Decorate The Cake: June 2014

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Wide Floral Lace

Thank you Sandy Swart for the great blog post for today!

Our preacher's wife was retiring from teaching from our parochial school after 18 years of teaching. She is a North Carolina gal and has never lost her accent. I remember years ago that she mentioned that dogwood were her favorite flower so I decided to use dogwood on the centerpiece cake for her retirement reception at the school.

The plates the school board was providing had a light aqua background with soft pink roses and a creamy hydrangea type flower printed on them. I was supposed to create something that coordinated with the plates. I knew that dogwood wasn't on the plates but really wanted to put 18 dogwood flowers on her cake - each dogwood symbolizing 1 year of teaching at the school. I decided to incorporate the aqua color by using two lace pieces diagonally across two corners of the sheet cake.

The Border - Wide Floral lace press that I purchased from Decorate The Cake at a cake club DOS in Council Bluffs, NE, was the solution to my design challenge. I mixed aqua MMF (left over from graduation time) with white fondant, rolled it out to #3 thickness with my KA Pasta roller.

I placed this over the lace mold cavity and pressed the second part of the press into it until the edges cut the fondant. I removed the lace mold piece and cleaned up the edges by using my finger to gently pull any fondant along the edge to the middle of the lace piece. I removed the lace piece by placing the mold and lace face down and rolling the silicon mold back to release the fondant lace.

With a little dusting with luster dust, I place the ribbon on opposite corners and trimmed the lace to the angle of the cake edge. I chose those two particular corners so that my dogwood branches and lace pieces would leave me an open area in the bottom left of the sheet cake to write the message.

I piped the branches on, placed the gumpaste dogwood flowers on and then piped a few leaves with green (again coordinating with the green in the paper ware). Since there was a predominate color of pink on the plates, I chose to print the salutations in pink to incorporate the color onto the cake design. Since the parochial school is preschool-8th grade, I chose to print the words so that the younger children could read it. We all call her Amy but the children address her as Mrs. Hofman so I decided the message should be: "We will miss you, Mrs. Hofman!"

When I look at a lace mold, I immediately contemplate in my mind how I would use it on a wedding cake. Sometimes we just have to "think outside of the box" or our "norm". I was happy with the end result on this sheet cake using Border- Wide Floral silicone mold from Decoratethecake.com

For Step-by-Step directions, with photos on using a lace press, check the Lace it Up! blog post.

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

DTC Product Used:
Border - Wide Floral

Monday, June 9, 2014

Creating an Isomalt Pond

Today we will make the base pond and add the elements created in previous blog posts to get a great little pond scene.

First use some aluminum foil, you will want to use a non-stick foil or if you do not have a non-stick foil use foil that you spray with cooking spray and then lightly wipe the excess off leaving a thin layer of spray.

Wrinkle the foil up a bit, then smooth it back out. The wrinkles add additional dimension to the back side of the isomalt. Next manipulate the foil to build a dam to keep the isomalt contained when pouring out the pond. Place the foil onto a silpat to help protect your workspace.

I used CakePlay Blue Isomalt Nibs, but you could use clear and add blue food coloring. Place the nibs in a microwave safe container with a pour spout to melt, warming in 15-30 second increments until fully melted. Stir with a bamboo skewer and let sit to allow bubbles to dissipate. Then pour the isomalt onto your prepared foil. Maybe you can aim better than I do and actually keep it all in the dam.

You don't have to fill the entire area -- this is just a guide.

Once the isomalt is fully cooled gently pull the foil away from your pond.

Invert onto a silpat and peel back the foil.

Place the pond the cake board or a cake top. Using isomalt as your glue start adding in all of the elements created from out previous blog posts.

Dragonfly Directions