Thursday, 7 June 2012
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Designing a Wedding Cake with Dutch Iris Sugar Flowers
I had wanted to combine a couple of design ideas for a while, an offset stacked square cake and Dutch Iris sugar flowers. This artice is intended to show how the show cake was made from start to finish. Im hoping this may give more understanding of why wedding cakes can be costly to produce because of the amount of time it takes to make the components to go on it.
Polestyrene dummies are normally used for display cakes and are covered in sugarpaste and decorated in exactly the same way as a real cake would be. This allows the display cake to be exhibited several times. I also find them useful for visualising a design or layout of tiers.
Display cakes allow the cake designer to showcase thier skills to potentail clients and give them ideas of how they would like thier own cake made.
This is how I decided to stack my square tiers (each is 2" bigger as you go down):
Next the colour and decoration. The beautiful blue Dutch Iris (they also come in other colours, I chose the most difficult!). I had not made this flower before, so after ordering the cutter (TT-Tinkertech Two) and viener (Squires), I bought myself some of the real thing from the shops. This is an excellent way to study the flower and make the one in sugar as botanically correct as is possible with the materials. The petals are more fleshy than those of a rose but thinner than a cala lily. I had a couple if trial runs making the flower until I had a finished flower and method I was happy with.
The little spaces created by stacking the cake were perfect ledges for placing the sugar flowers as well as a posy on the top, so the design concept was born.
First the dummies where iced and stacked and the ribbon trim added (blue). There are many border designs you can use on a cake e.g. piped royal icing or sugarpaste cut-outs. The medium you use should fit in with the overall design/cake theme.
Next the sugar flowers. This is the part that can the most time consuming. The Dutch Iris has 9 petals, three 'uppers' and 6 'fall', all of these petals need wire supports inside (30g) to help hold the weight of the petals. You can use moulds and cut outs for flowers or make unwired ones that look very pretty instead.
Here's how the flowers were assembled over a couple of days:
Two or three flowers worth of petals can be prepared at the same time. All the materials used are available from sugarcraft suppliers
Stage 1- roll out some pale blue sugar flower paste thinly using the grooved side of a non stick board, turn over the paste onto a flat part of the board and cut out petals.
Stage 2- insert wire (put under stay fresh mat while preparing more petals), thin edges on foam mat, vein and shape on dimpled foam until firm (look at a picture to get the petal to dry in the correct shape). Note: All pointed upper petals were cut out first, the forked lower petal second and the bulb shaped petal last. This sequence ensures that by the time you have finished prepping the bulb shaped petals, the upper petals are firm enough to old their shape.
Stage 4-Next time to deal with the lower petals. The bulb shaped petals were painted white then, yellow, back and front. While this was drying, I dusted the forked petals. The bulb petals were duted last. The whole lot went in one polystyrene block and was steamed to set. The lower petals were then taped together (forked and bulb), re-shaped/piched together and left to dry on kichen towel overnight. If this is done just after steaming they are pliable enough to re-shape togther nicely without breaking.
Stage 4-Now time to make some leaves. Same principle as above. Two leaves per flower (26g wire), one of each size using the TT long leaf cutter and corn cob husk veiner from Diamond Paste and Mould Co. The colour dusted onto the leaves was set using leaf glaze. When the leaves were touch dry after dipping in leaf glaze they were shaped and left to dry.
Polestyrene dummies are normally used for display cakes and are covered in sugarpaste and decorated in exactly the same way as a real cake would be. This allows the display cake to be exhibited several times. I also find them useful for visualising a design or layout of tiers.
Display cakes allow the cake designer to showcase thier skills to potentail clients and give them ideas of how they would like thier own cake made.
This is how I decided to stack my square tiers (each is 2" bigger as you go down):
Next the colour and decoration. The beautiful blue Dutch Iris (they also come in other colours, I chose the most difficult!). I had not made this flower before, so after ordering the cutter (TT-Tinkertech Two) and viener (Squires), I bought myself some of the real thing from the shops. This is an excellent way to study the flower and make the one in sugar as botanically correct as is possible with the materials. The petals are more fleshy than those of a rose but thinner than a cala lily. I had a couple if trial runs making the flower until I had a finished flower and method I was happy with.
The little spaces created by stacking the cake were perfect ledges for placing the sugar flowers as well as a posy on the top, so the design concept was born.
First the dummies where iced and stacked and the ribbon trim added (blue). There are many border designs you can use on a cake e.g. piped royal icing or sugarpaste cut-outs. The medium you use should fit in with the overall design/cake theme.
