Saturday, March 16, 2013

Saturday Practice

I was bored this Saturday so I whipped up a batch of buttercream and practiced a few techniques.
I decided to make my frosting orange today because it seemed fun. And is not a color I use very often so this seemed like a good chance.
I started by working on my basket weave technique. This is hard to master. Plotting out the proper spacing is the most important part to help ensure that you have a nice tight basket weave. I used a small round tip (tip #4 I think) for the white and a small star tip (#16) for the orange to achieve this look. No basket weave tip for me. Lol! I like the hard way. It looks amazing in my opinion and tends to take more time and effort but it really does look great.
I also used the star tip to create the rope border around my basket weave design.


The next technique I was wanting to learn was how to pipe a buttercream bow. I use tip #104 and a rose nail to make these. I didn't get a lot of pics because these were hard! And didn't always turn out very well. I made the two loops of the bow by placing the wide side of the tip on the nail and moving it around until one side is made, turning it and making the other side. Then making the ruffled ends coming down from the center of the bow. I love these bows! I just need to master them and they will be able to be used in so many ways!


After I was done with that, I decided to whip out a few 5-petal flowers. I used tip #104 for the flower petals and tip #16 for the center. I really like these actually...they remind me of creamsicles or something. I think they're cute. Just need to find a use for them.



Not a bad way to spend a Saturday...😊

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Mini-Cakes with the Kids

After making my two tiered cake in class, my kids wanted to make their own. I used some leftover cake I saved from cutting my two 5inch rounds (see previous blog post) and cut out some squares to stack and make mini cakes.


I made a mistake and stacked them before I crumb coated and frosted them, making it way harder on myself than really needed.


My daughter wanted purple and my son wanted green. They ended up looking a little like The Hulk colors. Haha! Love it though.





My daughter really loved the Corneille Lace so we covered the bottom tier of her cake with that and added a pearl border around both tiers. We also used some leftover buttercream decorations (hearts and an ombré rose) to finish off her cake.


My son, on the other hand, wanted to make a cake that's very non-traditional so we went with a alien/octopus hybrid thing. Haha! It's pretty fabulous. Especially since he was able to pipe most of his decorations himself.


A very fun night of decorating and eating tons of cake and frosting 😃

Monday, March 11, 2013

My First 2 Tier Cake!!!

I was both nervous and excited to make a tiered cake! It is very intimidating! But it really is not as hard as one would think, at least for my tiny 2 tier cake.
Due to the complexity of the work this week (and outside factors/stresses that had nothing to do with the cake) I did not take as many pictures as I would've wanted. I stacked my cakes and began decorating before taking many pics. Sorry!!! I feel horrible, but like I said it was just not my week.

I began by baking two 9inch round cakes, and two 5inch rounds (that I actually cut out of a 13x9 cake pan). I filled them with ganache, crumb coated, and frosted them.
I stacked them by placing 4 cut-off dowels under the area I was stacking my 5in round. After sprinkling a little dehydrated coconut between the layers, and placing the 5inch cake on a foil covered cardboard (I could only find a 6inch board, so I had to make sure my frosting covered up the edges so they didn't show), I placed the smaller cake on top. To help secure the cake I sharpened two dowels and hammered (yes, with an actual hammer!) them all the way through both layers of cake/cardboard. This really helps make sure the cake does not shift in transport.
After they got stacked, we have free reign to do whatever designs we wanted for our class final. One of my favorite design techniques is the Corneille Lace so I had fun and played around with it.
I decided to use a large, dark purple ruffle as a border to help cover the cardboard. And even though it looks kind of blue in the picture it was a awesome royal blue color.


I had a lot of left over flowers from my projects a week or so ago. So I decided to turn this into a Cascading Flower cake! I have been obsessed with them lately and thought this was a good opportunity to learn how to make that work well (with great instruction from my teacher!!!)
I started by figuring out exactly where I wanted the flowers placed. Using a 'S' shape to help them look more natural as the fall down the side, I was able to find flowers that worked and fit onto the cake well. I also placed a big glob of green frosting on the top of the cake and stacked some of my buttercream roses.



After getting the bulk of the flowers on, my teacher helped me make it more natural looking by continuing the flowers onto the border and adding leaves in a few select places.





I think it looks great! The colors are not really what I would use for a wedding cake but this was more inspired by my daughter than a wedding. Maybe it's a classy birthday cake or something. I don't know but this week I was more focused on the techniques used than the styling of the cake. Using my last class as a opportunity to get as much knowledge out of my teacher as possible :)

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Lattice and Lace

This week was our biggest, hardest cake to date but the time and effort payed off because it is also my favorite cake I have ever made!

I started out making two boxed cake mixes (yea, cheating. But since my class is more about decorating I let myself cut this little corner) and that produced 2-9in cakes and a dozen mini-cupcakes. I didn't need the cupcakes, so I frosted them with a light green buttercream and topped them off with a few extra flowers I had made (


I filled my cakes with my favorite ganache (2:1, choc:cream) and stacked them.


Using some thinned down buttercream frosting I created a crumb coat and allowed it to dry.


After it had set up (just at room temperature) I put on my frosting and smoothed it out with my large offset spatula.
 

Thanks to a handy little garland marking tool, I was able to seperate my cake into 8 even areas. I applied a lattice pattern on the sides of the cake, using the marks from the garland tool as a guide for starting and stopping my lines.


I applied the Corneille Lace pattern to the scallops on the top of the cake. (I had never used this technique before but after working on it for a while, it's one of my favorite patterns for a cake. Simple but elegant, and can be made in an size to give it a very different feel)


To help give the illusions of scallops, I made a very small star border around my lattice work (cleaning up all those messy edges I didn't bother cleaning up).


Wanting the top to look a little more elegant, I used a simple, small pearl border around the Corneille Lace.


Final touches to my cake included a larger, yellow shell border around the bottom of the cake (helping to cover up my very messy frosting job) and a few simple (pre-made) wild roses and drop flowers. I chose to make them in purple, because it really popped with the yellow and white frosting.



This is by far my favorite cake I've made. It's simple, elegant, and fun. It would work wonderfully as inspiration for a larger wedding cake, or even a nice birthday party, or a summer picnic.