Cake decorating

Gold-painted fondant is very popular, but you need to be careful about how you do it and what type of gold paint is used.  To paint fondant gold, you will need to make sure that the gold dust that’s being used is food-grade and labeled edible. There are many types of gold dusts that are […]

Every now and then, a cake that I’m making gets what people refer to as a “blowout,” but which I like to call a “cake tumor.” It’s so much more descriptive. I don’t want to say that I was lucky to have a cake tumor appear the other day, but it was useful for blogging

You don’t need to spend a lot of money on specialty cake tools, there are a lot of everyday items that you can use for specific decorating tasks. These are some things that I used for cake decorating that cost nothing, or a lot less than the cake-decorating branded versions. Pulp Trays When I go

If you need a little urn or a vase for a cake topper, you can easily make one from sugar and water. The key is to use a container that’s wider at the top than the bottom so that you can remove the sugar easily. You can also use this method to mold sugar into

Here’s a quick look at how to make some chocolate leaves, which can be a nice change from gumpaste. I actually used candy melts for these, but real chocolate would taste better! What leaves to use. Start with some leaf presses or veiners, or some real rose or lemon leaves. It’s best to use leaves that

There are a couple of ways to make tomato sauce for pizza cakes (or spaghetti cakes) but the important thing is to make sure the “sauce” will set up firmly enough that you’ll be able to use it the way that you need to without it dripping all over the place. One method is to

Whenever I make marbled fondant I tend to overuse the darker color. The key to marbling is to really use a minimal amount of the contrasting color, or you’ll end up having a big blob of uncontrasty fondant. I did these shells and started with what I thought was a small amount of black fondant,

Piping gel is a sugar-based gel that’s made from corn syrup and thickeners, and it’s basically a less-sticky version of corn syrup. You can use it to paint onto cakes to attach things, or to attach wafer paper to itself or to cakes. It’s a type of edible glue that’s pretty versatile for lightweight purposes.

I had a decorator send me a photo of a cake that had a little garland on it, and she wanted to know what it was made of, and to me it looked like gumpaste. It’s simple to make a gumpaste string of pennants, you just need a little sugar clay and some printed wafer paper.

When you put stems of real or artificial flowers, or the wires from gumpaste flowers into a cake, you need to be careful for a couple of reasons. Don’t damage the fondant. First, just randomly sticking something into the cake can ruin the icing or fondant, so pushing stems in can end up making a mess or