Cake Craft discussions and questions thread

[blackberrycrimble]

[SevilleOranges]

Hello party over and life back - well I finally made the cake stress tears and alot of love went into it - its not amazing but it was my first EVER time making the models and man its hard!!!!! Pics of flickr thank you for your advice and links

[Wilma]

[emzit]

Hello cakey people,
Hoping you can help me! I'm not too shabby with baking but am a fairly non-creative type when it comes to icing and normally just go with a basic glace icing for my cakes. But the mini muncher's first birthday is coming up and I want to do a cake smash with him and have a lovely beautiful cake! I am going to make a giant cupcake but I need some tips on what kind of icing to use! I have just done a trial run tonight and used my new icing tools to test some designs out, but I'm not sure that the glace icing is going to cut the mustard - my test cupcake is dripping on the edges. Besides it being ridiculously sweet.

What I want to do is use the big star shape to do little dollops of icing all over (technical terms here), what would the best kind of icing be for that and has anyone a recipe for it? Would it be best to do a base layer of icing or just make sure I cover the whole thing with the dollops?

[MissKitty]

When I do cupcakes, I use a basic buttercream 'frosting' (standard buttercream recipe) for my swirls rather than something labelled frosting, which I think have other ingredients to make them lighter and fluffier. I use royal icing sugar instead of regular as it gives a slightly firmer set and a satisfying form, then a very slight crunch when bitten. I make mine in my Magimix processor and this makes it quite fluffy. I tend not to add all the milk/liquid quantity a recipe suggests, preferring a slightly firmer buttercream that handles better. Although sweet (obviously!) buttercream is scrummier than glace

On a giant cupcake, I'd say that as long as you generously and closely cover the surface of the cake with your frosting decoration, you shouldn't need a base layer. WIth buttercream or frosting, you can even use a palette knife to slather it on then sculp it into a rustic swirl, no piping tools needed. You could have some fun with lots of little swirls or star-rosettes - dot different colour ones in an out of your base colour. That could look quite funky!

Are you using one of those giant cupcake moulds?

[weasley]

^^^^ WSS,

I'd use buttercream too. Here is my recipe if it helps -

110g unsalted butter
350g Icing sugar
about 20ml of milk or water
A drop or two of vanilla extract.

Beat butter until light and fluffy, sift in suager and beat until it changes colour, add in milk until it is 'spready' enough. Add vanilla. Hope that helps.

[MissKitty]

Good basic buttercream recipe - pretty much the one I have scribbled in my little pink cupcake notebook

If you wanted a lower fat option, I have successfully used Lurpak Lighter (not the extra light/lightest though) instead of butter on and in many buttercreamed cupcakes/cakes. Definitely add less liquid if you do go this way as it tends to be naturally more 'spready' (love that word, Weasley!).

If you're colouring it, use a paste and add a little at a time. Not sure if it's my imagination, but my buttercreams always seem to take more colour with a small amount than other icings. I have had some darker results than I wanted in the past and it's much easier to add more than take away IYSWIM! This happened with the rose pink for my wedding cupcakes - oh my gosh I panicked when it wasn't the 'hint of rose' I was aiming for, but actually it worked better in person and on photos, so was clearly Wedding Fate!

[blackberrycrimble]

<adds buttercream to list of things to do more of>

[MissKitty]

[Fozza]

I have added a couple of butter cream cakes to Flickr using the technique you describe. They were my first two cakes...I don't enjoy buttercream but for some things its great (and yummy). I never did a base layer for these two. You will use a lot of buttercream...obscene amounts!

Weasley, I added some tiny Lego men I made for my nephew (SIL opted for a big thing stuck on a shop bought cake) ...what's your plan?

[emzit]

Thanks for the help ladies. MissKitty, the swirly thing with little bits sounds like what I was going for so I will give it a trial run tonight or tomorrow - DH helpfully suggested that I take the cake apart last night so I can play around with icing the bottom half. I think he just wants more iced cake.

I have one of the giant cupcake moulds and the cake itself came out quite well. A little too much mixture went in so I had to do some trimming but I'll know for next time.

Sadly I think that what I have in my head is not what is going to turn out on the plate but I'm sure it will be fine anyway!

[weasley]

[blackberrycrimble]

[jvnt]

Saw the lego cake, looks great!

[emzit]

Trial run 2 was a success! I didn't realise how easy it is to make buttercream icing. Much easier to pipe too so feeling more confident about the final cake next month. DH is not understanding my vision though so I might have to make it while he is out! I think it will be much better for the photos too, much easier for mini muncher to smear it all over himself...