Cake of the... well, it's been a few months, hasn't it?

       So, it turns out that maintaining a new business AND a regularly kept blog is a real challenge! I apologize for the lengthy delay since my last post. If you want more frequent updates, like us on Facebook and follow our instagram account, I'm on those all the time!
     So, let's do a recap of some of my favorite cakes that I've decorated recently. Now, it should be noted, that some of these are not my original design, so I don't claim real ownership to all them. However, they are almost always tinkered with, if they are not my original concept.
      Without further delay, here are some of my favorite new cakes!

     This pretty little cake was for a classmate of mine. She was celebrating her adorable baby's first birthday! The theme was "Alice in Wonderland" and I loved the idea of doing a cake that wasn't just your every day topsy turvy, mad hatter take. This cake was not an original design, but I did alter it from being a 5 tiered wedding cake, to being a little more suitable for a baby's 1st birthday. I was really happy with how it came out.

      The DJ cake was a cute little birthday cake I made for one of our shop's neighbor's. She was celebrating around Thanksgiving, so the cake was her favorite fall flavor, pumpkin cake with cinnamon cream cheese icing. Sadly, in a sitcom-worthy twist, it turned out that one of her party guests accidentally SAT ON THE CAKE! That's why you always take a photo before it leaves the shop!




   
     These next cakes were made for our Valentine's Day store window. I had a lot of fun making pretty, love-inspired cakes. I adore the simplicity of the pennant cake and I think it could work for a lot of really cool weddings. The "Be Mine" cake allowed me to play around with painting and developing a deep, rich tone of red and gold on the bottom tier.
I even snuck in our initials into the window by "carving" into the birch bark of our rustic wedding cake. It features some of my favorite flowers, peonies and tulips.

    Believe it or not, this brightly colored cake was actually for a baby shower! The mom-to-be has a lot of love for Mexican art and textiles, so her sister selected them as inspiration for the cake. I LOVE the idea of a baby shower that isn't just pastels. I had a lot of fun piping all the details on this cool little cake. Side note: This cake was also ordered by a former classmate of mine. GFS PRIDE FOREVER!

   For my final cake, I wanted to show off one of my super-favorites. I made this cake at the request of a wonderful event planner who found me through the owner of the shop next to ours. She was putting together a big celebration and really wanted the look of multiple cakes and cupcakes for her dessert table. These cakes, including the ruffles, are iced with buttercream and decorated with hand painted gold cake lace.  I made a few purple peonies to garnish the cake and I LOVE how it all came out. I really hope everyone at the party enjoyed them. Just like I hope you have enjoyed this post. If you would like to talk about designing your own wedding or birthday cake, you can contact us through our website at www.frostedfoxcakeshop.com. Also, please follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. I promise I am way better at keeping up with those!

Grand Openings are a Great Time to Party!

     Hi Friends! It's been a while since I've posted and I'm very sorry for that. A LOT has happened since my last post, and that is why I have been so negligent of this blog. So, I'm going to start by writing a long overdue post about our grand opening and all the people we want to thank.

Sean and I grinning ear to ear during our grand opening.

 
  The big news is that we finally opened our shop at the Beginning of November. We soft opened on the 3rd and we had our official Grand Opening on the 6th. We celebrated by inviting our neighbors in for a cookies and milk party. We provided the cookies, the milk and a fun cake and our neighbors supplied the excitement. We were so thrilled to see so many families in our shop. People seemed to really enjoy the ambience and many of them treated themselves to some of our baked goods. It was a really great night!

Our customers seemed excited about our milk and cookies party.

  We followed up that party with our "Friends and Family" party the next evening when we had a private shindig with all those wonderful people who helped us along the way and kept our spirits up when it felt like we would never get it all done! I think we filled the shop past capacity, but it was a great group of people. We are really so lucky to have so many terrific people in our lives!
 
   With that in mind, I want to thank all the remarkable folks who helped make this happen. Thank you first and foremost to our parents. David, Kelley, Skip, and Dorothy, we absolutely would not have this shop without your support, your guidance and your overall fabulous parenting! Jamie, Katie, Alexis and Brian, you guys are phenomenal siblings, thanks for being there for us, you're the best!
 

Cake cutting is no longer just for
weddings. This is the second time
we "cut the cake."

     Next up, we have to thank the creative team that made the physical space of our shop into a reality. Val and Trudy at Ennis Nehez, your amazing eye for design, your quick problem solving skills, and your excitement for our project helped us envision a space more fabulous than we could ever dream up. Jonathan and your team with Duck Rabbit turned this shop into a beautiful reality that functions. I can't tell you all how many compliments we get on the way our shop looks and feels every day, it's really amazing. You turned our vague descriptions of our aesthetic into something real and breathtaking. Ingrid, thank you for being such a fantastic, patient building owner. We hope to be your tenants for a long, long time. Thank you to our neighbors for putting up with our construction, the noise, dust and traffic.

Tuba Dan entertaining our guests.

