I remember back when I bought some of my first cake dekoration tools. What was good to start with? and what was not that important? It was so easy to spend too much money on equipment and I must admit that I still do have unpacked cutters in my tool box.
So now I try to be more critical whenever I see something new on the cake decorating market because do I really need it? So to help newcommers to the cake decorating universe on what to spend your money on first. I have writen a basic list that hopefully will help you deside what you need the most.

Note: not all of the tools I am talking about is on the photo.

Cake pans: you can always start out with some basic ones. But when you want to spend money on “real” cake pans then go for brands like: Wilton, Silverwood, Fat Daddios and Invicta.

Rolling pin: Do try and see if you can get a long one. Because you can also use it to “roll up” your fondant and transfer it to the cake. Use a shorter and smaller one when you make decorations. You can get rolling pins in non-stick and wood.

Smoothers: A pair of smoothers really makes the different when it comes to smoothing fondant.

Angled spatular: Makes it more easy to apply buttercream frosting om the cake.

Pizza cutter: To cut off exces fondant.

Constarch duster: I use this when I roll out my fondant or sits and make decorations. You can make one very easy.

Modelling tools: A good set of modelling tools will help you when you are making figures or flowers. I like the sets from JEM and PME.

Petal pad: When making flowers a petal pad out of firm foam is neede. Especially when you work with the ball tool.

Petit spatulars: I use them to all kind of things. You could also just use a small knife.

Piping bag and tip: In the beginning I only had one piping bag, a coupler and a pair of decorating tips. Start out with round, star and leaf. They are still the ones I use the most.

Colours & dusts: There are different brands of paste/gel colours on the market today. I like the brands SugarFlair & AmeriColors. Often you can get a starter colour kit that will give you plenty of opportunities. Remember that colours like black and red can be hard to obtain from regular paste/gel colours. Most brands have those colours with extra strenght. That way you dont have to use a whole bottle to get a deep color.

Dusts are like eyeshadows they comes in all the colours of the rainbow and it can be hard not to buy to many So a white pearl and a couple of plain dusts is good to start out with.

Cutters & embossers: An easy rose cutter is always a good cutter to start out with. I like the cutters that comes like an ejector and you can now get a nice variety of both leaves, blossoms, calyx ect. One of my all time favourite is the silicone flower veiner as you can make pretty flowers in no time. Use it with 5 petal blossoms and Petunia flower cutters. You may also like lettering cutters ?
Embossing stamps can quick make beautiful details on your fondant.

Miscellaneous: Clear alcohol for mixing colours & dusts. A small non-stick board. A good cake decorating book. Soft and fine brushes for painting. Toothpicks for adding colour and small painters palette for mixing colours but also for drying small flowers are good to have in your tool box.

Finally one of the best tools to have is the sugar craft gun. It can help you out with so many things and it will soon be one of your best tools to work with.

You are more than welcome to post a comment and tell me what kind of tools that you started out with in the beginning.

Happy Caking

Louise

This is one of the most silky smooth frosting for cakes and cupcakes. The Italian meringue buttercream. I must say though that this batch showing on the photos did cause me problems I had to make it over five times to get it right. My problem was when I was adding the sugar syrup to the beaten eggwhites. It turned into a milky soup… that have never happend to me before and the only thing that made it ok was simply to buy new fresh eggwhites and start over again with the sugar syrup. So I was very happy it happend before the butter was added.

Italian meringue buttercream (IMBC).

Makes 8 cups.

1/2 cup of cold water (120ml)
2 1/4 cups of caster sugar (530ml)
1 cup of eggwhites (10) I use pasturized eggwhites only!
1 1/2 pound of soft unsalted butter (680gr)
1 tsp of vanilla extract
Kitchen stand mixer

First set the timer on 7 mins & pour the eggwhites into the kitchen mixer with whisk attachment.

