Cake Hack: All-thread

Cake Hack: All-thread

In a few weeks I'll be delivering a baby shower cake to my cousin.  To match her theme, I wanted a tool that could make a texture similar to ribbed ribbon.   When I was a teenager, I used to work at Joann Fabrics ... moms would come in and buy ribbed ribbon in all kinds of sizes and colors for hair bows (typically for cheerleaders ... I don't know what that was about though).  That's what I want my next loopy bow to look like.

The first thing that came to mind was the ribbed / smocking rolling pin by PME:

$9 shipping for that???  Really?  I couldn't find any online store that could get it to me for less than $27 total.  I posted a facebook message to my cake club to see if I could borrow someone's.  The club president reminded me of a trick that was demonstrated at one of our meetings a while back: use all-thread.

All-thread is a steel rod that is threaded (like screws) down the entire length of the rod.  I'm not sure what it's supposed to be used for, but I found a section for it at my local Ace Hardware store.  There are different lengths and thicknesses (again, like screws).  After some pondering, I decided to get the 1/2" x 1' rod for $2.70 ... that's 1/10th of the cost of the PME pin.

I rolled out some fondant and then rolled the rod over it.  Remember, the rod is threaded ... not ribbed ... so it does move towards one side as you continue to roll.  The 1' length was plenty of room for what I was testing on.  This is pretty much exactly what I wanted!  I'm thrilled and can't wait to make my loopy bow.

NOTE:  This product has not been declared food-safe.  Use at your own risk.

Internal Structures

Internal Structures

Do I know what I'm doing?

Absolutely not.

This hot mess is how I'm practicing for next month's cake competition (http://thattakesthecake.org/).  For the past few nights my kitchen table has been subjected to some serious prototyping.  Since this is for competition, I'm going to keep some details on the down-low.  After the show I'll discuss my designs more in depth.

This is the first prototype for a 3D sculpted cake of a cartoon character.  He will be standing straight up and will hopefully stay that way for several days.

Here's what I started with.

Stats:

• 8", 7", and 2 6" rounds of doctored Spice cake
• Rice Krispie Treats
• Wilton Decorator's Buttercream Icing
• big ole piece of scrap wood
• 2 1/2" galvanized floor flanges
• 1/2" PVC piping, some threaded, some not
• several 1/2" PVC couplers
• PVC cutter
• foam core
• modeling chocolate
• fondant

I've never built an internal structure for a sculpted cake.  I've never taken a class for this.  So for the most part, I don't know what I'm doing.  I'm going off what I've seen on tv, notes on CakeCentral.com and other internet bits, and off of Mike McCarey's 3D car tutorial DVD.  It was extremely hard to research when I didn't even know what those thingies were called (those "thingies" turned out to be "flanges").  It's good that this prototype happened early on; there's plenty of time for improvement.

I want the body to be in at least 2 parts: top and bottom.  Things will be so much easier if I can deal with half of him at a time.  The idea is that later on in the process he will be glued together.

Initially I hot-glued couplers on to foam core and fit them over the PVC.  After one night the couplers popped right off and I was left with a saggy waist.

Wilton icing is all kinds of gross to the nose and tongue, but it's actually really nice to spread.  I bought a 4.5 lb bucket with a 50% coupon at Michaels.

 I did not make the entire cake; there's not enough time or resources at the moment to push this prototype much farther.

Notes:

• buy more flanges
• buy a 1/2" thin pipe to help core cake to be put on structure
• get thicker base wood
• get thin wood to go in the middle
• re-design how PVC fits together
• bake twice as much cake
• make twice as much Rice Krispie treats
• let chill after crumb coating, then do another layer of buttercream to help smooth him out
• use a mixture of fondant and modeling chocolate instead of just fondant
• decorate the board around the flanges so his feet can be flush ... somehow
• his head needs to be Rice Krispie treats as a base

I left half of his torso covered in fondant and modeling chocolate.  I'm going to let him sit on my kitchen table for a few days to see how long he can hold up.

