String Work Cake

Happy Sunday! It's a very happy one for us since our grandson arrived on Thursday! We have been enjoying his company since!

Today's cake is a demo cake. I had been taking a Master Decorators class. I wanted to work on detail work which included different piping techniques as well as sugar flowers. Over the next few months you will see examples of the new flowers I learned how to make but this week you get to see the piping techniques. I was required to show 7 different techniques in this one cake for my final "exam". For this cake I used bridge work, string work, line work, coronets, ruffling, sugar flowers and shell work. That's a lot of different looks to try to put into one cake and we had to come up with our own design, not copy from the teachers work.

I have to say this is the hardest bit of piping work I have ever had to do on a cake. The instructor warned us that for every 1 string we got to string properly we would end up wiping 3 away. I had no idea that was an understatement! It took me two hours to do the string work alone! The fun new technique that I learned was the ruffling. I've done a form of ruffles before but this is such a more realistic, not to mention easier, version of what I've done in the past!

Now you are probably wondering why I bring up my classwork here in the blog. For one thing it was something that took me 3 months to learn and a whole lot of work and I wanted to show you all that I'm still learning. No matter how much I think I know about decorating, there is still more to learn and it's fun to discover new things to do with sugar and icing. But the other reason is to encourage others here that may be reading this to go out and explore the classes in your area. Michaels has several levels of classwork and many cake supply shops also offer them. Lastly, check online to see if you can find one that works for your interests. If you still can't find something that works for you then please do explore YouTube. Yup, you'd be amazed at how much I've learned thanks to that website! Tons of videos that you can play over and over again till you get the technique down and all for free! Can't beat that.

More cakes to come over the next weeks. Next week I'll share with you a baby shower cake I delivered just this afternoon!

Cat

Rose Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday! As promised from last week, there's more on the "rose" technique that you used on the cupcakes last week. Since I found the tutorial (http://iammommy.typepad.com/i_am_baker/2011/02/rose-cake-tutorial.html) to make this lovely design I have seen the design popping up all over the place in one form or another. This is my own version.

Due to the fact that this is a very small cake, just 6 inches by 3 inches tall, I didn't want too much buttercream frosting on it in proportion to actual cake. The roses take a lot of buttercream to make so I decided to lightly frost the sides and save the roses for the top. Now if this was to be a larger cake, say a 10x4, then roses all over it like in the tutorial would be fine. There would be a lot more cake to icing ratio then. Lastly I wanted to add a bit of "bling" to the cake and that's where this week's secret comes in!

If you visit Michaels, or any other craft store that has caking supplies, you will see a whole section dedicated to sprinkles and sugars and glitters in which to embellish your cakes and cupcakes. Edible glitter is in flakes, not sprinkles, and can give your cake that little bit of extra sparkle when you need it. It's inexpensive and a little goes a long way. Unlike sanding sugar or other types of sprinkles, edible glitter doesn't alter the texture of the icing very much so you don't end up with a gritty feeling in your mouth from it. One of the many reasons I prefer it to sanding sugar.

Over the past few months I've been taking "Masters" classes. Next Sunday I'll share with you the outcome from my final "test" for the course!

Cat

"Rose" Cupcakes

Happy Sunday! This week brings some new fun stuff I can share with you! Fun stuff YOU can do for your own cupcakes that is easy to learn! These cupcakes require only some buttercream icing, a piping bag and an extra large open star decorating tip. This tip looks like a pointy top crown.

Put the tip into the bag (no coupler needed) and fill the bag with buttercream. Twist the top of the bag and hold it straight up and down about an inch from the top of your cupcake. Starting from the center of the cupcake swirl the icing around in a flat circle and when you've covered the entire cupcake let up the pressure and angle down to finish the line and stop and pull away. You can practice this on wax paper a couple of times to get the hang of it but once you do this will be SO easy for you to do quickly!

