Cake Decorating at Home
How to decorate cake at home easily? Home Cake decorating is a fabulous mixture of cookery and art. If you have never baked before, but want to make a teddy-bear’s picnic for your toddler’s birthday, or if you are planning a three-tiered traditional cake with sugar roses for a family wedding, or if you would |ust like to bake a luscious chocolate gateau for tea with friends, this is the guide book to show you how to do it.
Cake decorating is not difficult, but it is something that requires patience, time and attention to detail. Like most skills, your results will get better with practice, but, before you attempt to make the recipes in this book, read the following hints, tips and instructions.
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Cakes have been baked and decorated tor several thousand years, initially to appease angry gods and then as a celebration of special occasions. We carry this tradition with us into the third millennium.
Cake decorating is easier and quicker, and you will achieve more professional results, if you have the right tools for the job. All are available from specialist decorating suppliers.
How to cover cakes with sugarpaste
Covering a cake with sugarpaste gives soft edges. In keeping with modern delicate designs (royal icing sets much harder and gives firm sharp edges). Sugarpaste is also known as soft icing and rolled fondant and is available in packets from the supermarket, or you can make your own using the recipe.
You will need about 1 kg (2 lb) ready-made sugarpaste for a 20 cm (8 inch) cake. Keep the sugarpaste covered with plastic wrap until you are ready to use it, to prevent it from drying out. Unused packet sugarpaste can be wrapped in plastic and stored in the fudge for several weeks.
How to cover cakes with royal icing
Royal Icing sets hard and is normally used only on fruit cakes as it needs a strong base for support. If you are making a layered cake, remember dowels and pillars will crack the icing: you need to use stands. Royal-Icing a cake is more time-consuming than covering with sugarpaste: three or four layers are spread over the cake and each coat is left to dry for 8 hours. You will need about 1.25 kg (2 1/2 lb) royal icing to cover a 22 cm (9 inch) cake with three coats.
Cover the Icing with a damp cloth while you are working to prevent a crust forming. Store in an airtight container with plastic wrap on the surface. It is not necessary to keep the icing refrigerated.
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Covering cake boards
Cake boards are used to support and transport cakes. You can buy boards or cut them to size front heavy-duty cardboard (for light cakes) or thin sheets of chipboard. Cakes with several tiers need a thick board under the bottom layer. Cover boards with coloured paper, fabric, or sugarpaste or royal icing. Some papers, being porous, will absorb oils from the cake and stain. If you’re worried about this, cover the paper with clear plastic or place a layer of non-stick baking paper between the cake and board.
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Tiers and layers
Light cakes that have two or three layers can be placed directly on top of each other. But cakes that are made up of many layers, especially heavy fruit cakes, need to be supported by pillars. As a general rule most tiered cakes are wedding cakes, but you can make other cakes in tiers too. Make sure the cakes are well balanced and visually appealing, cither centred above each other or obviously off-centre. You don’t have to have the cakes the same height apart—the top layer could be raised up high. The following method, using dowels and pillars. Is suitable for cakes covered with sugarpaste. You cannot insert dowels Into royal icing and need to support the layers with ring stands.
Working With Sugarpaste Hints & Tips:
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Adding colour
How to Colour sugarpaste ? Both sugarpaste and royal icing can be coloured any shade of the colour spectrum. You can buy ready-coloured sugarpaste, colour your own while it is soft or paint it once the icing is dry. The easiest way to change the overall colour of sugarpaste (or marzipan) is by adding paste or liquid food colouring (paste is usually better quality, will give a stronger colour and is more manageable). When using liquid colourings, never pour them directly from the bottle: use a dropper or pour a little into a small container and use sparingly.
