Sunday, January 8, 2017

STEP-BY-STEP Cake Decorating Pt. 5 -- Ritu Buttar

Decorating Cakes
For my fifth and final blog post I decided to decorate another Bundt cake using 4 different piping techniques. At first I messed up my design using royal icing because the cake was too warm, but then I tried to cover it up by using whipped cream icing techniques.
"This trend is possible thanks to the multitude of tools and specialty ingredients that are now available, and the help of decorating classes, blogs, websites, online videos, books, and programs that are devoted to the subject" (Sullivan). So many more people are entering the art of cake decorating because of all the resources that the world has made available. There are so many ways to learn how to decorate cakes on the internet and in libraries. For this blogpost I made royal icing and whipped cream frosting.
Ingredients:
  • 3 large free-range pasteurized egg whites
  • 1 tsp lemon juice, plus extra if needed
  • 6 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted
  • coloring paste, optional
(Sullivan 35)
The next type of frosting is whipped cream frosting which is a lot lighter than buttercream, it is also easier to pipe with. This recipe wasn't in my book but it still tasted great.
Ingredients:
  • 1 pint heavy cream, well chilled
  • 1 cup sifted icing sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions:
  • Beat the heavy cream until it becomes frothy
  • Add the icing sugar and vanilla
  • Turn the mixture of hand held beater on high speed until the frosting becomes thick.
The first frosting I used was royal icing to decorate my cake. I attempted to do "Filigree" piping - "This delicate piping work is created with a small writing tip and long piped lines of random patterns. Dust with luster dust to highlight" (Sullivan 81). As I tried to do this, my frosting melted because my cake was too warm, so it was a fail.

After my royal icing failure I decided to use whipped cream frosting. I used three different piping techniques. The first one was a do
t border - "Create a row for symmetrical dots or beads with a medium round tip" (Sullivan 77). This is the easiest decoration because all you have to do is apply a little pressure to make dots.
 

The second technique I used was a pulled bead border - "Use a medium round tip to pipe beads and then slowly release the pressure as you drag each bead" (Sullivan 77). I had previously done this and it wasn't very hard, as it is kind of like connected the dots.
The last technique I used was a draping technique - This is where I basically made "drapes" with my frosting (Sullivan 82). I didn't really do a good job, but for my first time I think it turned out okay.

Overall I think that my decorating skills definitely improved from when I first started. I learned a lot more about the various techniques there are and how to make frosting from scratch which most benefitted me because store bought frosting is always too sweet. I will still try to improve my decorating skills with piping whenever I bake other things.

Which of my cake decorations were the best?
Sullivan, Karen. Step-by-step Cake Decorating: Hundreds of Ideas, Techniques, and Projects for Creative Cake Designers. London: DK, 2013. Print. 


4 comments:

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  2. As somebody who likes to bake, I think your cake looks amazing! I liked how even though you messed up at first, you still found a way to fix it and make it look nice. I think my favorite decoration was the one with the white icing. A tip I could recommend to you is to put your cake on a cooling rack after it comes out of the over, this'll help it cool down faster and won't ruin your frosting. Keep up the good work Ritu!

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  3. Thank you for the tip Renee, it is very helpful. I will be sure to use it next time I am baking. I also appreciated your comments because I think that I have improved my baking skills throughout this whole experience.

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  4. Hi Ritu! I like how you included your mistake at the beginning. Cake decorating takes a lot of time and dedication. I mess up all the time on my decorations. That's why I make many cupcakes to practice on. But since you are using a cake to decorate, I usually give the cake about 10-20 minutes to cool off before I use icing on it. Anyways, I loved the white icing decoration the best.

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