try-hards and professionals, messy rustic iced cakes are where it's at for home cooks.

First, make a bigger batch of icing than you normally would. Then, simply ice the outside of the cake with a thin layer. Don’t worry about getting it smooth, just make sure that it covers the whole cake . Chill the cake in the fridge for 15 - 30 minutes to firm up the icing.

Next, use an icing spatula (or a regular spatula or butter knife) to spread a thick layer on top of the chilled cake. Press the icing spatula or a large spoon into the icing and move it side to side to create little dips and waves. Oooh... So rustic.

You can stop right here and serve your beautiful minimalist cake with pride. Or, if you're feeling fancy, try some of these other tricks using the messy-iced cake as a base.