Knead the sugarpaste lightly on а surface dusted with icing (confectioners’) sugar, then dip the end of a cocktail stick into the food colouring and wipe it onto the sugarpaste (a little colour cun go a long way, so add a tiny dob at a time, especially if you want soft colours). Knead gently again until the colour is evenly distributed. Check by cutting the sugarpaste in half. Once you’ve reached the right colour, wrap the sugarpaste in plastic until you’re ready to use it. Royal Icing can be coloured by using liquid food colourings.
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Decorative designs
These designs are easy methods to tidy up areas on your cake that can look “unfinished” such as the edge where the cake and board meet or a plaque is attached, or to hide the top of extension work. Embossing requires no special tools—use patterned buttons, jewellery or decorative spoon handles. Garrett frills are flared frills that are attached to the top, side or corners of cakes or used in modelling. Broderie anglaise gives a lace finish. All of these designs are earned out on soft sugarpaste (if you find your paste is too soft, knead in a little flower paste to firm it up).
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Inlay, bas-relief and applique
These easy techniques involve cutting out shapes and applying them to the cake or a plaque, either by removing a section of the icing and replacing it (inlay) or by laying the pieces on top of the existing icing (applique and bas-relief). Sugarpaste is mainly used, but try modelling paste for fine work. When using inlay directly on a covered cake, do not brush the marzipan with clear alcohol before applying the sugarpaste as you need to be able to remove sections easily.
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Needlework designs
These decorative features, taken from needlework, are worked onto soft paste. Quitting gives the impression of a padded image with stitch marks joining the pieces. Smocking is a form of embroidery, with the soft icing gathered into tiny pleats. Ribbons of fabric or icing can be woven’ into sugarpaste using the ribbon insertion technique. The iced cake should be left until the sugarpaste has firmed a little on the surface.
Working With Royal Icing Hints & Tips:
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Basic piping
Linework is the basic piping technique, with the most popular linework being the edging or outlining of shell, bulb and scroll borders. Overpiping on top of an existing line will make the outline more prominent. Half-fill the bag with soft-peak royal icing and hold the bag with your index finger underneath to support it and your thumb on top. keeping the bag closed and applying pressure. Use the index finger of your other hand to steady the tube. Touch the tip of the tube on the surface and. as soon as you feel the icing attached, slowly pull away.
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Pressure piping
Pressure piping means increasing and decreasing the pressure on the bag to produce shapes that are more three-dimensional than the basic shapes. The icing must be soft enough to pipe into shapes but not so runny that it won’t hold the shape. Gradually water down soft-peak royal icing until it will hold its shape but goes smooth when a knife is agitated on the surface. Pipe directly onto an iced cake, or pipe onto non-stick baking paper and dry under a lamp. Remove the piece from the paper with a palette knife when dry and attach to the cake with royal icing.
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Runouts
Runouts are made by piping an outline onto non-stick baking paper or acetate and then filling in the outline with thinner icing, like colouring in a picture. The design is left to dry and then gently lifted off the paper and attached to the cake. The technique is used to create a picture or make small intricate pieces to be incorporated into other designs or techniques, such as making doors or shutters for a gingerbread house. The simplest form of runout is the picture plaque, but you can create two-sided or three-dimensional runouts that stand up on the cake. The technique is sometimes known as flooding, because the area within the outline is “flooded” with Icing.
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Runout collars
Runout collars аre made to be attached to the top surface of cakes and extend over the edge, increasing the border and giving the cake an appearance of iniportance and being larger than it actually is. The design used for the runout collar is sometimes repeated around the base on the board in place of the conventional piped border. Runout collars are delicate, so it is a good idea to make two collars in case of breakages, or make several spare pieces if your collar is in separate parts.
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Embroidery & Filigree
Embroidery is another piping technique tor giving a cake a ‘finished’ look. Decoration can be as simple as plain white ‘hailspots’ or repeating flowers around the cake. There are many types of embroidery, the two most popular being tube and brush embroidery. Tube embroidery can be piped either freehand or with a template, but with brush embroidery it is best to use a template. These techniques can be used on both the cake and board.
