Hi all! Welcome to What Are You Working On, a weekly series involving all things crafty and creative.
It's birthday season at our house, and I will share with you-all how I decorated my daughter's recent birthday cakes. She is a princess extraordinaire, and chose a castle cake this year.
Cake decorating is quite easy with a few basic supplies.
Please share your own creative endeavors and post pictures if you have them.
Why I decorate Cakes:
The first birthday cake I made for my daughter was so ugly I cried. The next day I phoned my local Michael's (Arts & Crafts) store and registered for a Wilton class. I took the first series and then part of the second. And learned so much that isn't available in the books or online, of course. I have been happily decorating all kinds of cakes since.
About Wilton:
Wilton is the wedding, cake, and all things sweet company. They have a headquarters in Illinois, and you can, if you are very lucky, go to their school. Their web site has tons and tons of info - including basic techniques. Their publications are thorough, (if extremely "advertise-y"). If you are interested in cake decorating, I highly recommend this site.
For this cake, I used Wilton's Romantic Castle Cake Set, which has all the doo-dads, towers, windows, etc., that any princess could want. There are several cake patterns using this kit at the Wilton site, including a haunted mansion and a dungeon.
Process:
First, bake the cake.
I personally prefer the Betty Crocker cake mixes. The texture and flavors are very pleasing to my family and my guests. The BC mix results in a bit more volume than the other brands, and this gives me more flexibility in filling multiple small pans and making cupcakes.
Wilton's Bake Easy spray is the total best! It's shortening and flour combined (so you don't make a mess flouring the greased pan). It blends in with all colors of cakes too. My cakes ALWAYS come right out of my Wilton pans when I use this spray.
Those funny strips - there's one laying across and one wrapped around the pan. These are Baking Strips, and you soak them in water before wrapping them around the pan. I secure mine with binder clips or paper clips. These are the SECRET to getting a flat cake (desirable for decorating and stacking). They cool the outside of the pan so it bakes at the same rate as the center.
The Frostings:
The tastiest frosting is buttercream, and it is what our bodies crave, from long ago in our evolution. Fat and sugar. And a bit of vanilla or butter taste for a bonus. Buttercream frosting is crisco (one stick), powdered sugar (Wilton recommends cane sugar and that's what I use)(one small box), and vanilla and butter flavors (I use Wilton's clear versions of both). You can use butter in your butter cream, but you will not get white frosting, and the other colors will be less predictible. Meringue powder is the secret ingredient here - it helps the buttercream get a nice crust when it dries.
Royal frosting is just beaten sugar and water. Oh, and merine powder. It is sweet-tasting, but is usually dry by the time you make the rest of the cake. It is useful for making things ahead of time, so you are not making 5,000 little flowers and leaves hours before you serve the cake. Not that I would ever make that many flowers and leaves for anyone I know anyway.
Fondant: this is a kind of manufactured material involving sugar and gum paste and I don't think it tastes very good. Professional cake decorators are crazy about it - it gives a very smooth finish, you can cut it into shapes, etc. I rarely use it. I make cakes to eat. It could be that all the secrets to fondant are in Wilton classes that I haven't taken yet, and that I dislike it out of ignorance.
The castle cake was easily the most complex one I have made. I even made a practice version for a small birthday party the week before. The first step was to get the tower tops purple.
I used royal icing in a decorating bag with a flat tip and squeezed out rows to cover the surface. It was a pain in the butt. On my first try on the practice cake, I used a spatula to apply the frosting, and it was also a pain in the butt. If I were to do this again, I would try to make very thin royal icing and dip them in. The outside of the little windows received some purple, too. And the tower tops had a fresh coat of wet royal icing then I applied the glitter:
The instruction for the cake said to make 5,000 little flowers and leaves and let them dry. I ignored this part.
Frosting the Cake:
Here is one view of the partially frosted cake. Daughter wanted a pink cake and I wanted chocolate, so we compromised ;-). I use the Wilton spatulas: flat for the top and slanted for the sides. I also really noticed that my icings all seemed rather dry and stiff, and I had to add a lot more moisture than the Wilton recipes normally call for.
After the layers were finished, I started to add green and pink buttercream touches. The green frosting had a ribbon tip, and I used a star tip for the pink. I made "greens" around the base of the cake and base of the second layer. I made litle pink flowers and placed them at intervals. I apparently did not stop to take a picture at this point, so you will have to infer.
Daughter's birthday cake was at a local garden, so I packed up all my supplies and assembled the rest of the cake at the site.
I used royal icing to attach piece-parts to each other and to the cake board. I used dowels on the couple of towers that ran through the cake, but I really had trouble with these. I apparently need to take Stacked and Layered Cake Class and get some clues.
I added greens to the windows and doors, and then flowers too, and the cake was done! I learned during the practice cake that this cake is very difficult to use for blowing out candles, so I had a cupcake available for that purpose for the big party.
Practice Cake:
This was for a family party the week before. I made a little royal cottage and practiced the things I would need to do for the big cake.
I applied royal icing to the plastic pieces, and added the glitter. The glitter is edible.
I frosted the smaller cake:
I started to assemble the cake:
This was a bit of a mistake, and I corrected it for the big cake. It was really hard to add the buttercream while I was steering around all those towers. I muddled through and finished it:
And it was eaten and it was good:
Oh, Torting:
Torting is when you slice your cake into thin layers and put a filling, like frosting or jam in. I torted the practice cake but not the final one.
Here is a really easy decorated Valentine cake: The kids and I baked using the heart shape pan. I made a bunch of very fluffy white icing. I frosted the sides, then used a Giant Star tip to make giant puffy stars. I put some cherries in the middle. It was very fast, yet looked good and tasted great.
Please feel free to ask question. And for insanely fancy cakes, there is always Ace of Cakes.
It's also your turn to share, so let's chat.