Step 1:
Place sugar & water in a casserole and bring it to the boil and start the timer.
Note: I like to turn down the heat just a bit so the syrup dont get brown

Step 2:
When the sugar syrup has been boiling for 5 mins. Start the kitchen mixer on full speed and whisk the eggwhites for the last 2 mins. When the timer is up the sugar syrup is done. With the mixer still going on high speed slowly pour the hot syrup down the side of the mixing bowl.
Be carefull not to get burned.

Step 3:
When all sugar syrup has been added it should look like thick cream. Stop the mixer and change for the paddle attachment. To avoid meringue splatter all over your kitchen place a clean tea towel over the mixer. Set the timer on 10 mins and beat on high speed. This is how long it takes in my mixer for the mixing bowl to be cool to the touch.
After 10 mins. You should now have a lovely thick meringue like on the photo.

Step 4:
Now its time to add the butter. Start the mixer on high speed and with a knife cut pieces of the butter and add it to the meringue. When all butter is added it will not take long for mixture to turn into nice thick smoothe buttercream. When that happend slow down the mixer and add 1 tsp of vanilla extract. Stop the mixer and scrape down the bowl and start again. I do this two times. You should now have a bowl full of lovely Italian meringue buttercream.

Note: If the IMBC wont combine just continue to whip whip whip. It will eventually get smoothe. If you are still having problems, put the whole bowl with paddle attachment into the fridge and let it “cool” down a bit and then whip it again.
Also if you have taken it out from the fridge or freezer then bring it back to room temprature and whip it smoothe before use.

Flavour options:

Raspberry: 1/4 cup of raspberry puré or more pr. 2 cups of IMBC

Lemon Curd: 1/2 cup of Lemon Curd pr. 2 cups of IMBC

Chocolate: 2-3 oz of melted chocolate, cooled down to 98 F, pr. 1 cup of IMBC

Coffee: 2 tbsp of instant coffee mixed with 2 tbsp of warm (not boiling) water pr 3 cups of IMBC

See a video from CakeLove making IMBC here and see how Dyann Bakes make Swiss meringue buttercream here

Happy Caking

Louise

I want to thank you all for the questions that you have send about cakes and cake decoration for Jean Michel Raynaud. He have written back some very interesting answers and I hope that you all will enjoy reading them.

CJR=CakeJournals Readers.
JMR=JeanMichel Raynaud.

CJR: Would you please tell us about your career path? Where did you learn you skills? What are some of the other places/companies you have worked for, and how do they compare with Sweet Art, where you are working now? Where do you get your design inspiration?J

JMR: I started in apprentice in 1981!! I was lucky to work under the tutelage of one of the best chef in France; whilst he was getting his masterpiece for his MOF (best chef in France) I instantly developed a passion for decorating. When I graduated, I was employed as the head pastry chef for a 3 Michelin star restaurant called Le petit nice, however, the culture of restaurant didn’t meet my path of specialisation in decorating. I moved to Australia, and after a brief detour as a pro sportsman, I was given an opportunity to head the kitchen at Sweet Art. This organisation is a worldwide institution and gave me the opportunity to bring my own style, inspired by formal French training. After 6 years, I left to help Paris and Billy set up planet cake but we eventually fell out, and returned as the general manger to sweet Art. All along, I pro actively continued my learning, going to seminars around the world, and won gold medals as a decorator on several continents. I started the classes at Planet cake, and am currently putting the finishing touches on sweet Art courses. After over 20 years of constant learning, I now go around teaching specialised subjects in the myriad to schools and organisation around the world.

CJR: Would love to master the art of cake decorating. What type of classes should I be taking to master the art of Cake decorating? Should I attend a culinary art college?

JMR: That would depends on what your intentions are, long term. Do you want to make a career of it, or simply learn new, exciting skills? If you chose decorating as a career path, I strongly encourage you to learn the basic of cake making first, it will help you become a more viable proposition for prospective employer, more over if you open your own business, you will be able to not only decorate, but bake, set up and understand the underlying needs of pastry cooking, as such you should go to a culinary school or professional school. If you only want to specialise in decorating, you want to look for specialised courses such as the one offered by small decorating businesses, they are expensive but will be more focused on what you want. Keep in mind that the two best decorator I know, Faye Cahill and Margaret Carter are not trained as chef, but come from an art background, decorating has more to do with art than the cooking!!