DIY Lightbox

DIY Lightbox

I finally got around to making my own lightbox for photographing little things.  This tutorial is fantastic:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html

There were a few modifications in my design ... mostly because I hadn't read that tutorial recently and didn't remember everything.

Stats:

• cardboard box
• freezer paper
• hot glue
• tape

My husband recently ordered a new computer, so I got a nice cardboard box to make my little photo studio.  I re-enforced the corners and folds with tape and a line of hot glue.  With a craft blade, I cut out panels from 3 sides and the bottom.

Rough-cut sheets of freezer paper were hot-glued to the box.  In the tutorial he uses tissue paper.  This substitute seems much sturdier.

I've got a bendy lamp with this bulb shining through the right side of the box.  I think I need more lamps.

I didn't have any posterboard to put as the background, so I just used more freezer paper.  It's definitely not ideal because it's not 100% opaque.  I think the lampshade also gave the light a yellow tint.

There's plenty of room for improvements, but at least I got this project started.  You can definitely tell I need more white light and a better background.  These pictures are with the lamp on the right and my camera flash pointing straight up.

It's nice to have a designated area to take pictures with.  Hopefully my cats won't think it's a great idea to jump in it.

Handy Gourmet Batter Dispenser: Review

Handy Gourmet Batter Dispenser

Product Review

Making cupcakes are difficult for me.  I have bad wrists, so it's slightly painful for me to hold up my KitchenAid bowl and pour cake batter into 24 cupcake liners.  I've tried other methods for getting batter into cupcake pans, but have had rather messy results.  After thinking about it one night, it struck me that there must be some tool for pouring pancake batter at restaurants.  The internet told me that they are called "batter dispensers".  On amazon.com, I grabbed one for less than 10 bucks.

http://www.amazon.com/Handy-Gourmet-Pancake-Batter-Dispenser/dp/B000U6AXDI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1268973346&sr=8-1

This particular product is called the Handy Gourmet Pancake Batter Dispenser.  It's very shiny.  That pleases me.  There is a small hole at the bottom of the container that's blocked by a piece of plastic.  When you squeeze the handle, the plastic slides away and the batter is free to flow out.  The bottom of the dispenser has a built in holder so you can set the whole thing down on any flat surface.

 The dispenser holds approximately 4 cups of batter (regular box cake mixes are ~5 cups).  

After at batch of cuppies, I've concluded it has some pros and cons.  

FAILs:

• The container can't hold an entire batch of cake mix.  This requires a refill part-way through filling the cupcake pans.
• Leakage is inevitable.  I had several drops of batter escape through the supposedly closed hole soon after I poured the batter into the container.  After several squeezes, batter starts to get inside the bottom of the handle.

• The last bit of batter takes a long time to flow out of the dispenser.

FTWs:

• Pouring batter into the dispenser was easy.  It has a wide mouth with slanted sides at the top.
• The handle was easy to squeeze.
• Batter poured very quickly at first.  The first dozen cuppy liners were filled so fast, it was amazing.
• It was easy to pour a little batter at a time.  When I had filled most of my cuppies to about 2/3rds full, I went back and added some drops to those that could have used more batter.  
• I didn't drip while filling the cuppies!  No random batter drops on the tops of the pans that would get all burnt and I'd have to scrub off!!!

• The whole thing is easy to clean.  The batter rinsed off easily, and I just did some gentle wipes with a soapy sponge to clean the whole thing.

Conclusion: 

Well, for me, this is a great tool.  It's probably much easier for other people to utilize some other way (e.g. using an ice cream scope).  But at $10, really, it's pretty cool.  And some day I'm sure I'll have to make pancakes for a mess of people and will be thanking my lucky stars that I bought this.

Now that business is over, wanna see something funny?  The instructions had a few Engrish moments that made me laugh.

UPDATE (03/27/2010)

I still love this dispenser.  Last night I was able to fill cups with batter WHILE holding my 10 month old baby.  She got a little clingy and patiently watched me as I evenly filled my pans while sitting on my hip.  It may be a single-task tool, but I love it.