Filigree is ornamental fine lacework that can be piped directly onto a cake, or piped onto paper like a runout and removed when dry.
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Lace and extension work
Small pieces of lace icing, piped onto non stick baking paper and attached to the cake when dry, are another device for neatening unsightly edges. Attach them over the top edge of garrett frills or extension work. Extension work consists of parallel lines of royal icing piped from the cake’s surface to a ‘bridge’ of piping constructed on the cake.
There are two basic shapes of bridgework: the first is built up by piping loops of the same size directly on top of each other, as shown here; the second starts with small loops, which are overpiped with longer loops, increasing in length.
How to make sugar flowers for cakes Hints & Tips:
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Simple filler flowers
‘Filler’ flowers are simple blossoms used to fill out a spray or posy. The easiest way to make sugar flowers is by using one of the many types of cutters available-you will need to invest in petal cutters, stamens, florist’s wire and tape, and a set of tools for frilling and balling petals. Flower paste is used for all the cutter flowers. Only use a small ball of paste, rolling it out thinly so that it is pliable but not sticky. Thick paste is difficult to frill or cup and the finished flowers may look clumsy. Keep your paste covered with plastic to prevent it drying out. If your paste is too hard, knead in a little egg white or water. If it is too soft, knead in extra icing (confectioners’) sugar.
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Roses & Sweet Peas
Roses are perennial favourites, especially for wedding cakes. The rose is made around a central solid cone with the petals added in overlapping layers. Invest in many different sizes of cutters for petals and leaves. Even if you are making white roses, tint or dust them with a hint of colour to give depth and character.
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Poppies
They are also perfect for use in a spray of summer flowers. The flower paste is rolled paper-thin on a grooved board to make the delicate petals. You can steam the flowers very quickly over hot water when they are finished to remove the dry appearance.
- Making a flower spray
Fresh flowers and sugar flowers, made on stems of florist’s wire, can be taped into sprays in just the same way. Work on a soft surface, such as foam, in case you drop а flower, and strengthen the stems with heavier wires (or by taping several wires together) so that the flowers are stable.
Modelling Hints & Tips:
Basic figures, Characters, Animals, Accessories, Backgrounds
Lining cake tins
Cake tin are lined in prevent cakes sticking during talking and to give the cake protection from the heat of the oven. The following method is suitable for most simple tin shapes. Lightly grease the tin with melted unsalted butter or a mild-flavoured vegetable oil (do not use olive oil—the flavour is too strong). This helps to keep the lining paper in place. You can use either greaseproof or non-stick talking paper for lining tins and some cake-makers like to use a layer of brown paper underneath for extra protection.
- Round tins
Cut a strip of paper long enough to go around the outside of the tin and 2.5 cm taller than the tin. Fold down a 2 cm cuff along the length of the strip. Cut the cuff diagonally at 1 cm intervals. Fit the strip around the Inside of the tin, with the cuts on the base, pressing the cuts out at right angles so they sit flat. Put the cake tin on a double piece of paper and draw around it. Cut out tire circle and place it In the tin. over the cuts in the paper.
- Square tins
Use the same method as for a round tin, or if yon are in a hurry, place the tin on a sheet of paper and draw around it to make a square the same size as the base. Place this in the tin. Cut a strip of paper long enough to fit around the edge of the tin and 2.5 cm taller than the tin. Place this around the inside edge of the tin. This method may leave a small gap around the bottom edge of the tin. In most eases this won’t matter, but if you’re making a sticky cake, use the foolproof method.
- Odd-shaped tins
Cut a strip to fit around the Inside of the tin as for around cake tin. When placing the strip into the tin you will need to snip into the points or curves of the shape, so the paper sits flat. Draw around the outside of the tin, as before, to make a lining for the base and place this on top of the cuts.
Favorite Gateaux Step-by-Step:
This gateau is richly layered with white chocolate cream and fresh berries. We’ve used strawberries and raspberries but you can use whatever is in season. There are no tricky techniques and this spectacular cake is simple for a beginner to make.
