Decorator's Triangle

Decorators Triangle

On Sunday my family attended a memorial for Bill, a lovely man that always had the biggest smile.  I brought a last minute cake with left over icing, mix, and some apple filling that I had in the pantry.  As I was icing it, I figured the cake shouldn't look too fancy, but it should still look nice.  In the back of my cupboard I had the Wilton Decorating Triangle.  I had never used an icing comb before, but gave it a shot and was pleasantly surprised.

This was an all-butter American buttercream.  With the comb gently against the side of the cake, I gave the turn table a spin and that was that!  For the top I gently placed it so the edge of the comb was in the center and spun again.  You can't press too hard or it will scrape away your icing and you'll see cake underneath.

I was pleased at how thin and sharp the plastic was, making the icing shapes smooth and consistent.  I'll have to try out the other sides with future last-minute cakes!

Product Review: Cupcake Carousel

Product Review: Cupcake Carousel

My very supportive family has lavished me with all kinds of cake toys for Christmas!  Expect several production reviews in my upcoming posts.  This one, however, was a spontaneous purchase from a run to the grocery store.

Stats:

• "Cupcake Carousel" by Fox Run
• holds 24 cupcakes
• 3 trays
• BPA-free, food-grade plastic
• available in red, pink, or brown
• ~$20 at HEB (my local grocery store chain)

I had been on the look-out for a new cupcake carrier since my old one broke.  I was excited about this one because it looked roomy inside, and my previous carrier always smooshed the tops of my cuppies.

The top of the carrier features a handle and 4 locking tabs.  I did notice one of the carriers in the store had one of the tabs ripped off, so we made sure mine was sturdy.

There are 3 removable trays inside, each can hold 8 cupcakes and features its own handle.

The trays can rotate around the center column.  The product tag seems to present this as a desirable feature, but I'm not sure why.

The trays sit on top of each other with their own hollow, center column.  That only gives about 2" of vertical clearance.  Hope your cupcakes don't need to be tall!

These cupcakes are sporting a melted cinnamon marshmallow topping, so they are not very tall at all.  Notice the problem?  Sure, my cupcakes are nice and secure.  These babies are not ever going to tip or slide.  In fact, it's too secure.  As soon as I inserted the cupcake, it sunk right down to the bottom and they were difficult to remove.  My family and I got pretty sticky trying to get them out.  Trying to not touch the icing was like playing the board game Operation.  The best way I found was to pry them out with a small offset spatula, but that's far from convenient.  Ideally there would be a small finger hole at the bottom of each cup so the can be slightly pushed upward from the bottom and easily grabbed from the top.

You know what doesn't work?  Trying to drill a 1/2" hole in the bottom with a power drill.  Luckily no one was hurt in the process, but I did manage to split my guinea pig cup in half.

Pros:

• convenient handles on carrier and all interior trays
• secures cupcakes for rough transport
• lightweight
• tall instead of wide
• trays can be individually removed and carried; they look nice enough to serve with
• can be used for transporting other things, I guess

Cons:

• a bit large and bulky ... the exterior could slim down; I really don't need the carrier to also look like a cupcake
• still not ideal for tall cupcakes
• difficult to remove cupcakes from the trays

Overall I'm disappointed with this carrier.  I'm afraid it will sit in my closet-of-old-hobbies until I'm desperate to travel with 24 cupcakes for an extended period of time.  I'll let you know if I figure out how to successfully make a hole at the bottoms of the cups.

UPDATE:
After doing some online research for this product, I've concluded that what I bought is a newer, improved model.  The images I see online for purchasing this product only have 2 latches for locking the lid.  Low score reviews said they had the lid accidentally come off during transport.

Here is another blogger's post on 10/25/2011 about this product, and it looks like she has the same one I have but in pink.
Heart, Soul & Flour: http://heartsoulflour.blogspot.com/2011/10/can-you-guess-what-this-is-for.html

Product Review: Wilton Molds

Product Review: Wilton Molds

Have you seen these???  Wilton has some new cake decorating products out that are pretty nifty.  I was very interested in their new "Fondant & Gum Paste Molds" ($9.99 each): Baroque, Global, Fabric, and Nature.  Michaels is currently having a "buy 2 get the 3rd for free" sale on all their bakeware and cake decorating products.  Go ahead and dash out to the store.  I'll be here when you get back.  I really wanted the Baroque mold, but they were sold out!  I settled for the Global and Nature molds.

