Cake Decorating Techniques

One thing I really love about pastry school, and especially my latest class, is the chance to get to experiment without having to worry (okay, directly worry) about the cost. At home in my own kitchen, I would never have a reason to make a cake that had four differently designed sides that I can't sell or even really use for portfolio pictures. But in school, I've already paid for those little square blocks of styrofoam like three times so pass 'em on over! 

My assignment with this "cake" was to use different techniques in mixed media to decorate each side separately. There were components that I had to put on there, but we had creative licence over most of it. On the side above I used royal icing to pipe the border and drop the delicate little strings from the cake onto pastillage bases. For more examples of string work, check out this baby shower cake too.

On the next side I did a ruffles leading up the side in gumpaste. You can cover whole cakes with ruffles like these which is a look I like a lot. Hanging down the side is a lace applique also made from gumpaste, similar to the ones on the side of the lace cake I made for a wedding last summer.

This side has more strings hanging from a crimped edge. Of all the sides, this one is definitely my least favorite, but it was still good practice to work with a crimper. The border is a rope made out of fondant.

On the final side I did a border out of a fondant rope, cut to have a "crown-like" edge. The butterfly is extremely tediously and tiny piped royal icing and the banner and buttons are also made out of fondant. I like the fondant banners and swags a lot and think they'd be perfect on a wedding cake for the right event. Lots of great ideas and practice came out of this class and there's still a lot more where that came from.

Red Poppy Wedding Cake

Back in August I started work on a dummy (styrofoam) cake with the intention of building it in layers to practice some new techniques I've been wanting to try. It started out with lots of plain white ruffles:

And then those ruffles got a paint job, making them pop out more against the white cake and look a little bit less like petals and a little bit more like strings or frills.

And now, they've grown into bright and beautiful poppies. Straight outta The Wizard of Oz ya'll.

Styrofoam cake for the win. I loved seeing how many different cakes I could stretch out of one! Poppies are one of my favorite flowers and I did them in a slightly abstract style, purposefully leaving brush strokes for a painted look.

I think I might like it without the leaves even better:

Same design, three really different ways. Which is your favorite?

White Ruffle Wedding Cake

My approach when it comes to designing a wedding cake is that less is more (this is definitely not my philosophy when it comes to eating it...). My signature style is clean and elegant. I love designs that remain traditional but have a modern, fresh feel. This is one of the major advantages of using fondant in a wedding cake, because it makes the whole surface impeccably smooth and you can cut decorations to have a perfect straight edge. Fondant is a sugar dough that can be rolled out and used to cover cakes like you see on Food Network Challenge. It is an amazing decorating tool, but not so fancy on the taste buds. I generally advise brides to use fondant sparingly, but in some cases the cleaner finish just fits the wedding better. As a compromise I still put a thick, yummy layer of buttercream on the cake for the guests to enjoy after peeling back the chewy fondant. And that way, you may eat your cake but I can make it look like this too:

The inside of this cake is actually a styrofoam dummy cake that I made a few years ago and finally found the courage to demolish and re-do. Now it  is covered in a new coat of fondant with fondant bands around the base of the tiers to cover the seams. 

The ruffles are made from gumpaste, which is very similar to fondant but holds a shape better and dries much harder. You wouldn't use gumpaste to cover a cake, but it is perfect to make detailed objects like flowers, bows and figures. 

Gumpaste dries almost like porcelain and can be rolled out extremely thin to make for delicate ruffles.

I love how classy this cake looks all white, but I had a hard time deciding whether or not to leave it that way while in the process. There may be a ruffle cake part two at some point in the near future...what do you think?