Marzipan fruit are an easy starting place for beginners to sugar modelling and this cake is very simple. Grated apple is stirred into the basic Madeira cake mixture before baking, and you could do exactly the same thing with pear. You can toast the almonds yourself on a baking tray in a 180°C (350°F/Gas 4) oven for 8-10 minutes.
We chose delicate pink daisies and pink feathered icing for our lazy daisy, but you could try simple yellow and white flowers, and tint your icing lemon yellow. Don’t use fruit cake for this reape—the combination of fruit cake and cream cheese frosting isn’t good.
Tiramisu means ‘pick-me-up’ in Italian and that’s certainly what this cake will do. You can make the cake up to two days in advance and store it in the fridge, but don’t put the chocolate wafers around the edge until you are ready to serve or they will soften.
This cake uses a mocha-flavoured genoise cake base, but any sponge or moist rich chocolate cake could be used instead. The chocolate ganache is also flavoured with coffee, which is added just after the cream, when making the ganache recipe from this ebook.
The sponge is layered with creamy lemon curd and then drizzled with a passionfuit topping that runs irresistibly down the side of the cake. The delicate pieces of chocolate lattice are piped onto non-stick baking paper and are easy for beginners to make.
Once you’ve learnt how to make your own cappuccino truffles, you might never come out of the kitchen again. Of course, if you don’t have time to make your own you can always use bought chocolates. Fruit cakes are not suitable for this recipe.
A millefeuille is a traditional French pastry, meaning ‘thousand leaves’ and refemng to the many buttery layers of puff pastry. We’ve adapted the idea to use layers of coconut cake and pastry, with black cherries and a creamy filling. For a neat finish, use an electric knife to trim the edges of the cake. If you don’t have one, you will need to use a large serrated knife. Use the same knife for cutting the cake when you are ready to serve it.
We’ve used beautiful fresh peaches for this cake but you could use other stone fruits that are in season, or even well-drained canned fruit. Fruit cakes aren’t suitable for this recipe. You can buy the clear plastic (shiny contact) for making the collar from art or cake decorating shops. Allow plenty of time for the topping to set before you plan to serve the cake.
This glamorously understated cake is perfect for a sophisticated occasion where style and taste are the most important items on the menu. Use any cake except a fruit cake-the combination of flavours would not be good.
The secret to a good marbled finish is not to mix your icings together too thoroughly, amply spoon them over the cake, then swirl together gently with a skewer. Use any cake for this recipe except a fruit cake, which wouldn’t combine well with the chocolate buttercream.
The smooth chocolate collar and creamy white chocolate ganache are topped off by a pile of fairground-striped chocolate cuds. Use any of the basic cakes for this recipe, except the fruit cake. If you can’t find clear plastic (shiny contact) you can use non-stick baking paper.
Prettily pleated with a collar of white chocolate sugarpaste and piled high with soft fruits, this special-occasion cake makes a gorgeous centrepiece. Use whatever fruit is in season and make the white chocolate leaves following the instructions on this ebook.
Dark chocolate, white chocolate and whipped cream… this is an ultra ‘wicked’ cake for a special occasion or for sheer indulgence at teatime. It’s easy to make, with a little bit of piping that doesn’t need to be perfect.
The meringue ovals, moulded between two spoons, are called ‘quenelles’. Here they’ve been cleverly used to create a deliciously soft marshmallow border. Make sure you keep the spoons wet while making the quenelles, so the meringue doesn’t stick.
The chocolate collar is what makes this cake so spectacular… once you have perfected the technique, you can use it to make even more elaborately patterned collars for cakes and cheesecakes.
Choose the smallest pears you can find to make this delightful and whimsical creation, so they just poke out of the pecan-covered cake. Spinning the toffee can be a daunting job for beginners to decorating and needs a little care.