CJR: If you have to choose only one decorating techinique and one tool that you can’t live without, what will that be and why?

JMR: Definitely Pipping, it is still the one aspect of cake decorating that separate good decorators and great ones!! Anyone, with a bit of patience can master the skills to cover a cake sharply, pipping takes years of painstaking practise and enable you to really express your own style. The tool would be my life long spatula, a Sabatier, soft, sharp and precise.

CJR: Have you written any books?

JMR: Unfortunately, not yet, I am quite busy as it is, I am setting up my own web site with a forum and dozens of designs and explanations

CJR: Many of the SweetArt designs have double-height tiers. (some even look like triple-height). I’d like to know what kind if supports are needed for this type of cake. And is it necessary to cover the tops and sides of these tall cakes separately? Or can it be done all at once?

JMR: SweetArt have hundreds of designs, we actually design every cake to our client requirement. I do try to push the double or triple high, I call these shapes spring time; they always look more sophisticated and light than traditional 4 inches cakes. You need to set your cakes on boards slightly smaller than their diameter, for instance a 7 inch cake is set up on a 6 inch board to avoid a line in your icing later on in the covering process. Each board has a whole in the middle and is supported by skewers. Once they are on the top of each other, ganache the whole 2 or 3 cakes together. A secret when you set up tall cakes, you will not be able to cover your cake like you do traditionally if the height of the cake is more than the width of the cake, if it is, you will have to roll the icing around and hide the junction with a design of some sort.

CJR: Which brands of color do you use and recommend for coloring fondant?

JMR: All our colours are imported from the US, we use Americolor and ChefMaster. For your fondant (plastic icing or pastillage), never use Airbrush colour. I use gels as much as I can, for very specific colour match, I supplement with pastes.

CJR: Are your figurines made from icing or fondant or clay or foam? There’s a christening cake on your website of a stork and baby….i’d like to know how you balanced him so perfectly!

JMR: The Baby and Stalk id made from polystyrene and BBQ skewers for the legs. I use masking tape to reinforce them so they don’t break. Most of the figurines you see have a base of styro, smoothed out with sand paper and covered with icing.

CJR: Since Orchard are no longer manufacturing their red fondant, where are you getting yours from? It’s so difficult to get a true red color.

JMR: Deep colour fondant are difficult to make as the more colour you put, the less workable it becomes. I prepare a base icing saturated in colour in black and red with very high gelatine content, and use this paste to colour proper icing. You will find it hard to go about it any other way. Alternatively, uses gels and mix your icing using corn flour, unlike icing sugar, it does not dry out the icing as much.

CJR: I’ve noticed that scratch recipes are not as stable as the mixes. do you bake from scratch or from a mix; and are you allowed to share a basic recipe with us? Please?

JMR: I never use pre mixes, simply because they are full or preservatives and processed ingredients and frankly, it takes the same amount of time to mix a cake from scratch using fresh ingredients. This is a great point that highlight my comment in question one about the difference between culinary college and decorating classes and their limitations. I would be more than happy to share my recipes but I don’t know if Louise will let me use 5 pages to answer this question, may be we will do a “baking special”

Part 2 will be posted in the next couple of days.

Happy Caking

Louise

I have made this Color flow fondant plaque over the last two days. It is going to be put on a cake for my daughters birthday. I knew that it had to be a motif from Littlest pet shop because she is crazy with those things. I have more photos of the procedure in the cake gallery, look under “Cake projects”.

Happy Caking

Louise

Many have asked how I made the small turtle cupcake toppers.
So I made this tutorial on how to make one.

It is very simple to make and you can scale the size for it like you want. Note that if you are making a larger one I would let the feet dry for 1-2 days so they wont colapse under the shell.

