Whooo is using isomalt?

Quick shot we took playing with some isomalt in one of the new owl molds.

We use yellow and red CakePlay isomalt.  Melted in a few seconds in the microwave and poured directly in the mold.  We weren't terribly careful on pouring so it slid around in the cavity but you get the idea!

After unmolding......

Product Used:
Owl - Large Jeweled

Bling Bases are Affordable!

Sandy Swart does a beautiful job showing us a quick, easy and affordable way to make your bling bases!

Silver and Gold plateaus are beautiful and work great for that finishing touch for wedding cake presentations. 

Many of us do not have the funds or the storage space to purchase and store beautiful metal bases for our brides.

Here is one way to make a bling base to show off a wedding cake.  These are just general guidelines since you can make your base any size you want to.

Materials needed:

* Cake dummy with straight sides- can be purchased or I make my dummies out of 2" polystyrene house insulation that can be purchased in 4'x8' sheets at home improvement store.  I cut rounds, squares, ovals, or whatever shape need with a jigsaw and cover with contact paper.

* Florist foil

* Scissors

* Ruler or measuring tape

* Regular straight pins used for sewing

* Clear corsage pins (because they are fairly inconspicuous when pinning bling ribbon

* Bling ribbon available from Decorate the Cake

1.  Cover the top of the dummy with foil.  I rough cut the foil to cover the top by cutting the circle a little larger than the dummy layer so I can fold it over the edges and attach it every 3"-5" to hold it in place.  I want a temporary cover so I can use the same dummy and change the foil/bling ribbon cover and also easy to replace if top foil gets damaged at the reception when the cake is served.  You could tape it , but I used plain straight pins (what can I say-- I'm also a seamstress!)

2. Cover the sides of the dummy.  I measured then cut a strip of foil a couple of inches wider than the depth of the dummy.  Then I folded each edge under 1" to make finished look to the edging.  I secured this to the dummy with straight pins with the strips overlapping. .  In this picture you can see I did part with florist foil and part with regular aluminum foil to see if there was any difference in the look with the bling ribbon over it.

3. Measure circumference of dummy and cut bling ribbon that length plus 1".  Measure the height of the dummy and cut the bling to that width.  My dummy was 4" deep so I cut my bling so that it was 4" wide.  Place the bling ribbon around the dummy and over lap the ribbon in the back and secure with at least 3 crystal headed corsage pins in the back for a 4" ribbon.  Since it is a foam dummy it is easy to pin the ribbon in place.  It is secure and not that noticeable.





4a. After it was covered with the bling ribbon, I couldn't tell any noticeable difference between the foil and the aluminum foil behind the ribbon on the sides. 

4b. Finished bling base with cake.  You can also bling the cake board.  Here 1/2" wide strip of bling ribbons was wrapped around the edge of the cake board.

NOTE: An alternative to a round cake dummy might be a stack of cake pad circles.

Any questions?  You can contact me through Sandy Swart Cakes on Facebook or at sewsweet2@hotmail.com
Albums of my decorated cakes can be seen at:  http://flickr.com/photos/sewsweet2/sets

Products Used:
Silver Bling Ribbon

Other colors available:
Apple Green Bling Ribbon
Gold Bling Ribbon
Pink Bling Ribbon
Purple Bling Ribbon
Red Bling Ribbon
Silver/Black Bling Ribbon
Turquoise Bling Ribbon

Dinorawr!

How many dinosaurs do you see on this cake? You might have to look close to see all three in their natural habitat of fondant grass, leaves and polka dots!

I used fondant with tylose powder for the these dinos. I filled the molds to the top and cleaned the edges of the mold by removing any excess.  Place the mold in the freezer for about five minutes and they  will pop out very easily. I brushed with  pearl dust to bring out the detail on the tiny ones.

The cookies were a nice size for the favor boxes which I picked up at Michael's. Cookie tiles seem to be a popular trend. These little dinos are the perfect size for them. This is about a 1 inch square cutter.

