February 2010 Blog Posts (9)

Update on piped gumpaste experiment

Let me begin by saying Patience is a virtue I do not possess.

I began the experiment on Monday of this week. It's now Wednesday. The piped tiaras seemed dry. I began removing them from the parchment slip on which they were piped. The pieces were weakend by me fiddling with the yesterday. So, a piece popped off of a couple of them, and one base area cracked off, taking with it the entire portion above it. I have one complete, uncracked tiara. For what…

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Added by JRW on February 17, 2010 at 12:06pm — 5 Comments

Experiments

The workload is light. So, I've been able to do a little experimenting. This time, it's with piping gumpaste. This experiment began Sunday night.

I placed about a 1/2 cup of gumpaste, pinched off into small pieces, into my mixer bowl. I added about 1/4-1/2 cup of hot water, a little at a time while mixing on low (the small chunks made the mixer clunk about a bit). I covered it with plastic to let in dissolve (hopefully) for several hours. After several hours had gone by, it…

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Added by JRW on February 16, 2010 at 9:30am — No Comments

Most Moist Cake Baking Tip!

I developed this technique over 25 years ago. It was published in Cooking Pleasures Magazine in 2004.

You can use this on any cake scratch or box mix, or doctored box mix, with the exception of Angel Food Cake. The thing that most people don't realize is the the steam that is created during the baking process is what makes a cake moist and retains the flavors of the cake. If you let that steam out by cooling on the countertop you lose moisture and most importantly you lose the…

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Added by Angela Wright Pineda on February 10, 2010 at 5:01pm — 5 Comments

Cake Carving Tips

Cake carving can seem intimidating when you first start cake decorating with one of the biggest challenges being not knowing where to start! My moto is that if you can stack a tiered cake you can pretty much make anything!

It's all a matter of getting your cake tiers to your desired height and then patiently carving and carving and CARVING!!! :-)…

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Added by Gonzuela on February 8, 2010 at 2:00pm — 1 Comment

Beginners Tutorial: Easy No Carving Turtle Cake

Here's a fun and quick cake to try with your kids that involves no cake carving and just simple fondant laying! You can use the same method to make a "ladybug" shaped cake as well.…

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Added by Gonzuela on February 6, 2010 at 10:00am — 1 Comment

Beginners Level Cake Decorating Instructions: Penguins & Igloos Theme

Here's a fun seasonal cake you can do with your kids and it's quick and easy to do with no experience or fancy tools required!

The cake should only take about 1 hour to finish (excluding baking time) and there's no fondant laying, piping, or cake carving - sounds good to me! Lol. …

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Added by Gonzuela on February 5, 2010 at 8:06pm — No Comments

Tips on creating facial details on bust (or head) cakes...

"Face" cakes are a lot of fun to do but they're challenging and it's always much much easier to sculpt cakes that don't have to resemble someone or something specifically (animals are a great simple way to practice carving). If you're trying to achieve realism even the slightest mistake can make the face look distorted and even a few milimeters difference in the proportion of the eyes or nose, etc, can make a huge difference in the end result.

To simplify the process here's a…

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Added by Gonzuela on February 5, 2010 at 12:44pm — 2 Comments

My daughter's 5th Birthday Cake

It took a few months of planning, getting in the supplies and making clear in my head the design of the cake. It came down to last Friday (28th January) to make the arch. It took me nearly all day purely to allow things to dry before moving onto the next step. Thankfully got that completed before my daughter came home from nursery.

Monday 1st February, 2 days till her birthday. I make the chocolate cake only to realise after levelling it, it wasn't deep enough. Unfortunately it was… Continue

Added by Rachel Graham on February 3, 2010 at 3:20pm — 3 Comments

even cake layers

Would love to know if anyone has suggestions on how to make nice even layers when baking like tiered cakes for instance..I can never seem to get nice even layers no matter what I do. HELP

Added by Sherry E. Nash on February 1, 2010 at 9:51am — 5 Comments