Cake decorating

[kbaby]

I made a cake for DD's birthday this week and followed the book's step by step to the leter, however there were a few things that turned out wrong and I cant work out what I can do next time to prevent it.
Can anyone help?

1. the cake was round and it said to drape the ready rolled icing over it and smooth over. Well I did that but imagine a tablecloth with the drapes hanging down, that what my icing looked like. How do I get the icing to cover the cake but without the excess drapes, I tried trimming it and joining the seems together but they could still be seen. 2)How do they actually get the icing so smooth? Mine was still bumpy and my cake appeared to sag which meant that my icing didnt look smooth and the cake leant to one side. 3)I was making models and flowers which I had to roll in icing sugar etc to roll out, how do I get the icing sugar powder off the finished results?

Sounds exactly like my cake decorating attempts, I will be watching this thread with interest...

I usually fit a circular top peice then a long strip for the sides its not too bad disguising the seam, especially if you are decorating with flowers.

Try Trex instead of icing sugar as theres no white residue.

Personally, I use a really, really big piece of ribbon...

Ha ha yes my fave decorating thing at the mo is slathering it in choc fudge icing then "glueing" spiky shards of chocolate up the sides and toppling choc strawbs into the centre. It looks like a frozen chocolate palace, especially if you do 3 teirs. Its also a peice of piss to do....

Heres the link for the cake if anyones interested. It was only the 2nd cake ive ever made so possibly a bit too adventurous but you can clearly see the bumpyness and cracks in the icing.(didnt look like that in the book)

www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=18936953&uid=9277295&members=1

try this link

pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL470/9277295/18936953/318606104.jpg

and heres the front

//pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL470/9277295/18936953/318606111.jpg

If only, I was honestly disapointed in it. The white walls are meant to be really smooth and flat and I just could work out how to achieve that, I had to keep hiding the cracks with more flowers!
I dont think jane asher needs to worry quite yet [ grin]

Rather than try and describe how not to get excess "drapes", watch this

Wow kbaby! I think any little girl who saw that on her birthday would be over the moon!
Its fab- the flowers are gorgeous!

Luckily my 4 yr old was pleased.
Its a good job that I could pass it by as more of an authentic cottagey look and it was meant to be bumpy instead of confessing that it wasnt meant to be like that at all.

The flowers took me ages but were easy to do with a flower plunger.

It is very rustic, and I love the little lamp at the door!

I'm also new at this but have got a pretty smooth surface by putting a layer of butter icing on first and then using a small rolling pin to smooth the rolled icing. The only one I did that didn't work was because I rolled the icing too thin which made it much harder to work with.