  Ben, Katie, Jesse, Jessie and Josh, thank you guys for helping us with some of the smaller, but super important elements of our logo design and branding elements. Ben and Katie, the logo is magnificent! Jesse and Jessie the wood-working is pitch-perfect!  Josh, the window signs are great and thank you for supplying us with your adobe software expertise! Susannah, thank you for helping us get the shop up and running. We could not have opened without your help. Our first week would not have been nearly as successful without your skills and eye for detail.  Dan "Tuba Dan" Nosheny, thank you for providing perfect accordion accompaniment for our opening party.
 

Nothing says "party" like balloons.

     We want to thank all of our mentors. Thank you Alex, Amy, Peri, Maureen, Kate, Susannah, Katie, and all the other wonderful decorators I have worked with. Your talent and artistry inspired me to work harder and become a better decorator. To the wonderful ladies at John and Kira's, Angela, Lorraine, Corrine, Heather and Megan, you showed me how fun work can be, even when your exhausted! To the crew at Culinart and Compass, thanks for teaching me the value of hard work and attention to detail. You set a great example for me to follow and taught me how to work as part of a team. Thank you all. Amy and John, Thank you for being great mentors to me and helping me hone in on how I envision myself as a business owner, even if I still don't really think of myself as one.
 
  Thank you to all of our friends who have been keeping up with our progress, either in person or via social media. It's so great to have your "likes" and well wishes to come home to each day. We miss you and if you are ever in Philly, come visit us. Also, thank you so much to those of you who don't know us, but have come by the shop to see what we're about. We are so grateful for your support, and I hope we can surpass your expectations!

     We've been very very busy keeping our shop up and running. I will try to write another post soon, but I'm not going to make any promises about when. In the meantime, stop in and say "Hello!"

The Frosted Fox has Finally Arrived!

It took a long time, but I can finally say that we are OPEN!

Me, Sean and Our Shop.

    We had our soft opening last Tuesday and we celebrated our Grand Opening this past Friday with a "Milk and Cookies" themed party for all of our neighbors. The party went great and I think it was very well attended. It was wonderful to see so many families stop by and welcome us to the neighborhood.

Our Wooden Trays in Full Use.

    As of today, we have been open for about a week and it has been great! We have a few awesome specialty orders on the horizon and we have been serving a small selection of treats to people who are checking out the new shop.  We have been welcomed by many of our new neighbors and it turns out that many of them were waiting for us to open almost as long as we were!

The Grand Opening Sign I Made.

   I am super happy with the way the shop has come out. It is perfectly adorable and I couldn't ask for a cuter space. We've heard it described as magical, adorable, beautiful, and, "like walking into a Wes Anderson movie." That last one is my favorite. Our designers, Ennis Nehez, did a wonderful job with the design of the space and our contractor, Duck Rabbit, executed the plans to perfection. Sean and I had a wonderful time decorating the window displays and adding all the little details to the display shelves.

Cakes in the Window, Finally!

   It hasn't been totally smooth sailing, we did have a few issues with equipment, I think I'll go into those on the next post. Nothing insurmountable, just a few growing pains. Overall, it's been such a great experience so far. Even though we have worked a ton of hours, it doesn't feel like it. We are so happy to be part of this neighborhood and I am super proud of all the hard work everyone has done to help us get here.
 Thanks everybody!

Cover Your Cakes in Sugarveil!

This lace wasn't piped, it's molded!

     Have you ever been piping an elaborate lace design on a cake and thought "MY GOD! THERE MUST BE AN EASIER AND FASTER WAY TO DO THIS!"? Well, the good news is, that there is an easier way to do it, SUGARVEIL! Just what that heck is SugarVeil? Well, SugarVeil is a brand name for a product called "confectionary lace." There's also some other brands like "SugarDress" but from what I can tell, sugarveil arrived on the scene first. It starts as a dry mix, then you add liquid and mix it into sort of a goo. Once it's the right consistency (think, royal icingish) you can pipe it, spread it out or work it into thin silicon molds. You let it set up either at room temperature for a few hours or in a 200 degree oven for a few minutes and you have this magical product that peels away but stays flexible!! You can attach it to your cakes, smooth it over cupcakes or decorate cookies with it. It's totally edible and pretty tasty and it allows you to make a ton of perfect lace quickly.

 
 
  Have I peaked your interest? Let's get into the how-to. For my photos, you should be aware that I
am using "SugarDress." I have, however, recently switched over to working with SugarVeil and saw a lot of really great stuff from them at the ICES convention. In fact, the creator of the product was there to demonstrate how to use it! I'm not an expert on this stuff yet, but it's just so cool and fun to use that even as a novice it was really approachable and I would definitely recommend trying it! Both products work about the same way.
 

Magical White Powder...
No, not that white powder....
This is before icing it up.

   The first thing to do is follow the instructions that come with your product to mix it up to the proper consistency. SugarDress involves a powder and some sort of magic liquid goo, SugarVeil is just a powder that you mix with water. It's pretty straight forward and no more difficult than making a little bit of royal icing.

  SugarVeil has different suggestions for mixing based whether you are going to spread your sugarveil into a mold or pipe it out by hand. If you are going to pipe it, you will want a slightly stiffer consistency. If you are going to spread it into a mold, you will want a runnier consistency so that it will flow into all the nooks and crannies.