Global

Nature

demonstrated with Satin Ice fondant

This was a lot of fun!  These molds are really nice.  They appear to be made of a thick slab of silicon.  They are easy to clean and are very bendy.  Love the colors!  I dusted the cavities with powdered sugar using my pastry brush and tapped out any excess.

I use my little wooden roller to smoosh the fondant into the cavities.

I was able to roll the fondant with enough pressure that you can see the mold through the fondant, but it was still easy to remove.  The back of the box suggested using a foam pad to press the fondant, but I didn't feel like rummaging through my craft closet for it.  I gently pressed a wad of fondant into the cavity with my finger tips and then rolled from the center outward.

If the fondant didn't immediately pop out, I was able to coax it with my pastry brush and by bending the mold.  I didn't notice any wrinkles or imperfections from impressing the fondant into the mold.  I did have to be careful not to pull too much on the fondant so it wouldn't stretch.

There are a couple of downsides to these molds.  The cavities are pretty deep, so the resulting fondant accents seem to be thick.  If you're not into that, well, you're a bit out of luck.

The other problem is that these beautiful borders aren't very long.  You'll have to do this many times if you want to line a cake.

Other than that, I say run out and scoop these up!  I had a blast and can't wait for a good excuse to use them on a cake!

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.

Baking with a Collar

Baking with a Collar

I wanted to see what would happen if I put an entire box cake mix into my 7" round.  One box mix is too small for my 8" round and too big for my 6" round.  I was hoping 7" would be juuuust right.  

My pan is 3" high, and I figured the entire batch might overflow, so here was my opportunity to try out a cake collar.  From what I read, a collar is just parchment paper inside the pan to prevent overflow and get that extra height when necessary.

I was concerned about the paper stability, so I used 2 pieces of parchment paper, both folded in half.  I don't think I should have done that.  The folds made pockets at the bottom where the cake got pushed inward.  Next time I should just cut a long strip instead of being lazy!

See how ugly the sides and bottom are from the paper folds???

Thank goodness for cake spackle.

The other problem was that it seemed to take a long time to bake.  That was due to either so much batter vertically or because this was in my Magic Line pan, which is more heavy duty than my regular Wilton pans.  I must have taken it out still too early.  There was a spot in the upper center of the cake that I noticed when leveling / torting that was slightly under-cooked.

Verdict

Cake collars is a neat trick.  I like the size of the 7" round and will continue using this method but hold back on some of that batter.  A little waste isn't worth the time or the risk of under-cooking.

Oh here's the final cake if you're interested ... I don't know why I bothered crumb-coating ...

Pulled Sugar

Pulled Sugar

My compulsive nature has led me to learn how to make pulled sugar after seeing Tartlette's version on EpiCute.com (here).  Once I started pulling, I realized I had no idea what to do then.  Here's what happened.

Recipe:

• 1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 100 mL water
• 1 teaspoon acid (Tartlette used lemon juice, I used white vinegar)
• food coloring

After doing some preliminary research on pulled sugar, I determined that I needed to invest in silicone mats for various reasons.  The most relevant reason was that the melted sugar should be poured on to a surface that can withstand heat and be flexible so the sugar can be folded.  Other reasons included my hatred for baking with parchment paper that always seemed to curl and also to save some cleaning time on my poor dining table when I roll out fondant.  Bed, Bath, & Beyond sells 11"x16" mats for $14.99 (here) and 16 1/4"x24 1/4" for $29.99 (here).  At HEB I got some nice Playtex rubber gloves to protect my hands.

I put the silicone mat on top of a dish tower.  Here are my new purple gloves!

Regular old granulated white sugar melting with water.

Once boiling you can add the vinegar and food coloring.

Boil until 298 degrees Fahrenheit.

I accidentally burned the sugar and it started to caramelize.  

I lost my bright green coloring and was left with something close to snot.

It took a while for the sugar to cool enough to not be so viscous.

I was able to lift and fold the mat to kinda knead the sugar.

After it was cool enough to be handled, I started pulling.

I got a nice, kinda burnished gold color afterward.

With no idea what to do next, I'm left with bizarre abstract art that tasted like caramel.