This is what I use:
Modelling paste in the colors you like
Tylo glue
Brush
Black paste food color or a tiny amount of black modelling paste.
Cocktail stick
Small knife
Plastic bag to keep your modelling paste from drying

Step 1:

Start by rolling the modelling paste into a sausage. Cut 4 pieces in the same size (feets) and make the head out of the rest.
Note: it is possible that you need to adjust the amount of paste for the feets and the head.

Step 2:

Take the 4 pieces and roll them into a ball and shape them like a teardrop.

Step 3:

Glue all four feets together with Tylo glue.

Step 4:

Take some modelling paste to make the shell and start by rolling it into a ball.

Step 5:

Shape it so it looks like the “hat” of a toadstole.

Step 6:

Make it slightly hollow like on the photo, brush with glue and place it over the feets

Step 7:

Use the handle of the brush and make a indentation where the head will be glued on.

Step 8:

Take the piece of modlling paste and make the head. Again start with a ball, tear drop and shape the head.

Step 9:

Glue the head on. I used my corn starch duster to support the head while the glue dried (this is only needed if you make a large turtle). Make the eyes with some black food coloring paste and a cocktail stick or you can make the eyes out of black modelling paste.

Step 10:

Roll out small balls of modelling paste and flatten them and then glue them on the shell. Now you have a cute large or small turtle to adorn your cake or cupcakes.

Happy Caking

Louise

I have received many questions about how I make my royal icing. When I make my royal icing I make it with eggwhites (pasturized) only because meringue powder or dried eggwhite powder is not commen use here in Denmark. Some of the cake decorating shops may have it though but I stick to the eggwhites.

If you do know how to make royal icing but are having trouble getting it runny for flooding your cookies then take a look at the photos maybe they can be helpful to acchive the smooth look on a flooded cookie. I can tell that I always start out with a stiff royal icing and then I thin it down with water to either soft for piping and runny for flooding.

Always remember to cover up your royal icing with either cling film or a wet cloth as this will prevent the royal icing to dry out. Also if your icing gets too thick add water or if it is too wet add more icing sugar. So here is the tutorial on how to make royal icing.

This is what I use:
2 eggwhites
2 lb icing sugar sifted (Not all may be used)
1 tsp lemon juice
Large bowl
Handheld mixer with hooks or kitchen mixer with paddle attachment
Cling film

Step 1:

Combine eggwhites and lemon juice in a large bowl. Add some of the sifted icing sugar to the mixture and start the mixer.

Step 2:
Keep adding icing sugar a little at a time. When the mixture looks like thick whipped cream and makes soft peaks when you push down the hooks/paddle in it, you can use it for piping.

Step 3:
When you have the soft peak icing, you start to only add 2 tbsp of icing sugar at a time because from now on the icing will get more and more stiff. When you can pull out small stif peaks the icing is ready. Cover the icing with cling film and a lid or wet cloth and store it in the fridge.

Runny icing:
If you want to make runny icing for flooding cookies or making run-outs then take some royal icing (stiff made) into a bowl and start mixing it with water, a few drops at the time. Continue this until the icing it thin and liquid. It should be smoothing out when you lift the spoon. The mixing with the water will most likely cause many air bubbles in the icing, so it is always good to cover up the icing and let it “rest” for 30 min. Then give it a slow stir and you have reduced the amount of air bubbles in your icing.

I hope you can use this

Happy Caking

Louise

Here are the four cookies that I made from my own templates. The cupcake cookie lollie from the previous post, a mini cupcake, a cake and a Petit Four or domed cupcake?.

If you like, you can download your own copy of the cookie templates, from me to you. They are easy to cut out with a small sharp knife on cold cookie dough.

Note: It is a good idea to transfer the templates to cardboard paper or laminate them so that they last longer.

You can also find inspiration on how to decorate cookies.

Happy Caking

Louise

Are you tired of using lots of time cleaning up your cake tins after you are done baking? I know I am, so I like to line my cake tins when I bake my cakes because it prevents the cake to stick to the cake tin and makes the cleaning a lot easier. Here is a tutorial on how to line a cake tin.

