3 Tips for Decorating Like A Pro

By no means am I saying that I my decorated cakes look professional; I am not that delusional. But I know a little more than the average person, and sometimes my cakes don’t turn out half bad. I’ve figured out some pretty neat stuff through all my successes and failures, and thought I’d share it with you.

1. Vegetable Oil

I’m not talking about greasing the pan, I use it to grease the fondant. Most places will tell you to use powdered sugar to keep the fondant from sticking on your counters when you roll it out, but it makes such a mess and can dry out or make your fondant powdery looking. I don’t know how I started doing this, but it works just as well to spray some vegetable oil non-stick spray on your counter instead. And it makes your fondant nice and shiny! Just be careful not to use too much, that could be gross.

2. Tools

I was taught in math class that the calculator is a crutch, but I look at it as a tool. I love tools, they make things easier! I have a lot of baking tools but one of the most useful for fondant decoration is a Ribbon Cutter. Since I’ve gotten it I use it every time I decorate a cake. A fondant ribbon or some stripes is a really easy and cute way to decorate a cake, and the cutter satisfies the need I have for perfectly straight lines.

3. Keep it clean

If you were to put two plain cakes, one professionally done and one homemade, next to each other you would probably know which one is professional. The key to making something look like you bought it is nice clean edges and level layers. When you’re making the layers, use a cake leveler to make sure they’re even. When you coat with buttercream, make sure it’s even. You can even square off the top edge of the cake using your angled spatula, and chill before you add fondant or more buttercream.

4. Do what you know

Fondant covered cakes have been all the rage the last few years, but it’s not always necessary. Pick a skill or two that you can do well, and do it well! It’s better to pick something that you’re good at and use it artfully than to try a bunch of things and cover the cake with them. It helps to plan out what you’re going to do in advance, and as things go wrong you can add or subtract. Save the new skills for the practice run!

6 Baking Rules of Thumb

The best way to learn is from your mistakes. But with baking, mistakes can be frustrating and wasteful! So here are my six rules of thumb for mistake-free baking, that I learned from my own mishaps.

1. Best recipes have few and simple ingredients.
2. Use exact measurements, except with these situations:
        a. When the recipe says “scant” or          “generous.” Scant means just under and generous means a little over.
        b. If you’re measuring vanilla. As long as you don’t put in 1/2 cup where it asks for 1 tablespoon, you’ll be fine. Who doesn’t love a little extra vanilla?
         c. When using chocolate chips or any other addition like nuts. You would need to use a lot of chocolate chips to ruin a batch of cookies, so go nuts!
3. Butter should always be softened when the recipe tells you it should.
4. Don’t open the oven unless you’re rotating what you’re baking.
5. Let your cookies, cakes, and cupcakes cool! Wait to add frosting so it won’t melt, and don’t close them in a container until they’re cooled off.
6. Prepare your equipment! For whipped cream, chill your bowl and whisk in advance. For egg whites/meringue, your bowl must be completely clean and cool, any debris can keep them from fluffing up.

I hope this helps! Do you have any rules of thumb that I missed here?

7 Weird Baking Terms and What They Really Mean

One day my brother and I decided to cook a fancy dinner. We went through a bunch of cookbooks to find something challenging and delicious to make, and found something that looked good and had ingredients that we already had. We started reading the directions, and the first step was to “Caramelize the mirepoix.” Huh? What the hell is a mirepoix (pronounced meer-pwa)? Even though we both speak French, we had no idea what this meant and ditched the recipe. New cooking and baking vocabulary can turn you away from a great recipe, so here are some terms that will help you jump right in.

Cream the butter

This phrase is found in a lot of baking recipes, but what does it really mean? It’s the base for the Nestlé Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe and many others; it basically means combing the butter and sugar by beating them together. It’s easiest to do by putting the butter in the bowl and beating it on medium speed with a hand or electric mixer. Once the butter is fluffed up, add in the sugar and beat again; the result should be nice and fluffy. Make sure that you used softened butter for this! A lot of things can go wrong if the butter isn’t soft.

Bain Marie

Another French term, this is just a water bath for heating things like chocolate, eggs, and sugar. It usually includes a medium saucepan half-filled with water and put on medium heat on the stove. Then take a bowl that fits halfway in the saucepan so it’s just resting in the water, and put whatever needs to be heated in there. This is the best way to melt chocolate so it doesn’t burn, and can be used for things like meringue and bases for buttercream.

Folding

We’re not talking about laundry here; folding is a way of mixing or combining ingredients gently. This technique is used for everything from Chocolate Mousse to French Macarons. It means that you are using usually a spatula to sweep around the sides of the bowl and underneath the ingredients you are combining. It’s important to fold when it tells you to fold and not mix (circular motions that cut through the batter); folding is usually called for when you have to retain air or fluffiness in a batter. Just be gentle and you’ll be fine!

Confectioner’s Sugar

This might be an easy one, but when I first started baking I had no idea what it was. Confectioner’s sugar is just a fancy name for powdered sugar, it is not plain white or granulated sugar. If it looks like the kind of thing that’s very powdery and that you would sprinkle on a doughnut, then you’ve got the right stuff.

Alternating Additions

I think you would be most likely to see this in a recipe for cake. Typically there will be a batter or dough that is already started, and you alternate adding a liquid and a powder, usually flour or sugar, to it.

Food Processor

A food processor is usually used to chop things up or grind them into crumbs (like nuts or Oreos), but can also be used to make things like cookie dough. When I want some chopped walnuts for example, I use either my ancient Cuisinart Food Processor or a Ninja. But I’ve also made cookie dough in it too, although I prefer my KitchenAid Mixer. It depends on what you’re making, but it’s not always necessary to use one over another kitchen gadget. The food processor is nice because the lid stays on while mixing, and there’s sometimes a hole in the top that lets you add things without a mess while it’s still mixing.

Heavy Cream vs. Whipping Cream

Don’t stress if you bought one and the recipe calls for the other! They do the same thing.

 

I hope this helps you attack some new amazing recipes! Did I miss the weirdest baking term you’ve ever come across? Give me a shout, I’m definitely going to make a part 2 to this list.

Choosing Wisely

Making cakes to look like an identifiable object is definitely not easy. One of the most important parts of doing so is choosing your ingredients wisely!

For this Formula 1 Car cake, there are some things that you can’t see that are part of the construction that are disguised. First, what did you think the tires were, rice krispy treats? Wrong. They are actually Ring Dings covered in fondant. As a lazy person, I decided to use them because they were already the right shape and size.

Cake would have been too fragile to stand on its side like that, and I would have had to hand cut rice krispies which would not have yielded a perfect circle. Finding something like that is important and can save you a lot of work, so choose wisely! The best way to do this is to just raid the snack aisle in your nearest supermarket or Wal-Mart, be creative and don’t be afraid to use something!

Want to learn my methods for making a shaped cake? Check out my tips for Making a Shaped Cake here!