Next the sugar flowers. This is the part that can the most time consuming. The Dutch Iris has 9 petals, three 'uppers' and 6 'fall', all of these petals need wire supports inside (30g) to help hold the weight of the petals. You can use moulds and cut outs for flowers or make unwired ones that look very pretty instead.
Here's how the flowers were assembled over a couple of days:
Two or three flowers worth of petals can be prepared at the same time. All the materials used are available from sugarcraft suppliers
Stage 1- roll out some pale blue sugar flower paste thinly using the grooved side of a non stick board, turn over the paste onto a flat part of the board and cut out petals.
Stage 2- insert wire (put under stay fresh mat while preparing more petals), thin edges on foam mat, vein and shape on dimpled foam until firm (look at a picture to get the petal to dry in the correct shape). Note: All pointed upper petals were cut out first, the forked lower petal second and the bulb shaped petal last. This sequence ensures that by the time you have finished prepping the bulb shaped petals, the upper petals are firm enough to old their shape.
Stage 3-Dust the petals, use pictures of the flower as a guide if there are no written instructions available from a book or magazine. I put all the petals in a polyestyrene block when dusted. I Keep the nice pieces when you get flat packed furniture etc and tape them together to make blocks for this purpose. Next to set the colour, I pass the petals upside down over a pan of boiling water 3 times to let the steam set the colour. Its a delicate balance to steam the petals enough to set the colour but not so much as to make them go wet and floppy!. The petals should be ok to handle after a couple of minutes. I taped the three upper petals together using 1/2 width olive green florestry tape.
Stage 4-Next time to deal with the lower petals. The bulb shaped petals were painted white then, yellow, back and front. While this was drying, I dusted the forked petals. The bulb petals were duted last. The whole lot went in one polystyrene block and was steamed to set. The lower petals were then taped together (forked and bulb), re-shaped/piched together and left to dry on kichen towel overnight. If this is done just after steaming they are pliable enough to re-shape togther nicely without breaking.
Stage 5-The flowers can now be finished. Three of the lower sets of petals were wired to the stem of the upper petals spaced in between the gaps. One large and one small leaf was then taped to the stem. Flowers with wires are put into a plastic posy pic which has been sanitised and are then inserted into the cake (if this is how the flowers are intended to be displayed, a bunch of tied sugar flowers with wires covered in florestry tape can be secured to the cake surface with royal icing). Wires should never be inserted directly into cake (!!heath and safety!!). I made 3 single flowers to go in the gaps on the cake corners and a big posy for the top with 4 flowers and some extra leaves.
And then the flowers were put into the cake and its done!
So one cake can easily be a few days work!
Please visit our website for more cakes; www.tashastastytreats.co.uk
Monday, 13 February 2012
Making a BMW M3 car cake you can see under
This project became the presentation piece for my last PME diploma course. I had wanted to do a car cake you can see under for quite some time after watching numerous episodes of 'Ace of Cakes' where Geoff worked his magic. This took about 4 days of my time to do and I would recommend you have some experience behind you if you want to do this yourself. You can of course do a car cake without a platform, but if you want the extra wow factor this is the way to go!
After a lot of thinking and research into both cars and car cakes, this is how i did it:
The cake-
Baked a 5" by 12" by 4" tall loaf cake using a good chocolate Madeira cake recipe that carves well (Alan Silverwood multisize square baking tin is brilliant for getting the size and shape for this sort of model)
The Cake Board Templates-
Note: Each item should be sanitised before coming into contact with food
This is where the planning comes in. For a cake on a platform, it needs to be secured to the cake board below and it needs to be food safe. It also needs to be the correct size/shape and the dowels which will sit behind the tyres need to be the right height off the base and in the right position. We made our own MDF 14" square board and two platforms for the car to sit on (one for the board and one to work on while carving the cake). Everything was covered in food safe paper covered foil and attached to the MDF with non-toxic glue stick.
The 'working' cake platform with dowels attached to bottom at the correct height for the model (only the top and sides need covering, the base will not be in contact with the cake):
(The cake platform for the car was covered on both sides and dowels do not need to be attached)
This shows covering the base cake board, a smoother was used on the top side to give a good finish.
Next dowels the car position was marked on the cake board with a food safe pen and the dowels were attached and covered.
Let the decorating commence!-
It was now time to work on the cake board. It was covered in grey sugarpaste and textured with the back of an unused and sanitised scouring side of a washing up sponge. The car platform for the board was then attached and re-covered.
