Clothes for my Food: November 2010

Finally, I have something to post again!! Ok ... I think from most of my previous post, you would know by now that I’m just too crazy in love with food decorating.... especially for bakery goods! Since the day I signed up for the ...

“Fabulous 2-Tier Fondant Cake Decorating Workshop” at Sugar Inc. ,

I’ve been anticipating for the day to come ever since. This time, I really had the chance of assembling a cake from scratch...

Let me guide you through the normal cake assembling process:

1^st

I call that gadget to cut the cake into perfect halves "THE SAW"

Look at the perfect half!! i would never be able to do it with just a knife =S

– cut the cake into 2 halves or 3 halves (if the cake is tall enough, cut it across the height of the cake)

2^nd

YumYum Vanilla Buttercream!

– spread buttercream on one halve (here is where you can put your surprise in your cake... such as fruits or ganache or nuts!! So that when you cut open the cake.. u see a layer of decadent fruits awaiting for you to take a bite! =D), then top with another layer of cake

3^rd

– Crumb coat the cake. Basically this is just spreading a thin layer of buttercream ALL over the cake to fill up for holes and unevenness of cake. With crumb coating done, you will get a close to perfect cake! Hehe =P

4^th

– Refrigerate the cake to allow the buttercream to set (for me... I feel that to allow the buttercream to slightly harden or become firmer... so that it is much easier to cover the cake with fondant later on =) )

5^th

– Rolling out of fondant (the size of the rolled out fondant has to be big enough to cover the whole cake)

6^th

– take out the cake and covering cake with fondant. Smooth the sides and top, cut the excess fondant and TA DA!!!! A cake covered with fondant!!! =D

7^th

– decorate with anything your heart desires... Just make sure... they go well with everything that is on the cake!

In the class, I learnt how to stack the two tiers together. Just like a building, cakes need support too... can imagine a 5 tier wedding cake without any support system??? Well... that calls for a disaster!!! From what I’ve learnt through baking shows and books, dowels are the basic support system for a cake. They are like straws that are either made of wood or plastic. The one that we used in the class were rather innovative... Considering our cakes weren’t too big, we actually used bubble tea straws!!then we topped it with royal icing and stack the second tier on top... the royal icing will harden thus acting like an edible glue!! Hehe... doweling was one of the technique I’ve been yearning to learn and I’m glad that the workshop covered it! =D

Miss Anna showing us how to add the "dowels" into the cake and marking them so that we can cut off the excess...

here is dowels! in the cake!

Next thing that excite me was the fact that I got to do stencilling!!! I am super glad that I have the chance to do stencilling!!! It is one of the easiest way of decorating a cake but requires you to be very neat! =)

As you can see on the second tier, I have stenciled the pattern. Now moving on the the bottom tier.. this is the only stencil the helper found that was small enough for my cake hehehe so yea... the cake was not that big =)

Alright... I think I have said enough... Let the pictures do the talking!! =D

My finished cake!!! so do you like it???!! =)

suddenly my cake look so dark... poor lighting

I learnt to make this ribbon from YouTube!! by a cake decorator named EDNA (she works for Wilton)!

Details of the ribbon... guess wat! we actually used a sewing tool for the details... the tool is the one that we used to draw lines on fabric... the one that looks like a pizza cutter with jaggared edges =P