The Tools Of The Trade

Hi all

So I'm on a very short cake lull at the minute and although I do have some posts I could do of previous cakes I got very excited about a new purchase over the weekend.

For those who don't bake cakes you might not be aware just how much cake equipment there is out there - and if I'm honest I would love it all! But it all comes at a price so slowly I am filling up a cupboard in my kitchen with cake equipment. When I first started baking more seriously I often stood in the aisles of Hobbycraft or my local Cake Craft Store thinking... what the hell does that contraption do?! So here is what I have accumulated over the past year. My tools of the trade.

In front of my lovely KitchenAid what I love are the very basic tools. On the left are my smoothers, flat edged and round edged. In my next post I'll show these in practice smoothing all the lumps and bumps from sugarpaste when it's been popped onto your cake. In the middle is my cake leveller. You can't see in this pic but there is a thin wire that you can move up and down and slices through your cake to create the levels which you sandwich with jam and buttercream yum! Before I had this is was a wobbly knife jobby, with my leveller cutting cakes is a breeze. Also my small spatula for slathering buttercream onto cakes to create a nice smooth base for the sugarpaste. I could do with more sizes of this but equipment don't come cheap. Next the two white strips are 'marzipan spacers' - these come in handy to roll sugarpaste out to an even thickness all over if you have one on each side of your sugarpaste and roll your rolling pin across the spacers to get no lumps and bumps. Great little tools! On the right we have a superlong PVC rolling pin which is non-stick so loves sugarpaste and doesn't need to be cornfloured/icing sugared to use. Sugarpaste life saver.

This is what most of the clutter looks like in my cupboard! Cutters of all shapes and sizes, alphabet cutters (I have two sets with different fonts). Also a piping bag for buttercream and a few tips I've collected including one for a grass effect! Then I've got snowflake and butterfly cutters with plungers, florist tape (for tying together the wires of individually made modelling paste flowers), and an impression mat for rolling texture into your sugarpaste.

And this is my steadily growing colour collection. Wilton's gel colours are by far the best I have used - only a tiny dot will get you a lovely strong colour. I've got an artists palette for painting onto cakes because gel colour + vodka = cake paint! And an assortment of brushes. Theres edible glitters, icing strengthening gum tragacanth (still can't pronounce that) and edible glues!

The pieces of equipment that I lust after most are modelling tools. These are normally packaged individually and can cost around £6 a pop. I bought a cutting wheel in the early days and a straight line cutter which I promptly lost so when I saw a whole set of modelling tools for £6.99 in steamer trading company I had to have them! And when I got home I couldn't wait to play with them. These will come in so handy for decorating cakes or making my own little models. There's a shell effect, star effects, dotted line cutter and so on. also some round tipped tools on the far right which will come in so handy for manipulating small pieces of sugarpaste when my podgy fingers are too big and warm for the job. So here are some pictures of my play time with my new tools!

So ladies and gents.... if you ever want to know what to get me for Christmas or birthdays........ Cake tools!

Love

Kirsty xxx

A Pretty In Pink Christening Cake (and 50 cupcakes while you're at it)

Hi cakefaces,

So I've given you a little bit of back story so far. Why I love cake (obvious), my manic days of throwing together cake-coctions leading up to my cake lesson with Jayne! But now what?

By now I had started to bother my Facebook friends with posts about baking, or selfies with an icing sugar covered face. People were starting to notice.... hey, looks like Kirsty can bake. And so came my first official order!! I must admit the message terrified me, the sister of a good school friend popped up on my Facebook messenger asking me to make her a cake, and cupcakes for her beautiful little girl's christening. Nooooo pressure then. Although I was now petrified and regretting all my cake-bragging statuses, I love the sound of a challenge and this certainly was that.

Problemo number 1 - normally if a cake collapses or sinks or ends up looking like a dog has had a good chew on it, it's not worries, it's only for family... we will laugh it off together.

Problemo number 2 - cupcakes are those things what I referred to in post numero 1 - up until this point cupcakes had mostly gone into the oven with raisins in, and come out of the oven straight into my gob.

Problemo number 3 - THIS IS SOMEBODY'S CHRISTENING. There are bound to be photos, people are going to eat my cake.... what if someone gets ill? ... should I immigrate and hope that Amy forgets she ever asked me.

So after my head had finished spinning I agreed.... two tier cake. Pink. Flowers scattered. Diamante cross. 50 matching cupcakes. Challenge accepted. Here's what was new about this particular caking challenge....

- New cutters! For a nice scattering of flowers a total of 5 different shaped and sized metal flower cutters were purchased. I had plenty of practice goes on how best to shape these flat sugarpaste cutouts into vaguely realistic petals.

- New edibles! After a good amount of research I discovered the beautifully coloured Sattina Sugarpaste in blush pink - perfectly pale and just the right tone for a christening.

- New strategy! This cake would not be thrown together like my previous bakes. I set aside three evenings to get the two-tiered cake baked, ganached, then decorated. This left me with the morning of delivery day to knock out 50 cupcakes.

 

- New techniques! Time to try ganache. This was my first attempt at this (save for a few practice runs). Made from cream and melted white chocolate it sets hard, gives a great solid base for sugarpaste, and tastes delicious!

So here are the results... not bad eh? Total flowers individually cut and shaped.... 200+ !

 

 

 

And here's the feedback, which made for a very happy Kirsty - Amy said:

 

"Kirsty made our daughter's christening cake in March this year. We asked for a two tier cake as well as 50 matching cupcakes and were thrilled with the final result. The cakes all looked so professional and neat and we lost count of the number of friends and family who commented on the cakes and asked where they had been made. Kirsty took the time before starting our cakes to research exactly what we wanted to achieve the right look, and her research paid off... they were perfect. More importantly, they were absolutely delicious! In particular the cupcakes, which in my past experience when buying from a shop, can be incredibly sickly, but we didn't have that problem! They were the perfect flavour and texture... one just wasn't enough. We have already put in our next order."

 

Lots of love

 

Kirsty