Happy Caking to All!

I made this holiday cake around 1993.  It was one of the first cakes I decorated after I completed Wilton III at the Chocolate Gallery in New York City (now NY Cake and Baking Distributors).  After all this time, cake designing is just as fascinating and fun as it was so many years ago.  Looking forward to continuing my sweet journey with you in 2010!

Happy Holidays!

Gumpaste Jingle Bell Tutorial

I wanted to create a few gumpaste jingle bells for a unique holiday favor.  The gumpaste jingle bell is made using a mold made from Amazing Putty. Amazing Putty can be purchased from Michael's Craft store.
Step One: Knead equal parts of the gray and yellow putty supplied in the kit until no streaks of gray remain. 

Step Two: Press the jingle bell into the putty and let rest for approximately 25 minutes.

Step Three: Remove the jingle bell from the mold. Now you have a food safe mold for creating a bunch of gumpaste jingle bells.  You can also use melted chocolate, fondant, or isomalt in this mold.

Amazing Putty is flexible; the gumpaste popped out in a snap! I used an exacto knife to deepen the depressions in the gumpaste.

Here is a close up of the mold and a side view of the gumpaste jingle bell.  I used a ball tool at the end of each depression.  I then pinched a ridge in the back center of the gumpaste jingle bell and used a needle tool to carve out a hole in the back of the bell.

Wilton's Christmas Red gel paste was brushed over the gumpaste and set to dry.

My Gumpaste Poinsettias & Holly Floral Spray

I wired the poinsettias and holly on Thursday and touched base with my client on Friday for pick-up.    I am still experimenting with boxing up the flowers for shipping.  So far Chef Lori's trick of wrapping each petal with fresh toilet tissue (off a new roll of course) is one of the best tips around. I've had my containers tossed and bumped and even dropped with no breakage.  So I am fine with using Lori's trick when  teaching a technique but wrapping a gumpaste flower order in toilet tissue might be seen by a client as well--not a good thing.

I used recyclable peanut packing  and stuffed thin pieces of foam around the sides and bottom of the box. Needless to say, we both braved Saturday's snowstorm to meetup for delivery.  I, ever the anal person for having to be on time,  tried to hurry and slipped on the snow, but the flowers arrived without any breakage.  It's not readily apparent in this photo but the order requested that the flowers be "sparkly" so I lightly sprayed the flowers with clear spirits and poured on some gold glitter.  This made a very subtle sparkle in the light.  I didn't want the flowers to totally lose their realism.

Winter White Bas Relief Doves

I had a blast teaching this Bas Relief Love Birds class.  Bas Relief is part of my "needlework" series.  The next class will be my quick version of satin stitch monograms.

Festive Gumpaste Poinsettias

My senior students had a lot of fun making gumpaste poinsettias and were quite proud to show them off to the staff.  I find that teaching is not only fun but pushes me out of my box to be more creative and responsive as a sugar artist.

And the Winner is....

 Photo courtesy of Ballina

Last week, I stopped by my friend Lynn Clark's store, CakeWorks, and bought a small tub of red buttercream flavored Fondarific.  It tasted great and handled well but I noticed that it had a tendency to get very soft in a warm room.  Fellow cakers in the Tri-State area who used Fondarific also had the same situation.  So, I decided to use the tasty stuff as an accent rather than cover the entire cake with it.

So far, Massa Grischuna and Satin Ice are still my work horses when it comes to covering an actual cake with fondant.  I covered cupcakes with dark chocolate massa last month and people are still raving about it. Nothing beats that warm chocolate taste.  Wilton fondant I personally use for covering cake dummies and show pieces.  Many of my caker friends add candy flavorings to Wilton before they cover their real cakes.  Although in my opinion Wilton fondant tends to dry and get that "elephant skin" faster than the other brands, once it dries, it's not moving anywhere. That's a plus if you're making a tiered cake.

I recently learned of Ballina fondant.  Chef Janet Ben-Ami, Hey!Cookie, highly recommends Ballina for flexibility, smooth coverage, and taste.  So now, I just have to try Ballina before I give my final weigh in.  Anybody else use Ballina?

Ho Ho Holly!

I've been away from the blog for a few months.  I've been very busy with gumpaste sugar flower orders, cake decorating classes, and set-up of Dina's Sugar Designs, my online store on Etsy.com.

I completed my gumpaste holly and berries a few days ago for a client.  I eventually attached it to three gumpaste poinsettias.  I hope to show you a photo of the entire floral spray in a day or two when I get a chance to upload the photos.  I used a Wilton  cutter but you can also make the holly by hand.  If you are interested in learning how to form the holly by hand,  just leave a comment or email me for instructions.