The cake was put on its working platform and carved using accurate templates of an M3. Tooth pics are very handy as guiding posts when carving as you can see but make sure they are all removed and accounted for.
The cake was split once and then filled and crumb coated with buttercream. I chill my cakes down before putting on the sugarpaste. Some people always do this and some never. It has always worked for me. The car was moved to the final platform which had some buttercream on it to help adhere. One black layer of sugarpaste was applied and then the car was left to dry overnight (this drying time is important for the next bit).
Next day the car was covered in red mexican modelling paste. The properties of this modelling paste work the best for me in this situation. Its flexible, can be rolled thinner than sugarpaste and holds its shape. The car was 'edible glued' all over except for the windows which where cut out afterwards using a scalpel and a steady hand. If the black layer was not dry it would be impossible to tell when to stop cutting throught the red layer of paste. I looked at all the different ways you can do car windows and this method looks the best, which is why the top coat of paste needs to be rolled as thin as you can (e.g. 2-3mm). The wheels were also made from black modelling paste ans stuck on with edible glue.
After a lot of thinking and research into both cars and car cakes, this is how i did it:
The cake-
Baked a 5" by 12" by 4" tall loaf cake using a good chocolate Madeira cake recipe that carves well (Alan Silverwood multisize square baking tin is brilliant for getting the size and shape for this sort of model)
The Cake Board Templates-
Note: Each item should be sanitised before coming into contact with food
This is where the planning comes in. For a cake on a platform, it needs to be secured to the cake board below and it needs to be food safe. It also needs to be the correct size/shape and the dowels which will sit behind the tyres need to be the right height off the base and in the right position. We made our own MDF 14" square board and two platforms for the car to sit on (one for the board and one to work on while carving the cake). Everything was covered in food safe paper covered foil and attached to the MDF with non-toxic glue stick.
The 'working' cake platform with dowels attached to bottom at the correct height for the model (only the top and sides need covering, the base will not be in contact with the cake):
This shows covering the base cake board, a smoother was used on the top side to give a good finish.
Next dowels the car position was marked on the cake board with a food safe pen and the dowels were attached and covered.
Let the decorating commence!-
It was now time to work on the cake board. It was covered in grey sugarpaste and textured with the back of an unused and sanitised scouring side of a washing up sponge. The car platform for the board was then attached and re-covered.
The cake was put on its working platform and carved using accurate templates of an M3. Tooth pics are very handy as guiding posts when carving as you can see but make sure they are all removed and accounted for.
The cake was split once and then filled and crumb coated with buttercream. I chill my cakes down before putting on the sugarpaste. Some people always do this and some never. It has always worked for me. The car was moved to the final platform which had some buttercream on it to help adhere. One black layer of sugarpaste was applied and then the car was left to dry overnight (this drying time is important for the next bit).
Next day the car was covered in red mexican modelling paste. The properties of this modelling paste work the best for me in this situation. Its flexible, can be rolled thinner than sugarpaste and holds its shape. The car was 'edible glued' all over except for the windows which where cut out afterwards using a scalpel and a steady hand. If the black layer was not dry it would be impossible to tell when to stop cutting throught the red layer of paste. I looked at all the different ways you can do car windows and this method looks the best, which is why the top coat of paste needs to be rolled as thin as you can (e.g. 2-3mm). The wheels were also made from black modelling paste ans stuck on with edible glue.
I left the cake overnight again to form before adding all the final embellishment's and detail work. The wing mirrors of the car were inserted in using dried spaghetti and the sugar model is supported with a pastillage sugar stick internally and dried spaghetti. These items should be removed before the cake is consumed.
Here's a link to a video of the cake:
Check out my website if you want to see more cake pictures:
I hope this has been interesting : )
Tasha
Monday, 6 February 2012
First post!
Very busy day today. I'm doing the last module of the PME Diploma in sugar craft in amongst preparing for wedding Fayre's and the year ahead. This is our (www.tashastastytreats.co.uk) first full year of trading after leaving the corporate job world, hopefully for good!
Here's the first wedding fayre cake for 2012, enjoy:
Come back next week to see how the presentation piece for my diploma course turned out and how it was constructed. All I will say now that it is quite ambitious but had to be done.
Tasha
Here's the first wedding fayre cake for 2012, enjoy:
Come back next week to see how the presentation piece for my diploma course turned out and how it was constructed. All I will say now that it is quite ambitious but had to be done.
Tasha
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