Baby Shower Cake Decorating Technique - Step by Step Instructions
Cake by Yvonne Poor Phone: 870-992-3568
The main "bed" of the cake consists of three different cake the largest is 11" x 9", the second tier is 9" x 7" and the top tier is 7" x 5". 4th cake 6inches by 6 inches and 1½ inches high
What you need:
Pouring fondant icing
2 ½ lbs of rolled fondant colored turquoise, or the color of your choice
2 lbs of rolled fondant colored pink or the color of your choice
1 1/2lbs of rolled fondant colored lilac or the color of your choice
fondant smoother
pizza cutter to cut the edges of the icing easily
Butter icing for the ruffles
3 parchment cones to make ruffles
Little royal icing (see above) to pipe the bedding decorations
Thin tips for the piping a #3-5 for the pearls
Piping gel For the little pearls and flowers. (or recipe below)
You may use a pound, sponge,fruit or cake of your personal preference.
Basic Pound Cake Recipe
Ingredients:
3 cups cake flour
6 large eggs
1 pound butter
1 pound sugar
2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Method
Sift the flour, baking soda, and baking powder into a large mixing bowl, add the salt and sugar. Soften the butter to room temperature and add to the other ingredients. Mix in the Eggs one at a time, and beat on low. Slowly add the buttermilk with the vanilla extract. Beat on low for another minute, until the ingredients are thoroughly combined. Pour the batter into an oiled cake tin and bake for about an hour. Cool thoroughly.
Genoise Sponge Recipe:
Ingredients
4 cups sifted cake flour
1/2 cup white sugar
4 pinches salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
16 eggs
2 cups white sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 4 x 8 inch round cake pan. Line with parchment paper and grease it as well. Lightly flour pan and paper. Sift together the flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, and salt onto a piece of wax paper. Place the eggs into a mixing bowl set over a pan of hot (not boiling) water. Add the 1/2-cup sugar to the eggs and whisk until the mixture feels warm (not hot) to the touch, about body temperature. Place the bowl onto a mixer and beat on medium speed until the mixture becomes pale yellow in color and falls off the end of the whisk attachment in long ribbons. Add the vanilla. Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture to the beaten egg and fold in. Continue to add the remainder of the flour, folding it in each time.
Place about 1 cup of the batter into the bowl containing the melted butter and combine the butter with the batter. Add this back to the main batter and fold it in. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
Immediately bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for about 25 minutes or until the top is a light brown. Cool in pan on a rack about 10 minutes and then invert onto a rack. It is best to invert it again onto another rack so that it cools with the top up. Let cool completely before cutting or frosting.
Butter Cream Meringue Italian Recipe:
Ingredients:
The Egg Whites
2/3-cup egg whites (4 to 5 whites)
A pinch of salt
1/4-teaspoon cream of tartar sugar syrup
The Sugar Syrup Ingredients:
1-1/3 cups sugar
1/2-cup water
Instructions:
Beat the egg whites at slow speed until they have foamed, add the salt and cream of tartar, gradually increase the speed to fast, and beat until the soft peak stage. Turn the machine to slow as you complete the sugar syrup.
Bring the sugar and water to a simmer, beating the sugar crystals that form on the side of the pan back into the mixture by stirring with a wooden spoon. Once the sugar has completely dissolved, cover tightly and boil to the softball stage (234°F to 240°F; 112°C to 116°C).
Pour the egg whites in a slow arc onto the boiling syrup whilst still beating, but take care not to splash the metal beater with the egg whites. Slowly increase the beating speed until the mixture is cool about ten minutes, when the meringue should be shiny and in stiff peaks. Add color if using, Because of the consistency of the Italian meringue it is a good icing to use as a two color effect.
Keep about twenty percent of the icing as white, and color the other eighty percent. Ice the cake with the colored icing and smooth with the plastic icing smoother and then pipe the white icing in squiggles around the cake. Or do it the other way around and ice the cake in white and then pipe the meringue as squiggles, this is a forgiving surface if the cake is not completely level. In other words it is useful for hiding a multiple of sins!