The cookies are decorated with royal icing. Party City carries sixlets in EVERY color.

Volcano cake pops were actually easier to dip than round ones. I worried they would fall off the stick but I did not have any trouble with that. I dipped the stick in chocolate and pushed it halfway into the pop and covered completely. The advantage of plastic sticks is that they can be wiped off if  any chocolate should drip onto them.

I put a small handful of orange melting chocolate wafers into a disposable pastry bag with a pinch of paramount crystals and melted on half power until melted. Be sure to take the bag out and squeeze the bag to distribute the heat evenly during melting.  Cut a small hole off the the tip of the bag and pipe some orange lava on the pop.

Repeat with yellow chocolate.

Use the pastry bag of melted chocolate to attach the molded dinos!

Did you know you can  use the deeper molds for making cookies?

Fill the mold and freeze for about 3 minutes and place on a parchment lined cookie tray.

Bake at 325 for 10 - 12 minutes. Watch carefully, remove when the cookie looks dry and just before it begins to brown. I used a Wilton Roll-Out Cookie Recipe from an old year book. It is not necessary to add the 2 teaspoons of baking powder because you do not want it to rise so I omitted it.

Roll-Out Cookies

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups flour

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar with a hand held mixer. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix in flour one cup at a time, mixing after each addition. Divide dough into small bowls and add several drops of gel food coloring to each bowl. Knead in the coloring with your hands until evenly distributed.  No need to chill dough before using, but if you are working with several colors, you may want to refrigerate the dough you are not using.

Vendor Credits:  Party Styling and Desserts by Jeannie GearinThepastrytip.com

Jeannie's Facebook Page

Products Used:

Mini Dinosaurs

Dino #6

Dino #8

Let the Good Times Roll!

Here is a quick and simple cake to add to your Mardi Gras festivities this week.

First we covered the cake in a green fondant.  Then using our new wavy texture to add the purple details.  I like to roll out the fondant on top of the texture mat.  This helps me to make sure that I'm rolling the fondant even.

Look Mom!  No hands.  I had to operate the camera!  

Next I turned the mat over and slowly pulled it off the fondant.  

Using a small square cutter I cut squares and arranged on the sides of the cake.  Easy!

Dust some sugar pearls with gold luster dust and place at the corners.  I also painted the board with the same gold.

Then I used green, purple and gold bling ribbon and some double sided sticky tape to add some bling to the board.

I will get the details on the mask in another blog.

Products Used:

Wavy Texture Mat
Fleur de lis - Fancy Mini

Gold Bling Ribbon

Apply Green Bling Ribbon

Purple Bling Ribbon

Other Colors of Bling Ribbon

Conversation Hearts

Just in time for Valentine's Day you can make some lovely hearts for your sweetie!

I'm going to show the steps for the two toned hearts.  I take two similar size blobs of  sugarpaste (I used fondant - you can do candy clay, gumpaste, etc).

Then I twist them together.  Looks like a colorful slug to me.

And roll into a smooth ball.

Place the smooth ball in the cavity.  Yeah, this one changed back to all pink for the photo - very odd.

Then I use my rolling pin to smooth out and push the sugarpaste into the cavity.

Once finished I pop them in the freezer for just a couple minutes so I don't squish them when I pop them out.

And all finished!

Product Used:
Valentine - Conversaion Hearts

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Acorns fall hunting theme

Thank you Sandy for a wonderful blog post!

I had a groom's cake for December that was to follow a hunting theme.  The mother of the groom found a cake on the internet and it served as the inspiration of the groom's cake that I created for them.  I cannot give credit to the original creator because I was sent the picture not the link on the web.  Here is my interpretation of a hunters groom's cake.

They wanted a cake with camo, tree trunk, initials, arrow, deer antlers, gun shot shells, and bullets on the cake. It only seemed natural to use gumpaste fall leaves and some acorns to help to give this cake a "fallish" feel to the cake.  The cake was placed on a camo puff base and a leather tooled look for a table cloth.

