Whether you are run­ning late for a par­ty, for­get to pick up dessert for din­ner, or just have a sweet tooth, you’ve prob­a­bly pur­chased a cake from the store. While store-bought cake is pret­ty yum­my on its own, a lit­tle bit of help can take what is of­ten quite a gener­ic and plain cake in­to some­thing gourmet and de­li­cious. Though the first bite does the job of sat­is­fy­ing your dessert han­ker­ing, store-bought cake gets a bit bor­ing. How­ev­er, with min­i­mum ef­fort, mon­ey and time you can feel like you bought a $70 slice of cake. Try at least one of our tips the next time you pur­chase your cake and be mind-blown.

#1 Easy Lay­ered Cake

Lay­er­ing your cake is the sim­plest but most ef­fec­tive trick on this list. Not on­ly do you get to make an ab­solute­ly fab­u­lous dessert out of a low-cost, gener­ic cake but, you can al­so re­pur­pose many in­gre­di­ents in your house as the ‘jam’ of the dessert. This trick al­so works well to jazz up boxed cake mix.

To sand­wich your cake, ei­ther cut one sponge or choco­late cake hor­i­zon­tal­ly or, pur­chase two cakes. Your fill­ing goes be­tween the cut sides or the tops of the cake—do this to en­sure that the most pre­sentable side of the cake is the first part that any­one sees.

You can fill your cake with al­most any­thing that is spread­able—that leaves a world of pos­si­bil­i­ties so, we’ll guide you through some of our most rec­om­mend­ed com­bi­na­tions.

Whipped cream and jam or Nutel­la lay­ered on ei­ther a plain sponge or choco­late cake makes for one of the most deca­dent com­bi­na­tions. We sug­gest warm­ing the Nutel­la ei­ther in the mi­crowave or on the stove for easy spread­ing. Use a fruit liqueur or juice to thin the jam if it is not spread­able enough. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, fresh straw­ber­ries and toast­ed nuts can be sprin­kled on the fill­ing for tex­ture and acid­i­ty. Whipped cream and jam make a quick and easy Vic­to­ri­an sponge fill­ing.

#2 Ice-Cream Cake

Ice-cream cakes are a lot eas­i­er to make than they look. Two in­gre­di­ents are re­quired: ice-cream and cake—and both can be store-bought. Of course, if you want to get fanci­er you can use nuts, cook­ies, fruits, and whipped cream but good old ice-cream and cake are re­li­ably de­li­cious. The hard­est part of mak­ing an ice-cream cake is wait­ing.

For as­sem­bly, you need at least two thin or halved sponge or choco­late cakes. Leave your choice of ice-cream out of the freez­er for at least 20 min­utes. The ice-cream needs to be the tex­ture of soft-serve—spread­able but still frozen and hold­ing some form. We ad­vise lay­er­ing on plas­tic wrap and a bak­ing sheet for easy trans­porta­tion of the cake. Spread a thick lay­er of ice-cream on your first lay­er of cake, top ice-cream with any ex­tras that you’d like and then spoon an­oth­er thick lay­er of ice-cream. Top ice-cream with the last half of cake and freeze for three hours; then, add a dol­lop of whipped cream if you wish.

This cake isn’t on­ly easy and ful­ly store-bought (ze­ro cook­ing in­volved!) but, it’s al­so ex­treme­ly flex­i­ble and cus­tomis­able. Many com­bi­na­tions can work—think pas­sion fruit ice-cream and sponge cake, cof­fee ice-cream and choco­late cake or even cher­ry co­conut ice-cream lay­ered with shred­ded co­conut and sponge cake! Ex­per­i­ment with flavours and tex­tures; the pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less!

#3 Home­made Top­pings

This one re­quires a lit­tle bit of cook­ing but, we promise it is worth it. Adding home­made top­pings to store-bought cakes takes the ma­jor­i­ty of work out of a fab­u­lous dessert; of­ten, home­made top­pings aren’t that dif­fi­cult to make. One of our favourite top­pings is home­made fruit com­pôte. This is be­cause you can make a fruit com­pôte out of any­thing! In a saucepan, cook what­ev­er fruit you have on hand with sug­ar, wa­ter and oth­er flavour­ings like gin­ger, car­damom or vanil­la. Once the sauce be­comes thick, let it cool; spoon over your cake. This works won­der­ful­ly well with cheese­cakes. In­stead of sub­ject­ing your­self to the usu­al­ly more ex­pen­sive but, cheap-tast­ing cher­ry topped cheese­cake, top it with your own fruit sauce.

Choco­late sauces are the oth­er easy go-to for home­made top­pings. A sim­ple sauce can be made by melt­ing choco­late, ei­ther white, milk or dark, with but­ter in a mi­crowave and then pour­ing over the cake. To crank up the flavour, you can in­fuse oth­er in­gre­di­ents to ac­cen­tu­ate the choco­late such as ground cin­na­mon, rum or in­stant cof­fee pow­der

As an al­ter­na­tive to the more labou­ri­ous but­ter­cream, yo­gurt or sour cream frost­ing is an easy way to achieve tra­di­tion­al frost­ing. Sim­ply, whip yo­gurt with pow­dered sug­ar and vanil­la ex­tract for a no-fuss but, deca­dent top­ping. It’s al­so a much health­i­er op­tion than but­ter­cream.