MY CAKE DECORATNG CHALLENGE

Another dear nephew is getting married next month and I had agreed (out of a flash of foolhardiness) to make his wedding/hantaran/'wedding gift' cake. And I'm bracing myself just so I don't crack into a million pieces and drop to the floor in smithereens from panic attacks. Having said that I do, however, hope to pull it off and emerge with a gaspingly, breathtakingly and cardiac arrestingly beautiful cake that will finally put my name up in lights for the rest of my life.....even if those are lights that glimmer pathetically at a mere 10 watts within the confines of home and family.

So......... colour smeared fingers, sugar crusted hair, perplexed-to-be husband and slappy happy ants here I come.

Which means, dear freinds, for the next few posts, I'll be updating you of my struggle, of my revisits to my long abandoned cake decorating tools and in all likelihood of my irregular heartbeats, of my blood, of my sweat and of my tears.

Just last night I cajoled and patted my dusty, whining tool box from under the shelf, fingered the tools inside, widened my eyes in horror at all those confounding utensils, dug feverishly around for my cake decorating books, stacked them up by my laptop and cudgled my brains so that I went into a cake decorating mode. So I think I might be ready.

And this morning I'm going to the bakery supply store to get 2 tons of icing powder, some Wilton food colours, some round styrofoams to use as cake dummies for practicing, some liquid glucose, some shortening and some gelatine. I'm off .........Will be back soon..

Hi ! I'm back. Got them food colours, two styrofoam dummies, searched the disorganized store for the other ingredients, knitted my eyebrows at the clueless attendants but finally managed to get the rest of the things inspite of them. My fingers are itching, my temperature's rising, my pupils are dilating and I can't wait to sweep everything out of my way so I get down to serious business.

These are my cake decorating bibles that I cling on to for dear life..


If you would like to play/work along with me here's the recipe for the gelatin icing for the sugar paste flowers. It's from "The Icing On The Cake" book. This is what I have always used to make roses, primroses, leaves, figurines, clown noses, tulips, alley cats, violets, impatients, forget-me-nots and some disasters.

Gelatin Icing/Modelling Icing/Sugar Paste
500 gm icing sugar
1/2 oz or 12. 5 gm gelatin powder
4 Tbsp (60 ml) water
2 tsp (10 ml) liquid glucose
cornflour

Put water in a heatproof bowl. Sprinkle gelatin into the water and let it soak for 2 mimutes. Place the bowl over a pan with 1/2 inch of water and set on the stove. Heat gently until gelatin dissolves. Remove from heat and stir in the liquid glucose. Allow to cool for 2 minutes. Turn the mixture into the bowl containing icing sugar and mix in. If the mixture seems wet add alittle more icing sugar. Add sufficient cornflour to allow the icing to be worked like bread dough. The finished icing should no tbe sticky. Wrap in cling film and place in an airtight container until ready to use.

This is the fondant/sugar paste that I have made with the recipe above and which I have coloured pink just for a trial run. I will be buying more colours tomorrow to experiment and until I decide on the perfect combination.


And these are the tools that I will be using......



And this is my plan...........well, 2 plans. Plan 1 is to decorate cake A and plan 2 is to decorate cake B... if cake A is ugly.