After last year's attempt at a robot I vowed that for Jack's second birthday I would ask for cake decorating tips from you people out there.
The main problem last year was getting cake crumbs mixed all through the icing as I tried to spread it with a pathetically bendy silicone spatula.
Last week I read through the decorating tips section at the front of the book (which I chose to ignore last year, certain I had an innate talent for anything crafty) and learned that baking the cakes the day before decorating is the first step in avoiding crumb spread. Would two days be even better?
Will finding a sensible old-fashioned plastic spatula make a difference? Last year I couldn't find one anywhere in Northcote Plaza but I'm willing to travel further afield if someone can name a supplier. Or should I abandon spatulas and use a butter knife dipped in hot water?
What else can I do to help this year's cake be more successful than the last?
And in case you're wondering, I thought that as I've got the experience of one cake under my belt I'd jump in and do the big one: the train.
Book photo from It Pleases Us
Not much scope for disaster there, hey?
8 comments:
Freeze the cake before you ice it, that keeps it nice and still, makes it easier to cut, and no crumbs!
Oh ... the book, the book. I'm still recovering from the year I did the carousel .... arrrgghhh!
Another tip is to do a "crumb coat". This is a thin layer of your buttercream, or other icing, which is spread all over the cake as an undercoat. It effectively cements the crumbs in place and really works really well.
GOOD LUCK!!!!
Hey Jennie, what Liesel said. Crumb coating is the best tip. You will never look back.
These tips from smitten kitchen work a treat. Cannot recommend them highly enough.
http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/03/layer-cake-tips-the-biggest-birthday-cake-yet/
Check out Greensborough cake shop, it has everything its ace. I coat the tin first before adding the cake mixture, can't tell you off the top of my head what the coating is sorry (you can get it at the shop). I also use buttercream icing works really well. Good luck :-).
I think the robot looked terrific. Kids don't care about crumbs anyway. The cake I tried to ice for Logan's 2nd birthday was truly pitiful. I had all these visions of being like Martha Stewart and just gently and precisely icing a cake. Nope... didn't happen. I couldn't get the working to look like anything, so it ended up being just a bunch of squiggles on the top.
Good luck with this year's masterpiece! :)
You could use ready roll icing so that the cake in almost wrapped rather than iced. My mum does this a lot as she likes to use a paint brush to decorate cakes. (She's got one that she only uses for food colouring.) This is particularily useful if like me you quite like doing cartoon characters but are useless at piping.
Or you could stick on a base leyer of marzepan using apricot jam so you have no crumbs to ice over, just lovely smooth stuff.
I have no actual experience in baking (except I made ugly scones the other day, which we will call "rustic") but I've heard that putting the cake in the freezer works well. Always a cold cake with warmer icing. And then a thin layer of icing on your cold cake and back in the freezer, then put the rest of your icing on and that should eliminate crumbs in it.
Can't wait to see your cake! Now I'm craving something sweet, mmm.
Holly xx
Go the train cake! You can just make several carriages and cover them in all sorts of evil crap and call it a train, it's awesome. I made one for William this year and it was pretty sad, but well-loved. My main recommendation would be to avoid the 'natural' food colouring which is LAME (green looked like avocado, blech), and just go all out on the bright, crazy-making stuff. Heck, it's a birthday. Blogged cake here: http://clutterpunk.blogspot.com/2010/02/and-now-for-something-completely-not.html
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