Quick Pour Fondant Icing Recipe
Ingredients
6 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1/2-cup water
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 teaspoon almond extract
Method
In a saucepan, combine the confectioners' sugar, water and the corn syrup. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until it reaches a temperature of 92 degrees F (33 degrees C.) By this time the mixture should be thin enough to pour, but thick enough to coat the cake. Prior to icing cover the cake with the apricot preserve and then place the cake on a cooling rack. Pour fondant over iced cake, flowing from center and moving out in a circular motion. Touch up sides with a spatula.
Looking at the cake visually, there are two oblong cakes one on top of each other, with a third layer on the top that is square. These three layers have been decorated to resemble a bed, the base of the cakes have been a ruffle attached which resembles a valance on a bed.
The bottom two layers have the same design and the top square has different piping. In front of the three main cakes there are smaller gem cakes, which resemble babies building bricks.
Before we look at the construction of the cake in detail what does it look like and what is the theme. Loosely speaking the main cake suggests to me the story of goldilocks and the three bears. There are three layers of bed and one teddy! The little gem cakes at the front are merely children’s building bricks.
The first thing to decide is what are the possibilities of the cake. How can it be constructed? The small building blocks can be any type of cake, a sponge, a flavored sponge a fruitcake or a vanilla cake. In fact any type of cake that you want. It does not have to bear any weight, they can be partially stacked but their holding power is not an issue.
The three-layered cake however has to withstand a certain amount of weight, in the resulting tiers as well as the weight of the icing. From an engineering point of view I would avoid the light sponges such as genoise sponge. The cake has been iced with rolled butter cream or rolled fondant.
There are several options here. You can make three separate types of cake for the layers. The bottom tier has to bear the most weight therefore a fruitcake or a solid pound cake would be the most sensible option. A pound cake is a yellow cake with a fine texture, and is so called because the recipe originally called for a pound of butter sugar and flour.
There are some recipes included in this e book to choose from but there is a large selection of free recipes at CakeChannel.com Forum. If you are using more than one type of cake place the heaviest cake on the bottom.
Lets decorate the cakes. We shall start with the smallest gems, the building blocks.
You need to start with a deep square cake, it has to be at least an inch and a half deep at it lowest point. The reason for this is if you look at the blocks they are square and are an inch and a half by an inch and a half. A nine-inch square cake by an inch and a half will give you six blocks when cut.
Decorating the smaller gem cakes
There are many ways to decorate these cakes you can use a basic butter cream icing and apply it to the cakes as flat as you can smooth it out. Then you can pipe on the edgings and the alphabet. However a glace icing here gives as a smoother and more professional finish. If you do want a simpler glaze than the glace icing then melt ½ cup of white chocolate with a tablespoon of milk. This will give a simple glaze with a flat even finish. The taste is excellent as it is white chocolate. First we will cut the cake into squares measuring an inch and a half by an inch and a half decorate the smaller iced gem cakes a coating of glace icing and then butter cream is piped on as the edging shells, and the alphabet.
Glace Icing Recipe
Ingredients
100g (4oz) icing sugar - sieved
15ml spoon (1tbsp) water
This recipe is sufficient for the iced gems cake
Method
Mix sieved icing sugar with water in a basin. Beat until smooth; add color and flavoring as required. The icing consistency needs to be thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. If it's too thin thicken it withy sugar, if it's too thick add a few more drops of water. Any adjustments you make should be small. Add the water in drops from a skewer.
Variations
Orange/Lemon Glaze Icing: Replace the water with Orange or Lemon Juice.
Chocolate Glaze Icing: Sieve 2 x 5ml spoons (2 tsp) of cocoa powder with the icing sugar before mixing with the water.
Coffee: Replace the water with strong black coffee. Or add half of chocolate and half of coffee.
Cover the squares with your chosen icing. If you are using glace icing you a large bowl and place a cake rack on top pf the bowl. Place the cake square to be iced on top of the cake rack and pour over the icing using a large spoon. The bowl "recycles" the excess. Once the icing has stopped falling then place the cake on a rack to cool only three sides have been covered, so place the cakes the un-iced side down.
The next stage is to pipe the borders around the faces of the little building blocks. The star tip can be used to form a shell border, touch the tip to the cakes surface, squeeze a little icing out, and then raise the icing bag a little and let a little roll of icing drop back down. Then bring the tip back down towards the cake at a slight angle to form the tail of the shell. Make each connecting shell the same size around the cake until they have connected at all borders.
