More Valentine Fun

So do you remember last week when I mentioned that extra cake I baked along with our petits gâteaux?  You dont? Shame on you.  ;) Today, I am going to share with you an incredibly easy technique that is guaranteed to impress your friends and to woo your Valentine.

This fantasy floral design reminds me of the most romantic of flowers, the red rose and is really quite simple to achieve.

We first begin with a 6" heart shaped red velvet cake.  (Thank you again, Sir Duncan Hines.  I bow to your adept culinary prowess.)  

After a quick coating of Vanilla-Almond Buttercream, we are ready to cover our patisserie with fondant!

It is important to note that using a crusting buttercream is very helpful when frosting a cake that is to to be covered in fondant.  The smoother you can make a cake with your buttercream, the smoother your finished fondant covered cake will be!  For this torte, I iced my cake, then let it sit for about 10 minutes to allow time for the buttercream to crust.  A few moments of internet surfing and facebook lurking and it's time to check our buttercream!  

Once my icing had crusted, I was able to smooth out the top and sides of the cake, using a plain white Viva Paper Towel.  This is called the Viva method.  A serial baker would tell you that Viva is the only paper towel that is pattern-free and thick enough and smooth enough to work.  Remember:  No Paper Towel is created equal! Don't have Viva Paper Towels?  No problem!  You can achieve the same result using a piece of parchment paper or a parchment triangle used for piping bags.

Now that we have a beautiful fondant covered cake, we are ready to create our gorgeous fantasy floral design.  (We will go over covering a cake with fondant another time.)  

For now, let's check out the tools we will need to achieve our design:

We will need about 6 ounces of red fondant kneaded with 1/4 tsp of Tylose Powder to make modeling paste.  We will also need some powdered sugar to dust the work surface, some clear plastic vinyl to cover the modeling paste to keep it from drying out, a sharp knife, a straight edge (not shown), a rolling pin, a ball tool, and a thin foam pad.

Now to get started on the fun!  Let's roll our red modeling paste out very thin to about 1/16th inch thick.  Using our knife and our straight edge, we cut our paste into 1/2" thick strips.  Since we are working with only one strip at a time, we will use the clear vinyl to cover the rest of our paste.  

Using our ball tool, we ruffle the edge of one side of our first strip.  To do this, we run the ball tool along the edge of the paste, using a fair amount of pressure.  We need to make sure that we are rubbing along the edge of the paste, as well as making contact with the foam pad at the same time.  This can take a bit of practice at first, but soon you will perfect the technique and will be able to move along with great haste! (LOL great haste for great paste!  Oh the cleverness of me!)

Now that we have our first ruffle completed, we are ready to apply it to our cake!  Before we do this, let's take a moment to talk about glue.  Most crafters are all too familiar with the many forms of adhesives available to aid in the creative process.  Often, it comes down to the right tool for the job.  This is universally the same no matter what form of creative expression you prefer.  The serial baker would always know what the best option is for the given confectionery challenge.  As for me, I can but offer my best opinion as to what form of adhesion will work best for our project.  But, I assure you, many applications will work here.


For this project we will use sugar glue.  Sugar glue is made by mixing a very small amount (1/8th tsp or less) of Tylose powder into a small sealable container with a tablespoon or so of hot water then placing it in the refrigerator to set up for several hours.  It will not dissolve right away, nor will it want to mix with the water, so letting it rest in the chill chest offers it a chance to congeal.  (LOL congeal is such a funny word, isn't it?  It makes me belly jiggle-giggle.)  If you do not have Tylose, you can dissolve a small amount of gumpaste in hot water too!  Or, you could pipe a thin line of buttercream or Royal icing to hold your decorations in place.  If you work quickly, even brushing the surface of your fondant cake with vodka (don't worry, the alcohol evaporates), clear vanilla extract, or plain water should do the trick.  I prefer sugar glue, however, because it gives more time to maneuver our sugar paste decor.  It also dries clear, which makes it much more ideal an adhesive than buttercream or royal icing in this type of application.  (Whew! so many words! Let's get to the good part, shall we?!!!)


Using a small, clean, paintbrush, we brush a small section of the outside border of our cake with sugar glue.

We carefully postion our first ruffle onto the outer border of the cake, making certain that the ruffle extends past the edge of the cake about an 1/8th of an inch or so.  We will continue to repeat the steps until we have finished our first row of ruffles around the cake.

Here we will continue to the process with another layer, careful to position each layer so that it overlaps the previous layer enough to cover any exposed white areas of the cake.  We must try not to mash the ruffled part of our paste strips down, so that we can still manipulate our petals later on if we need to.  We may also need to trim our strips to accomodate the shape of the cake.  We must do so, carefully with a sharp knife.  Using our cut strip, we will continue placing ruffles around the cake.

Wow, isn't repetition fun? It may seem a bit tedious at first to make these ruffles, but it will help you to perfect this technique.  You will also be pleasantly surprised at how quickly it comes together, since your strips go further with each layer!

See!  I told you it was fast! ;)

Once we get to the center of our cake, we may find it easiest to roll our ruffle strip into a flower shape, carefully manipulating the ruffles to look like petals and gluing into place.  Once we have covered the entire surface of our cake, we can use the handle of our paint brush and gently lift any ruffles that have stuck together to achieve the look we want.  I'm sure a true serial baker could spend countless minutes doing this, but I am all about letting art speak for itself.  In nature, nothing is perfect, so how on earth can you expect a fantasy flower to look perfect? ;)

All that is left to do now is add a border to our cake.  I think I'll put some of my fancy-pants, self-promoting ribbon around the bottom.  Simple, yet elegant.  For your cake, though, you can do whatever makes your heart smile!


Well, we did it.  We made a cake that will be perfect for your paramour!  Pipe a love note on the cake board, and you'll be getting all kinds of love on Valentine's Day!  Oh, and if you do, I want to hear all about it.  (except anything that is NOT G rated.  You don't wanna see me blush!)


Happy Everything and Happy Caking!


Confectionately Yours,


Wendy


P.S. Here are a few links to some of my favorite cake sites:


www.globalsugarart.com
www.cakecentral.com
www.cakesupplies4u.com