My Decorating Techniques It has been a little over two years since I first started decorating cakes. I have made cakes that are themed, bon voyage cakes for individuals deployed by the Navy, beach themed cakes for 21st and 50th birthdays, and many more. I usually personalize each cake for the person receiving it, whether it is his/her name, a favorite color, a favorite animal, or a fondant figure of him/her. There are many different occasions cakes are used for and even more ways to decorate the cakes.
When I decorate cakes, I tend to use fondant, sugar flowers, and sugar work. The most used component I use for decorating cakes is fondant. Fondant is a sugar-based paste. There are two main forms of fondant. It can be a rolled fondant, which is a sweet, sugar dough that is not cooked and made up of melted marshmallows and powder sugar or shortening, corn syrup, and powder sugar. The rolled fondant can be rolled out flat and used to cover a cake, or cut into shapes. It also can be used to sculpt figures of people, animals, or any other object of the imagination.
There is also a poured form of fondant, which is a creamy, sweet paste. It starts out as a liquid of melted sugar and gelatin that is poured over cakes as a coating (usually petit fours) or poured into cupcakes and candy as a filling. The filling in Cadbury Creme Eggs is actually poured fondant. The coating hardens a small amount as it cools. All fondant can be colored to any color using: paste colors, gel colors, powder colors, or airbrushed. Fondant can also be flavored with any edible extract. Another technique I use while decorating cakes is sugar and icing flowers.
The Essay on Stages of Heating Sugar
Carbohydrate when heated results to a complex group of reactions in absence of nitrogen containing compounds. Such reaction is commonly known as caramelization. Sugars will show caramelization to a relatively high temperature. The browning of these carbohydrates is further facilitated by the presence of small amount of acid, salts of this acids, phosphates and metallic ions. Lack of moisture in ...
Making these flowers is one of my favorite things to do because of the creativity that is at your hands while forming them. Sugar flowers are very delicate, handmade flowers from gumpaste (an edible dough made of sugar, cornstarch, and gelatin).
Any flower can be formed by cutting out the shapes of the petals in the gumpaste with pre-made cutters or cut out free hand with an X-ACTO knife. The flowers are usually colored at the end with petal dust or luster dust, which gives them a very realistic look. They also could be colored before being cut, by dying the gumpaste with edible food colors.
Flowers could also be made from buttercream icing and royal icing. Buttercream icing is a frosting made of butter and icing sugar (powder sugar), while royal icing is a mixture of icing sugar and egg whites whipped together, which hardens over time. The most common flowers made from buttercream and royal icing are roses. The last way of decorating cakes that I like to use is sugar work. sugar work can be pulled sugar, blown sugar, or cast sugar. Pulled sugar is a technique that uses cooled, melted sugar that is manipulated, and pulled to form flowers, bows, and other shapes.
Blown sugar is a warm piece of pulled sugar that is placed on a hand air pump then shaped and cooled while pumping air into it. Cast sugar is made from hot liquid sugar that is poured into a mold. The molds are usually silicone, due to the high temperature silicone molds can handle. When decorating, there is no limit to what can be put on the cakes. If it can be imagined, usually it can be represented in some form, and placed on the cake. While I tend to use fondant, sugar flowers, icing flowers, and sugar work the most, there are still many other media people use around the world to decorate cakes; my ways are just a few.