Close up

Now another fun tip for this design. At Michaels you can find spray cans of food safe dye that you can use to add color to your roses. Lay your cupcake onto wax paper and, holding the can about 6 inches away, lightly spray on your color. A fun combination for this is to spray on some yellow and then a lighter layer of pink. This makes some really beautiful "roses" for your party!

More on this technique next week!

Cat

Critter Cupcakes

Happy Sunday! The rains in Northern California have been impressive over the past few weeks. Torential downpours, hail, flooding, the whole 9 yards. It has made outdoor activities almost impossible but our local CubScouts weathered the rain for a trip to the fish hatchery (and the rain held off for a couple of hours for them too!) and needed a bit of a treat for the trip.

I have made this type of cupcake before but with pretty butterflies on top. Somehow I don't think the boys would have been too happy with butterflies! LOL! So spiders and ladybugs (for those who couldn't make themselves chomp into a spider) became the "critters" for this go-round. Those were piped out of royal icing. The kids were delighted. And they are Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes so the parents were pretty happy too!

The "secret" this week is that you can easily do something very close to this yourself in your own home kitchen without needing a piping bag or tips or much skill. All you have to do is color icing in two colors of green, one a few shades darker than the other. Put those into ziplock bags and cut a small bit of a bottom corner off on each. Now, using the lighter green first, "pipe" dots on to the cupcakes in a random order. Then, using the darker color, fill in the leftover spaces. Finally, you just use a fork and dip it into the icing in a straight up and down manner to create your grass "spikes". After that you just need to put candy bugs or worms on top!

This week I learned a new technique that I will share with you all in the week to come. This one is so easy and beautiful that you will be happily using it for your Easter cakes this year!

And speaking of April! Many of us are watching the preparations for the Royal Wedding which is coming up on April 29th of this year. Well, today they announced who the cake designer will be and what she will be creating! The lucky designer is Fiona Cairns and she will be using the Joseph Lambeth technique on several fruitcakes to create the wedding cake. The Lambeth technique is where they use intricate piping to decorate the cakes. English wedding cakes are not like ours. They don't stack the cakes and the cake inside the fondant or Marzipan covering is a heavy fruitcake. Yup, similar to that stuff your Grandmother has been trying to get you to eat for years. They are not fluffy chiffon type cakes like we have here in the US and while our current trend is clean lines and just a hint of decoration here or there, the Lambeth method . So it's fun to watch the Royal Website for the preparations and see how differently it's done on the other side of "The Pond".

For those interested:

The Royal Website: http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/

Fiona Cairns Website: www.fionacairns.com

Have a great week, I'll see you next Sunday!

Cat

Baby Ballcap

Happy Sunday! This week has been a challenge. If you take a look at the photo above you will notice that cap has many pieces that make up the whole. Well, the rain this week, and it's been pouring in Northern California all week, has made for a rough journey to completion for this cap. I have earned my money on this one!LOL!

Step one was to make the bowl of the cap. To get the right "newborn" size I actually covered my son's magic 8 ball with plastic wrap, then crisco and then smoothed the circle of sugarpaste over that, trimmed it and let it set up for 24 hours. Normally this would only take an hour or two but the humidity was making everything dry at a much slower rate. Once that was set up enough I could add the ribbing and letter and then let it set up again for 24 hours. At that point I could attach the blue section of the bill and it took the full 24 hours to set up and allow the "glue" to dry enough to hold it onto the bowl of the cap. At that point I could put on the trim around the bowl/bill and let it set up. Finally, 24 hours later, I was able to add the red piece to the bill of the cap and 48 hours after that I could pick up the cap and hold it in my hands. I'm very happy this cake isn't due for 3 more weeks since it needs to get rock hard before I can place it on the cake and with the rain that is still predicted for around here I think it's going to take every second of those 3 weeks to dry as solid as I need it to be.

But, as with all patience trying aspects of caking, the end result is so worth the time and effort it took to get it from powdered sugar, tylose and marshmallows to the finished product that could just fit a newborns teeny head. I can't wait for the Mama-to-be to see the cap and shoes, both personalized with a B for the baby's first name, on her baby shower cake!

