Applying Sauces

Sauces are usually not ladled over the dessert because doing so would mar the appearance. Instead, apply the sauce in a decorative fashion to the plate rather than the dessert. Many different styles of plate saucing are available.
Pouring a pool of sauce onto the plate is known as flooding. Flooded plates are made more attractive by applying a contrasting sauce and then blending or feathering the two sauces decoratively with a pick or the end of a knife. For this technique to work, the two sauces should be at about the same fluidity or consistency.
Rather than flooding the entire plate, it may be more appropriate for some desserts to apply a smaller pool of sauce to the plate, as this avoids overwhelming the dessert with too much sauce.
A variation of the flooding technique is outlining, where a design is piped onto the plate with chocolate and allowed to set. The spaces can then be flooded with colorful sauces.
A squeeze bottle is useful for making dots, lines, curves, and streaks of sauce in many patterns.
Alternatively, use a spoon to drizzle random patterns of sauce onto a plate.
Another technique for saucing is to apply a small amount of sauce and streak it with a brush, an offset spatula, or the back of a spoon.