Then pipe tiny beads or attach pre-bought little white pearls or silver beads to the cake. The alphabet letters are piped on with butter cream icing usually in a series of pastel colors that spell the word baby.
The main "bed" of the cake consists of three different cake the largest is 11" x 9", the second tier is 9" x 7" and the top tier is 7" x 5". There are two possibilities to decorate. It is a matter of personal preference, which may involve the cost of the rolled icing. I would use rolled fondant icing to get the perfect satin smooth finish, but if the cost is prohibitive then you can use rolled butter cream.
First of all decide whether you want to ice only the visible parts of the layers or all the layers. I personally recommend that you ice all the top surfaces of the cake, including the parts hidden under the middle layer and the top layer. There are several practical reasons for this the whole cakes keeping properties are improved as all the moisture is locked inside the cake, and also all the cake has to be eaten and to ice only the visible bits mean that most of the cake does not have an icing and will look odd on a plate when it is served.
The bottom layer will take approximately 2 ½ lbs of icing the middle layer 2lbs and the top layer 1 1/2lbs. Make up a pouring fondant icing and separately place the crumb layer of fondant on all three layers, let dry. This layer keeps the crumbs out and gives a tacky layer for the icing to adhere to. Place the bottom tier on the serving dish and anchor with a little of the pouring icing.
To decorate the bottom layer of the cake
Roll out the 2 ½ lbs of rolled fondant icing for the bottom layer in this instance it is turquoise, but you can color it any color you choose. Place over the layer and use a fondant smoother to create a smooth surface. If the fondant cracks on no account use water to smooth it as fondant is basically sugar and the water will dissolve it, roll a little shortening on your fingers and smooth out if there are still very fine cracks repair with butter cream.
To pipe the icing "pearls" on your cake, fit a round-holed icing tube a #3-5 tip onto a pastry bag. Then, simply coat the inside of the pastry bag with clear piping gel before loading the pastry bag with icing. Fill one side of the bag with white icing, the other side with some turquoise icing. When you squeeze and release, glistening "pearls" of icing are formed, which resemble little pearls.
Piping Gel Recipe
2 envelopes (2 tablespoons) Knox unflavored gelatin
2 tablespoons cold water
2 cups light Karo syrup
Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water in a small saucepan and let it rest for five minutes, then heat on low until the gelatin has dissolved, being careful not to dissolve the gelatin. Add the karo syrup and heat thoroughly, then cool and keep the clear gel in the refrigerator for up to two months. To color it for use on the cakes add a paste or gel or food coloring drops. You can use it from a parchment cone or a little squaeezie bottle.
To decorate the middle tier the pink layer
Level the cake and roll out the fondant colored to your choice in this example pink. Color a little of the piping gel pink. Pipe a little circle which will represent the center of a little flower and then trace either four or six petals around that center as in the diagram below. Place these floral decorations around the cake but exclude the portion that will be hidden with the top lilac layer.
To decorate the top purple layer
Color a 1 ½ of the icing purple, or another color of your choice roll out and smooth the fondant down on the cake. Color a little of the piping gel lilac and pipe a series of random circular movements over the cake as in the diagram underneath.
This method of decoration is known as scribbling and is a perfect technique for masking a less than perfect surface. It is also a very quick way of adding texture to icing It can be done with a small straight icing tip and the gel in a parchment cone or in a "squeezie" bottle.
Adding the ruffles to all the layers
The technique is the same; it is a question of using the same matching icing to all the layers. Roll out the color of icing to match the layer and adhere to the layer with a little royal icing. Pipe the ruffles on with the piping gel to look like the valance on the bottom of the sheet. Bear in mind I have started at the left hand side as I am left handed, for most right-handed people starting on the right and working towards the left is more comfortable.
A variation on ruffles is to make up some butter cream icing in the color that you want the ruffle to be and smear up the ¼ of an inch of icing and then repeat further to the left, which will give a textured effect. If you do not want to create the ruffle with icing it can be done by attaching a pleated ribbon. However you decorate it will be determined by your skill level and the method that makes you feel more comfortable.
To finish the cake - decorate with sugar or real flowers and a teddy bear.
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