There is no "secret" this week. Decorating a baby shower cake can be as complicated or as simple as you'd wish it to be. But if you are hiring a cake artist to do something really special for your shower, or a friends shower, then going for a "realism" look with the embellishments might be the way to go. In this case it's the baseball cap and teeny sneakers but on your cake it could be a realistic looking stork with a baby bundle as a topper or a cake shaped like a crib or bassinette. Giving you the wow factor for your party is why we cake artists do what we do!

I also did cupcakes today for our CubScouts but I'm going to save those for next Sunday so I can give you lots of tips and tricks that you can use to make your own Springtime cupcakes for your next outing!

Cat

Baby Converse Sneakers

Happy March! Spring is beginning to poke out here and there in Northern California. It's a bit confused with it going from warm to freezing to warm again but it looks like warm is currently winning and the flowers and trees are beginning to bloom everywhere. With the Spring comes the Spring babies and the Baby Showers for the new Mom-to-be's. This weeks project is for an upcoming shower cake for a first time Mom.

They chose a Sports theme for this shower and it's for an expected baby boy so everything is very athletic and very blue and very very small! Since the embellishments for this cake need time to dry hard as a rock I needed to take some time and get that done now so they would be ready to set on the cake in a few weeks.

First up are these adorable newborn sized sneakers. The challenges in doing this type of work is that the items are so very small but also you are working with fondant that has tylose added to it which helps it to dry quickly. So you cut out the pieces, just like you would if you were making real shoes, and then assemble as quickly as possible before they get too dry and start to crack. The other challenge is to add the details needed to make them look like real shoes. For these I added the baby's first initial to make it even more personalized.

This weeks' secret is for those who want to add embellishements to their own cakes without having to spend the time or money to make the sugarpaste pieces. Look for a local cake supply store in your area. Inside you will find all sorts of plastic and sugarpaste embellishments to help you to take your simply iced cake and make it something really special. From there you can add a bit of color to a white iced cake or even to a store bought cake and make it more personalized for your party.

Next week I'll share with you another embellishment for this cake which is presently drying enough so I can take photographs of it! See you next weekend!

Cat

Hippo Themed Baby Shower Cake

The beauty of this business is that when you have a special family occassion for your own family you have the opportunity to create your art for the ones you love and pour your heart into your work. This week's cake was for my younger daughter's baby shower. It's their first baby so this was a special cake for a truly special occassion!

I started work on this cake over a month ago. Starting with the sculptures, which are all hand molded out of fondant, and working my way to the palm leaves and then the boulders, each piece had to be molded, painted and left to dry. More detail painting was added then another drying period. All leading up to three days before when the actual cake was baked, then wrapped, frozen and finally two days before the construction of the cake began. Since this was for my baby girl, I wanted to add as much detail as I could so this was a project that took several more hours than an average baby shower cake but when the trees were finally set into place the cake was just perfect.

From the baby hippo sleeping on the top of the cake under the palms and next to the water...

to the Daddy Hippo tubin his way down the waterfall...


to the Mama Hippo lounging in the pond on the cake board, this cake was perfect for my daughter and her vision of her Hippo Themed Baby Shower. Right down to the cup of tea next to the Mama Hippo since the shower was held in a Tea Room!

Inside the cake was also tailored to the Mama to Be. Lemon pound cake filled with lemon curd buttercream is my daughters favorite cake so there was no doubt what the shower cake needed to be!

As I've mentioned before, my younger daughter and I also run an event company so this was a fun way to combine both businesses on one day...with a twist. My oldest daughter is who threw this party for her sister so I got to work with her for a nice change to help her bring our Mama to Be's vision to life. What a wonderful day it was too!

The next few weeks brings me some detail work for yet another shower cake so I'll be sharing with you the bits and pieces as they come together! See you next Sunday!

Cat