Sugarcraft chat

[wem]

I started a thread for cake people a while back but it got a bit lost in Chat so thought I'd try to tempt people into our lovely new baking topic.

Hopefully I'll see some of the posters from the chat thread, but for any new people popping in, introductions: I'm wem, I'm a recent cake obsessive and have been bothering mumsnetters about it a fair bit as I'm starting up cake decorating business. I don't have anywhere near the experience or knowledge of some of the posters in here, but I do have an excessive willingness to chat about cake :)

Let's try this again, eh?

Wem, website is going nowhere at the moment; it's the end of the Rotary year so I'm snowed under. Hopefully next week will be a bit quieter !

Bum, fairy woman has pulled out. Exciting to have had the enquiry though.

new booking for this weekend - ordination cake for vicar :) Cake in oven as we speak type

wem, looks to me as if those flowers are painted with petal dust+paintmate. It's the only thing that would account for the texture of hte white

wem, are you interested in cocoa painting ? I can scan and email you some stuff if you like i remember

That would be great Nigel, if you could. I got excited by the idea and went and bought some cocoa butter but haven't had a chance to use it yet. What's paintmate? I googled it when you mentioned it before but only found a Black and Decker thingy for painting rooms, and I doubt that's what you're talking about...

An ordination cake eh? And a cake in the oven at 11pm? You clearly have a very different bedtime to me

Ooooooooooooooohhhhh my order arrived today, I can't wait to try out some modeling, but after a very long day at work I'm too knackered to do anything tonight.

You and me both, Viking (knackered - no parcels here). I really should be making seafood life for DH's diving cake. Maybe after the DC are in bed.

OK, experts - what is the best way to do sand, do you think? Also all inspirational pictures of scuba-diving cakes welcome at this point as I am running out of time, energy and imagination.

Cakewrecks did a sundays sweets on a beach theme here. It mentions using something called Nilla wafers for sand, which I guess are american but you could see if there's an equivalent. Otherwise crushed digestives or golden caster sugar?

Cute scuba cakes here and here and an absolutely incredible one here.

Vikingvagine, bet your excited to start, oh go on gave a go at something, i got in after working till 7.0clock and i made a batch of cupcakes as i promised them some in work tomorrow, daren't go in otherwise, i've made some pink hearts, blossoms, tinys flowers etc etc, i do hate it though when it practically goes down in one mouthful, all that work for a sceond in the mouth!! at least it shows they like them though!

Hi Wem, those cakes are so good arent they? Have you ever looked at Cake Fantasy, some good ones on there to!

Stealth - I used crushed digestives for sand on my Octonauts cake, it looked amazingly real.

Viking - I am supposed to making Angelina Ballerina but an too knackered to even get my kit out the car!

Thanks, blueberry. Have added digestives (or maybe rich teas for tropical sand?) to the shopping list.

Thanks for the research, Wem - that Australian cake is genius. I wish I had the time and skill to attempt it. I think I am going for something more like the circling sharks - how do you think you support the sharks so that they don't fall off? I might have a go at a shark tonight, to give it a chance to dry, and a few more fish/shells from the moulds I have. I should really paint the fish that I already have, but I think I am too tired for that (another 5 hours in the car tomorrow [yawn]).

Stealth your can do the sharks on florist wires or tooth picks and poke them in at the last minute.

That's what I was thinking - bit worried they won't dry enough to support their own weight though (I had better stop faffing and go and make one, or I'll never know!)

You clearly have a very different bedtime to me

3am is late here.....

if you add cmc to the sugarpaste they should dry quite hard and quicker too. if you use a thicker florist wire 18 or 20 they should be strong enough to hold the weight. Another tip is to heat the wire in a candle until red hot before poking into the shark and it will melt the sugar and bond it to the wire so you don't end up with the shark slipping off.

Sharks duly made and drying draped over baking tins to give them (hopefully) the right curvature. I seem to have run out of yellow colouring paste which is a right royal PITA as I wanted to paint some of my fish yellow. I think I have enough pre-coloured yellow for flippers etc - I hope so, because I can't see anyway I will have time to get to a shop to get some (nearest one ~13 miles and not on the way anywhere ). Likewise heavy gauge wires - all the ones I have were bought for flowers - so I think it will be toothpicks, plenty of sugar glue, and hoping for the best.

LOL at 3am, Nigel. Someone once asked DS if he helped me with cakes - he said "No, because Mummy only makes cakes in the middle of the night when we are asleep". All-nighters are not unknown.

Anyway, work tomorrow, so sleep now...

Stealth - if it is gel colour Morrisons have started selling them, the are quite good too!

I need to make 4 cake tiers which are identically pink - now I can't make enough mix all at once (they are 12, 10,8 and 6 inches) so how do I get them all as close to the same pink as possible?

Thanks, blueberry - the nearest Morrisons is actually even further [live in the middle of nowhere]. Fortunately, I remembered that there is a hobbycraft only a couple of minutes detour on the 100mile journey to where I am working today. So I have yellow colour. What I don't have is a 6" cake board because hobbycraft only stock 8" and up . Not sure what I am going to do about that - layers were supposed to be 8" and 6" and my poor sharks are drying to that size now .

Could you cut an 8inch board down to fit the 6 inch cake? Depends if you've got a thin board or a drum.

I've got a complex solution for you blueberry, it depends how exact you want it to be! You could take a quarter (or some other fraction) of each batch of cake mix by weight, make a note of the weights, and then combine them all in one bowl and mix to a darker pink than you want. Then weigh each portion out to add back to the original batches.

So, for example, say the 12 inch cake mix weighs 1kg, take out 250g of that, and the 6 inch weighs 200g (not very realistic figures!) take 50g out of that, so you have a quarter of each of the batches. Add them together, make them dark pink, then weigh out 250g to add back to the 12 inch batch, and should have 50g left to put back in to the 6 inch batch. Theoretically should have the same proportion of pink colour in each!

I got a thin one as it is intended to be hidden. I will have a go at cutting it (don't have much choice, really).

I like the mathematical approach to colouring icing. Alternatively, you could make them deliberately shaded light - dark [lazy].

Blueberry - buy a couple of blocks of precoloured sugarflair and a couple of blocks of white. Mix in the same weight proportion per cake - eg. 350g to 1000g would become 87.5g colour to 100g white.

Or just buy precoloured icing and amend your costing accordingly.