SugarDress, silicon mats and tools of the trade.

     If you are going to pipe the SugarVeil you can free-hand it onto a flat surface, which is pretty cool. It makes it a lot easier to pipe than trying to pipe directly on the side of a cake and you could follow a pattern really easily by piping onto transparent acetate over a template. You would then let your design set up completely. Next, and this is the really awesome part, you can peel it up off your acetate and directly apply it to your cake, cookie or cupcake! It's so cool! It's flexible, so it won't snap like royal icing could (but be careful because you can still rip it if you're not careful.) I just about lost my mind the first time I peeled it up! My husband and business partner, it should be noted was less excited than I was.

    If you are going to mold it, you can use one of the many silicone mats that are being made for this

The blue mats and all those packets on the left are my
SugarVeil haul from the ICES convention.

product. There are a ton of different patterns to emulate everything from lace to burlap, spiderwebs to steampunk gears. And, the mats all have a TON of detail. So much detail that it looks like you have real lace on your cake. The downside? The mats aren't cheap. The upside? Hopefully you will save so much on labor while making such gorgeous cakes that it will be worth it. Also, the designs are SO pretty. There are a quite a few brands on the market selling these mats, so shop around for a design you like. Also, some mats have just about a 14" length of design while some bigger mats have 3- 14" lengths. I would really recommend getting the bigger one, otherwise, if you have to cover a whole cake with lace you might get stuck repeating the process over and over again. That would sort of defeat the labor-saving appeal.

   Using the molds is pretty easy. You start with your pourable SugarVeil and you treat it sort of like you are going to grout some tiles. You pour it over your mold and then use an offset spatular or a rubber scraper to spread it over the entire mat. Then, you use a straight edge (like a rubber bowl scraper or on the stiffer scrapers that they sell specifically for this purpose) and you carefully scrape over the entire mat and remove all the excess SugarVeil  that hasn't been pushed into the mold. Once the surface of your mat is clear, you can allow it to dry at room temperature or you can dry it in a 200 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes. I would recommend adding a second coat at this point, then dry it a second time before trying to remove it from the mold.

Above you can see me applying the Sugarveil,
Spreading it out and removing the excess.

   

This how it looks after coming out of the oven.

    Now we're at the exciting part! Once your SugarVeil  is set and you can carefully peel up an edge,
you turn the entire mat over (so the SugarVeil is facedown) and carefully peel the mat away from the lace. This seems to work better than trying to peel the lace up out of the mat when it comes to preventing tears. Try to use an even hand (or your scraper) when peeling the mat away, and keep an eye on the extra delicate parts, they may need a little help out of the mold to prevent tearing.

I know, I'm pulling the sugarveil up exactly like I told you not to. But you might not be able to see it the other way!

    Now you've got some really awesome flexible confectionary lace and it's ready to go onto your cake! You've saved yourself hours of piping time! Your lace looks awesome! Just brush the back with piping gel (or maybe watered down royal icing) and attach it to your cake. You can cut away what you don't need with a pair of scissors of a craft knife. You can also paint your SugarVeil with an airbrush or by hand to add some pop.

It's so flexible and delicate! Seriously,  SO cool.

    If you're not quite ready to put it on your cake, that's totally fine! Another awesome thing about SugarVeil is that you can roll it up, or gently fold it, put it in a plastic baggie and will stay good and flexible for a really long time! We're talking, months! OR you can let it set up hard, store it, then bring it back to life with a little steam or a moist paper towel. HOW COOL IS THAT!? You can get ahead on those wedding cake details for June (when it's crazy) in March (when it's slow)!

My secret shame, I didn't pipe this lace!!

   So, while I really love SugarVeil and I think it's super fun to play around with, I do feel a little www.sugarveil.com and see a bunch of photos of stuff they've made with the product. You can also check out SugarDress products at www.globalsugarart.com where there is also a ton of other decorating product. I don't want you to think I've been paid off by theSugarVeil people, I haven't, I'm not nearly that important!! I'm just really excited about this cool, and still fairly new, decorating product.
guilty when people compliment the lace and I know that wasn't really all that hard to make. That's the kind of person I am, I'm bad at taking a compliment. I will always be more impressed by a cake that is completely hand piped than one which uses molds, but that doesn't mean the cake is any lovelier. I don't think SugarVeil can or should replace all hand piping, but it is a super cool tool that belongs in any cake shop. It also invites creativity to use the SugarVeil  in ways that you can't use royal icing. When I saw their booth at ICES I basically bought everything because it was just SO cool. If you have the chance, check it out. You can buy it from their website
 
    If you are interested in having a beautiful lace cake, but aren't quite prepared to make it yourself, check out our website www.frostedfoxcakeshop.com and get in touch. We'd love to make a gorgeous cake for you, especially if you're interested in using some gorgeous confectionary lace as part of the design. If you enjoyed this, like us on Facebook too (www.facebook.com/frostedfoxcakeshop) and pass it on to your friends! