Wednesday, July 27, 2011

We Conquered Basics 108!

Our excitement rose inside us again as we pondered what lay ahead in our very next Planet Cake class. Basics 108 – The 3 tier, inverted, tapered squares. In this advanced class we were again able to design our own creation and as thoughts flew regarding art deco, animal prints and stripes… we were brought back down to basics to first shape and cover our cakes.



For this shape cake uniformity is particularly important. And by uniformity we are referring the tapered angle of the sides of the cake. If all four sides of all three teirs were not carved on the same angle … well then… the cake would look... odd. We were lucky again to have Anna Maria as our faithful lead as she gave us insight in how to achieve this perfect look. Not only were we given great pointers to help us shape the cake, we were also given a great, no stress way to cover the cake. This method gave all of those in the class a wonderful clean and seamless finish without us even needing to hold our breath!


Even though the excitement of learning and creating cake at Planet Cake is extremely AWESOME we just have to make a quick mention of one of our other favorite things about attending a Planet Cake class… the absolutely DELICIOUS lunches! I know it might be just a small detail of the day but WOW – they are just the yummiest food ever! Sorry about that… Just had to be said…
After a couple days of Cutting, shaping, ganaching and then some more cutting, shaping, ganaching…we moved onto covering and starting our individual designs. It’s actually really amazing to be in a class full of such talented decorators with literally TONS of great ideas that seem to bounce around the room and help guide people with there cake creations. Thanks for being such a great class guys! Anyway – back to the cake,



The other thing we would argue as the MOST important aspect of this cake is structure. Due to its inverted shape it is very top-heavy and insuring the dowels are inserter correctly is EXRTEMELY important. It's those little details that can be the difference between a beautiful tall cake and one that is that bit lopsided.

We would have to say that this class was one of the fun-est we have had the pleasure of being involved in. We got to spread our wings a little with our creations and were encouraged to bring out the designer within.





Thanks again to our Teacher Anna Maria and Facilitator Kylie Dumas for a great few days!







How to make an icing crown:


Hi all, it’s Shell here. During my few days doing basics 108 I made an icing crown to top my British inspired cake. I had a lot of people asking me about it, so here are a few steps to help you make one for yourself.

I started with a 5” polystyrene round and shaped it into a "chef's hat" shape. I wanted a slight angle on the side of my crown so a taped and glued a 4" board to the base of the round to act as a guide while I shaped it. Whilst rounding out the top of the polystyrene I also added in some deep indentations. I purposefully made these indentations quite pronounced as it will no doubt loose some depth when the icing is placed over it. I used polystyrene for my crown as I wanted to keep it, however, this could easily be replaced by a shaped cake.


I removed the base board once the crown was shaped and I created a hole through the centre of the crown with a skewer. I then painted the entire thing with piping gel to act at the gluing agent for my icing.


I then covered and smoothed the fondant onto the crown and added some slight red airbrushing into the creases.


Next I moved onto the side details. For this I cut out strips of acetate in my desired thickness and length. I made and stuck on some wire "prongs" for the base of each strip which I would later skewer into the side of polystyrene. I also found the position for a hole in the tops of the acetate that I would use later to secure the strips to a centre skewer in the top of the crown..


I covered my strips with white fondant (after brushing with piping gel to allow it to stick), and added some hand cut cross details to each one.


I then covered a round polystyrene ball with white fondant and hot glued it to a skewer in a perfect position for the top of my crown.

I then attached the strips and attached a horizontal stripe (again made with acetate and icing) around the base of the crown. I also hand cut some addition shapes as details for around the crown. I allowed everything to dry over night and tied a bit of ribbon around to help support the base strip.


With the basic shape complete I added some further details to the round ball and then I was onto the really fun part - bling! I tried to keep the design quite uniform but stay within my red and white theme. I added some silver cachous  to the sides and then some colored stones.


I also made a large cross to top my crown and added a rolled sausage to the very base edge to finish it off.


Ta - Da!

One crown fit for a Queen... or King

2 comments:

  1. wow¡ it's looks delicious, and thanks for share it, with us. Best wishes from Barcelona, Spain

    ReplyDelete
  2. where does one purchase the crown dummy

    ReplyDelete