Baking Project

Hi everyone.. sorry for not updating this blog more often. Please subscribe to my RSS feed if you haven’t done so. Anyway, today I was fasting (ada gak rasa macam nak pengsan, baru 1st day ganti ! ) so I was quite tired and free of cooking. Took out my gumpaste and started making these roses. I can assure you this technique is so much easier than the Wilton technique. You need only the calyx cutter. Ok, here’s the step by step tutorial.

First, make a cone shape from your gumpaste.

Then, for the petal, make a small ball.

Pinch to flatten it, making sure the edges are thin. Rub your fingers with shortening when doing this.

Brush a little water at the bottom and stick it to the cone. Try to cover the whole tip.

This is the first layer. The layering part is quite easy to remember. You will need :

My second layer is completed :

Continue till the 4th layer. Or you could stop here to make a bud.

Now, for the calyx you will need to use a cutter. If you don’t have any, you could just cut out the shape with a craft knife.

I use my fingers to pull and thin the calyx.

Brush some water and glue it to the base of the rose. Before that, pinch out the excess cone at the bottom of the rose.

So here’s the completed flowers.

Just leave it to dry, it can stand on its own due to the cone shape beneath. I like using this technique, its fast and easy. Probably most of you already know how to do this, but I still hope this tutorial will be useful to the newbies.

Time to sign off, thanks for stopping by and … smile ! Tomorrow’s Friday !

I’d like to show you one particular cake done by a student, Nana, which I think really looks beautiful. The cake was decorated with roses. Quite easy to do. First just rolled a piece of rectangular fondant or gumpaste. Fold into two. This is done by Nana :

Then roll, not too tightly, leave some space in between the layers.

Pinch off the excess sugarpaste at the bottom.

The completed cake, what do you think ?

I think it looks so pretty. Congrats to Nana for her first fondant cake !

Making gum paste roses can be time-consuming, sometimes I just make do with these simple fondant roses. My maid cum assistant is really good at this, here’s her in action.

First, roll a long strip, then start twirling it around till you get the size you want. Leave some space in between the layers and furl the edges. Pinch the excess fondant at the bottom. It’s done. Fast and easy.

I practice decorating a cake with these fondant roses today.

Yes, those are not real butterflies, I pinch it off my daughter’s jewelry box. By the time I finished decorating this cake, I was too tired to create a center piece. Step by step process on making this cake :

1. One layer of marzipan
2. Followed by a layer of fondant
3. Cut out a smaller circle in the centre until I can see the marzipan layer.
4. Put in the purple fondant layer. Crimp the sides and inside of the circle.
5. Then I coloured the background where the flowers will be placed, using my gel colouring and brush (felt like a true artist for a while ).
6. Arrange the cut out leaves, and roses.
7. Colour the leaves with gel colouring.
   
8. Make the bottom edging.
9. Brush the flowers, crimp edges and bottom edging with diluted pearl dust.

It’s better to colour using paste or powdered colouring, but I don’t have any.

Hope this gives you some idea on how to decorate your cake. The round circle can be replaced with pastillage which becomes very hard, and you can also do some painting on it. Or you could put a small edible image instead, lots of things you can come out with..

Ok, take care and have a good weekend ahead.

Do give it a try. It’s not that difficult, you only need patience and perseverance till you get it right .

Salam,