Read The Busy Girls Guide to Cake Decorating Online
Authors: Ruth Clemens
The Busy Girls Guide to Cake Decorating (17 page)
6 Fill a piping (pastry) bag fitted with a no. 2 nozzle (tip) with white royal icing. Working on one cookie at a time, pipe a complete line around the outline of the medium blossom.
7 Take your paintbrush and dip it in water. To remove the excess water, pat the bristles lightly on a piece of kitchen paper. The brush needs to be barely wet.
Keep dampening your brush as you work – it should remain barely damp throughout. Don’t let it dry out!
8 Flatten the line of piped royal icing using the brush, stroking the icing in towards the centre of the blossom. Repeat, working your way around the outer edge of the flower.
9 Pipe five small dots at the tip of each small blossom petal. Use your dampened paintbrush to drag the dots into a petal shape moving towards the centre of each small blossom.
10 Pipe a curved line of four dots from the centre flower to the small blossoms as shown. Pipe six small dots in the middle of the medium blossom to create the centre of the flower.
11 At the top and bottom of each cookie, pipe a small line with two dots at each end. Repeat with your whole batch of cookies and allow the icing to dry.
(longer projects to take your time over)
Densely decorating a tiered cake
This is a grand cake that you just need a bit of time for – nothing tricky for spectacular results! The colour scheme can be changed to suit whoever you’re baking for.
Square cakes: 20cm (8in) and 30cm (12in), both prepared for covering
35cm (14in) square cake board
Square cake cards: 20cm (8in) and 30cm (12in)
Buttercream
Four plastic cake dowels
Royal icing
Sugarpaste: white and blue
Star cutters: large, small and tiny
Silver sugar dragees
12mm (
1
⁄
2
in) wide blue ribbon
Pearl-headed pins
Basic equipment (see
Equipment
)
1 Roll out the white sugarpaste to a 3mm (
1
⁄
8
in) thickness and use to cover the cake board (see
Covering a board with sugarpaste
). Trim the edges neatly and set aside.
2 Place each cake on the corresponding cake card, securing with a little buttercream, and cover each with white sugarpaste (see
Covering a cake with sugarpaste
). Allow the boards and cakes to dry out overnight before assembling and decorating.
“If you’re new to covering cakes, try using a non-stick mat to roll out your sugarpaste. You will still need a little icing (confectioners’) sugar but the mat will really help. Roll out the sugarpaste fairly thickly – about 7mm (
1
⁄
4
in). This will help you get a good finish and avoid rips and cracks.”
3 Apply a smear of royal icing to the centre of the covered cake board. Position the larger cake squarely in the centre of the board. Measure and trim the dowels (see
Stacking a tiered cake
) and push them down firmly into the larger cake.
4 Apply another smear of royal icing to the centre of the larger cake and lift the smaller cake into position. The dowels will stop the smaller cake sinking into the bottom layer and the royal icing will hold it in place.
5 Take the blue sugarpaste and mix three further complementary paler blue shades by kneading together a little blue with increasing amounts of white. Roll out a small amount of each colour and cut out a selection of different sized stars in each shade.
Make sure you mix up enough of each colour the first time, as it can be difficult to match the colour if you run out.
6 Starting from the very top centre of the cake, apply a dab of water and fix a star in place. Continue attaching the stars in a random pattern working outwards and downwards evenly around the cake. Apply stars across where the two cakes meet, around the corners and also where there are any flaws in the white sugarpaste.
7 Continue rolling out the sugarpaste and building up the covering of stars until you reach the cake board. Trim any stars as necessary where they meet the board.
8 Cut out some tiny stars in all of the different colours and position them between the larger stars.
9 Apply two or three silver dragees along one of the points on each of the larger stars and some of the smaller ones too. To help them stay put, make gentle indentations with the end of the paintbrush then glue them in place with a dab of water and a quick press of the fingertip. If the sugarpaste stars feel too dry to indent, use the end of the paintbrush in a twisting action gently drilling a little hole – this will stop the paste cracking.
Edible glue, available from cake decorating suppliers, holds stronger than water. If you’re starting to build up a collection of decorating equipment then this is definitely something to have in your box of tricks.
10 Finish by placing a length of ribbon around each tier and the edge of the board, securing with pearl-headed pins.
Creating a lace effect with cut outs
Cakes don’t need to be big and bold to create impact. This stunning little number takes time and patience, but the results are worth the effort.