This is what I use:
Baking paper or grease proff paper
Non-stick baking spray
Pencil
Scissors
A paper clip

Step 1:
Take your baking paper and place you cake tin on top of it. Now draw around the cake tin with your pencil.

Step 2:
Cut out the marked piece of paper and make sure that it fits the tin.
Note: This is for the bottom of the cake tin.

Step 3:
Cut a strip of baking paper long enough to go all the way around the cake tin. I like to cut my strip 1″ higher than the tin.

Step 4:
Fold down 1″ of the strip and make 1/2″ cuts into the paper. Make around 1″ between each cut.

Step 5:
Grease you cake tin with non-stick baking spray.
Note: butter and vegetable oil can also be used

Step 6:
Now you take the long strip of baking paper with the fold and cuts facing down at the bottom of the tin. Make sure it fits nicely all the way around the cake tin.

Step 7:
You can use a paper clip to hold the ends together. Now take the paper from step 2 and place it at the bottom of the cake tin.

Step 8:
The cake tin is now ready to be filled with cake batter.

Note: If you are baking a cake that raises a lot then it is important to line you cake tin with a collar so you wont end up with cake batter everywhere.

Happy Caking
Louise

I had some cake scraps from the wedding cake so I decided to make some cake bites to indulge with my afternoon tea. Cake bites is made out of cake scraps (I used chocolate cake) and is mixed with either buttercream, cream cheese icing or chocolate ganache until it looks likes a sticky “dough” that you can mould. You can add flavours like sugar syrup or liqueur if you like.

Roll the “dough” into small bite sizes and chill them in the refrigerator for about 1 hour. Then decorate them as you desire with melted chocolate, poured fondant or sprinkles.

I decorated some of my cake bites with “home-made” pink sprinkles and covered the rest with poured fondant and decorated them with green vines and some small pink sugar flowers. Placed in paper cups these small cake bites would be a perfect treat for a tea party.

Happy Caking

Louise

Here is a little “How to” on how to make marshmallow fondant also known under the name MMF or chocolate MMF. You can use it to cover cakes. If you want to make flowers and figurines you will just have to knead in some Gum Tragacanth or Tylo powder so they dry up hard. 

This is what I use:

1 bag of white marshmallows (8 oz)
Water (2 tbsp)
Icing sugar sifted (1 to 2 pounds)
Crisco
Heatproof bowl
Spoon
Sift
Food colors or cocoa powder
Flavouring optional
Note: you can offcourse use your kitchen mixer when mixing in the icing sugar. Just remember to grease the bowl and paddle attachment well with Crisco.

Step 1:

Put the marshmallows in a heatproof bowl and add the water. Put the bowl in the microwave oven and heat it for approx. 2 mins. until the marshmallows puff up like on the photo.

Step 2:

Stir the marshmallows until they get smooth. This is the time where you can add your chosen food color/cocoa powder or give it flavour.

Note: Color the mixture a bit stronger than desired. You can always make the color lighter afterwards by mixing it with white marshmallow fondant.

Step 3:

Now add the icing sugar and stir the mixture with a well greased spoon. Keep adding icing sugar until it looks like a dough. Turn out the “dough” on a greased work board and with your hands greased with Crisco start kneading the marshmallow fondant. Keep adding a little icing sugar at a time until it is not sticky anymore.

Be careful not to use all the icing sugar as to much icing sugar can makes it too dry. It is ready when it feels pliable and ready to roll. If you are not using the marshmallow fondant straight away then rub a bit of Crisco on it and wrap it in cling-film and seal it in a airthight bag.

Note: Some uses the marshmallow fondant right away but I prefer to let it rest for a day before use.

If your marshmallow fondant feels very hard you can always warm it up in the microwave for a few sec. at a time. Then it should be more pliable to work with. If it feels dry then knead in some Crisco or if it is too soft add more icing sugar. I hope you can use it.

Happy Caking

Louise