Being such a creative person, I never know what area of creativity I want to tap into next. When it comes to the kids birthdays, it has been cake decorating. Doing a cake in the character(s) of their choice. I started when Jimmy turned 1 and Paige turned 2 and I have never taken any kind of class. How hard can it be really?
Well, it is not easy. Most of my knowledge I have gained from the internet. Watching videos on YouTube and reading articles. Each birthday, I experiment. I should say, Doug's birthday cake is always the experimental cake, since his birthday is 2 weeks earlier than the kids. I always loved the idea of doing a special cake for them, but really don't want to pay the money to have a fancy decorated cake that looks really good, but in my opinion, doesn't always taste good. I spent 6 years in the wedding industry. I know about beautiful cakes that taste like crap.
So my journey began. I wanted to do a Dora & Diego cake for Paige & Jimmy when she turned 2 and he turned 1. I went on Google images and found one that I wanted to use. Printed it out and was stumped over how to transfer this image onto the cake. I wasn't about to freehand it. While I would probably do ok, it wasn't the look I wanted to achieve. So back to Google I went. "How to transfer image onto cake?" Somehow, I came up with an article that said to trace the image onto a piece of parchment, lay the parchment over the iced caked and then pin prick the image into the frosting. Then I could use those lines as a guide to fill in the image with all my colors. Ugh. What a time consuming process. It worked, but I don't think it turned out as well as it should have.
While everyone in my house marveled at my cake, I kept thinking, there has to be a better way to do this. Regardless, the most important thing is that the kids loved it and were able to recognize the images.
Now onto the next year. Paige is turning 3 and Jimmy is turning 2. Again, I Google, "how to transfer image onto cake." Something better pops up. A frozen buttercream image transfer. Intrigued, I read on. The article has step by step instructions with photos and even has the recipe for the buttercream icing. Sweet!
This process requires you to make the buttercream icing, which is really good, by the way. You cannot use any store bought stuff, because the ratio of shortening to butter is crucial. Print your image out in reverse. Tape the image down on a cutting board. Then tape a piece of parchment paper over your image. You then pipe your icing right onto the parchment paper, tracing over your image. Stick it in the freezer for at least one hour. In the meantime, frost your cake.
When you are ready to transfer the image, you take the piece of parchment with your image off the cutting board and flip it down onto your iced cake. Peel back the parchment and presto! Now, I found you need to work quickly in transferring the image because the icing defrosts really fast.
This year, Paige turned 4 and Jimmy turned 3. It was time to step up my game for their big birthday party in January. I have since experimented with piping stars and flowers. It is a nice technique. I did Doug's Wolverine cake (which I didn't get a good picture of) in this manner, as well as the cupcakes for Paige's birthday celebration at school.
Paige is all about Princesses this year and Jimmy wanted Lightning McQueen on his cake. I went back to the frozen buttercream transfer for Lightning McQueen. Only this time I re-read the article and realized I forgot to press the image down a bit to make it smooth last time. So before you put it in the freezer, lay another piece of parchment over the image and gently push it down to smooth the lines left by your piping bag.
For Paige's Princess cake, I copped out a little bit. I took the printed Princess images and glued them to a piece of cardboard and cut them out. I stuck those on the cake and piped stars around them. I used a tooth pick to kind of stencil in the curly lines as a guide to pipe over. Both cakes came out pretty well. Much better than the previous years.
I did learn something new this year though. As I was frosting Paige's cake (it is chocolate), I was getting very frustrated because the frosting wasn't sticking to the cake and all of these chocolate cake crumbs were getting mixed in. It was making for a very ugly cake. I was literally in tears over it. I stopped and went to the computer. Google = "why does my frosting pull the cake apart?" Google returned a very nice video series that I watched. "How to crumb your cake." OK, I have never heard this term before. Apparently I am not the only one this happens to. You have to apply a thin coat of icing and let all the crumbs come up into the frosting. I put my ugly frosted cakes into the fridge to set the icing. When set and the icing is still hard, you can then frost a nice clean, smooth coat over the ugly one. Fabulous!
Next item to experiment with...fondant!
No comments:
Post a Comment