Full as a Goog.: Cake Decorating

I'm looking for a new hobby so I thought I'd try my hand at cake decorating.

I managed to score a couple of 'Cake Decorating for Beginners' books at Dymocks last week in their clearance sale. Planning ahead, I knew I had the house to myself on Sunday so I could make all the mess I wanted as well.

Saturday, I headed to Spotlight and stocked up on supplies. I bought myself a tub of white vanilla fondant, a few different colour pastes, some other random tools like a new knife, some new scissors, a pizza wheel, a cake cutter, a pastry mat and it goes on. Spotlight also stock a lot of Wilton products too, if any of you out there were wondering.

Looking at all the stencils and cutters, things started to get a little pricey so I actually headed to Kmart and bought a couple packets of playdough toys. I don't see why they wouldn't work just as well?

Saturday afternooon I baked myself some cupcakes (just 75c Homebrand Chocolate Sponge Mix) and also made a chocolate ganache to set overnight.

Once the cupcakes and cakes were completely cooled down, I put them into some containers to keep them covered for the night.

Sunday morning, I'm up and ready to give this a go. I open up my containers with my cupcakes and they have gone so moist and sticky overnight. From the books I have, I'm pretty sure these are meant to be completely dry and cool. Nevermind, I set to work anyway.

First thing I do, is trim all the cupcakes down to an even shape. I wasn't very good at trimming the top to make it smooth. Because the cupcakes were sticky, they weren't that easy to cut.

Even though the cupcakes didn't go completely as I'd hoped, the ganache has set to a really nice and thick consistency, still easy to spread and it tastes delicious.

I start to ice all my cakes with the ganache and the cake is not dry the ganache doesn't spread without pulling up lots of crumb. It's really hard to get a smooth layer across the top of the cupcake.
I tried a few times, but I just made things worse, so moving on.

My sisters 18th birthday is coming up and for it, her birthday cake is a teal blue with black zebra stripes. I thought I'd use this as a starting point. This pattern isn't in any of the books I had bought but I watched a couple of YouTube videos the night before and it seemed pretty straight forward.

I gradually added a tiny bit of the teal colouring to the white fondant, kneading until it was evenly coloured throughout. I kept adding a little bit at a time until I got the colour I wanted. It actually took more than I thought to get this shade. I checked it was even throughout by cutting the fondant in half and making sure there were no swirls of colour in the middle.

I then rolled it out to an even thickness. One thing I did forget to buy myself was a non-stick rolling pin. This is a must. I only had a wooden one and this didn't work. Luckily, a little mini plastic one came with my playdough toys. The only problem with this was that it was so small and it left line through the fondant from where the edges of the pin rolled across it. But, not the end of the world, these cupcakes are only for practice.

I bought some ready to roll black fondant, I thought black colouring might get a bit messy. I rolled it out to an even thickness and with my pizza roller, cut out some Y shapes and strips. Then I just places them over the top of the rolled out blue fondant.

Once that was all done, I placed a sheet of non-stick baking paper over the top and rolled the fondant again which made it into one level surface. Again though, I could use my big wooden rolling pin over the paper, it didn't take out all the creases from my little rolling pin.

Using my round cutter, I cut out a circle of the fondant to put over my cupcake. The first couple, I cut the same size as the top of my cupcake which didn't end up covering all the edges.

The next couple I used a bigger cutter so that there was plenty of over hang around the edges of my cupcakes. This allowed plenty of space for them to be smoothed over and I was able to trim to size.

I think I may have over kneaded the fondant though because it was quite soft and not the easiest to trim. I was using my smaller paring knife, which might not be the best tool for this?

For my first attempt I was pretty happy with the end result. I didnt make quite enough fondant though for all my cupcakes, so started fresh again and tried something different.

The kitchen was getting a little messy, so I cleaned up before I started again. My cupcakes were already iced with the ganache so I just started on my fondant. I've seen bows on a lot of different cakes, so thought i would give it a try.

I kneaded some red colour into my white fondant to get a nice shade of pink. I only used a tiny bit at a time because I was after quite a light shade.

I was more careful this time with the mini roller, and was able to get a smoother finish of the fondant.

Using the larger round cutter again, I cut out enough squares for the rest of my cupcakes and covered them.

After all my cupcakes were covered, I wiped my mat down and made up some light purple fondant for my bows. After rolling this out, I cut out long strips to put over my cupcakes in a cross to make the base of the bow (like a wrapped present).

Then I cut about a 3 to 4 cm piece and folded it in half to make one side of the bow. Then I pinched then end to make the little pleats (still working on this technique)...