Decorating my First Cake – Part I
Interestingly enough, I was a lot less nervous creating my first cake, than some of my subsequent efforts…beginner’s luck perhaps? My first cake was a 10” round fruit cake decorated in ivory fondant and decorated in an Autum theme. It was for my extra lovely father-in-law’s birthday and I wanted it to be perfect.
I’m going to chat here about some of the cake decorating techniques that I used. As a beginner I am obviously trying varying techniques out till I find something that works for me. I’ve mentioned about various cake decorating books I’ve read – the cake decorating techniques I’m going over here are a combination of tips from those books and my decorating classes.
To create the leaves and foliage I had picked up a few tips from a cake decorating course. My spray included blackberries, rose-hips, acorns and autum leaves and a moulded rabbit. These are a few things I learnt from this project:
*** It doesn’t matter if your green fondant is not quite the shade of green you’d like. Petal dust correctly applied after your sugarpaste leaves have dried, can really transform them.
*** There are two common methods to create the leaves – cutter-plunger options (which save time by veining the leaf in one push) and cutters with veining mats where one creates a main vein and then imprints the pattern from the veining mat onto the leaf. The latter is more time-consuming but to my mind produces a much more natural-looking result. And you get a proper line to push your florist’s wire into. I find cutter-plunger options tend to break when you try to insert the wire. However, this may just be my lack of dexterity!
*** Using the right gauge wire to support your flowers/berries/leaves is vital. The lower the number the thicker the diameter of the wire. 24G is a good option for individually created leaves.
*** Rather use corn-flour to dust your rolling mat /veining matt with to prevent your sugarpaste from sticking. Icing sugar will react with the sugarpaste in warm weather, weakening it. Always use only the tiniest amount of cornflour. Wrapping up some in a muslin bag and dabbing it onto the required surface works beautifully.
*** Florists foam works a treat when it comes to drying your sugarpaste creations. A block of polystyrene will work just as well.
*** Remember to manipulate your cut out leaves lightly to give them a more realistic appearance. Thinning the edges of the leaves down will improve their look drastically.
Just a few random thoughts on cake decorating techniques, some of them probably quite obvious.
If you have any tips you’d like to share, please comment.
More next time…
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My name is Shana and I live in a lovely part of Suffolk, England.