Decorate The Cake just came out with an acorn mold which was perfect for that extra finishing touch to this cake.

Supplies needed:
three piece acorn mold from DTC
medium brown fondant
dark brown fondant
brushes
gumglue
flower glaze (confectioner's glaze), optional
cornstarch, optional
freezer (too big for the picture)

Supplies needed

The three piece DTC acorn molds comes with two molds that are for acorn bases and the largest mold is for two different sizes of acorns caps.  (Forgive me, I don't know the scientific terms for the two parts of the acorn.)

Using the medium brown fondant, mold an acorn cap for the size acorn you are making.  The cap needs to be even with the top of the mold but slightly concave.  You do not want it even.

Molding the Cap

I made one acorn base to begin with and popped it out and used it to approximate the amount of fondant I needed for each acorn base. Roll brown fondant into small log.

Fondant log

Place the fondant log in the mold and I used the end of a paint brush to push the fondant down into the mold. I wanted to be sure that I had the fondant completely shaped to the ball shaped base.



Pushing the fondant into all parts of the mold

Do not fill the base even with the top.  I'd say about 1/16" from the top edge or the two pieces will not fit together properly.

Filling the base

Because the fondant will be misshapened if you pop it out of the mold fresh (at room temperature), I stick the mold in the freezer for about 10  minutes.  Then one can pop the acorn base out with no problem.



Popping out frozen base

Cap and base completed

I used gumglue attach the base to the cap.

Gluing base

Here's a picture of the acorn together.  The cap has a little bit of a gap between it and the base.  Acorns often lose their  caps so I didn't  want the "fully" attached look.

Finished acorn

THE FOLLOWING IS OPTIONAL:
My acorn looked a little dull to me, so I painted the base with flower glaze (confectionery glaze). Here's a picture of what your bottle will look like if you haven't opened it for a couple of years.  Hubby had to take it to the tool shed to get it open.  Notice the tool marks on it.  I have to admit when he left with the bottle, I was wondering what I would put the glaze it if he busted the neck of the bottle.  (Note to self: open bottle every week or so to keep bottle from gluing shut.)

Tool marks on confectionery glaze bottle

An acorn cap has a dull dusty look to a real one, so I dusted the cap with cornstarch to dull it and give it that dusty look.  Sorry no pictures of painting the glaze on the base or dusting the cap with cornstarch. I was in a hurry to finish up and get the groom's cake delivered.  Guess I messed up on my time management on this cake.

Here is a close of of some of the acorns I placed around the base of the cake with the gumpaste leaves. More were placed on the top edge of the bottom tier.

Product Used:
Acorns Small


Sandy Swart aka sewsweet2
Check out my cakes at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/sewsweet2
or my cake photos on FaceBook:  Sandy Swart Cakes
To see how I make my puff bases check out the tutorial at:
flickr.com/photos/sewsweet2/sets  

Day of the Dead Celebration

 A  national holiday in Mexico, this celebration is also celebrated in many

parts of the world. It is a time to remember those who have passed.

Day of the Dead cookies decorated with sugar skulls and flowers.

This skull mold has stone eyes which can be filled in with a contrasting color, add slightly less paste than needed to allow for spreading when the top color is added. Place the mold in the freezer for five minutes to get the details to show clearly and for ease in releasing the mold.

Be sure to clean up the edges of the eye area with your finger to get a nice sharp line.

 Piping gel or buttercream icing can be used to adhere the fondant to the cookie.

The backdrop is decorated with a simple garland.

Chocolate cupcakes were flavored with cinnamon and cayenne pepper.

The rose mold and simple flowers decorate the mini cupcakes.

Chocolate Skull Pops

A wood grain mat was used on the fondant before attaching to the cookie.

Vendor Credits:  Party Styling and Desserts by Jeannie Gearin Thepastytip.blogspot.com

Printables by etsy.com/shop/happythought

Products Used

Tree Bark Texture Mat

Floral Day of the Dead Skull
Jeweled Day of the Dead Skull
Ribbon Rose Set A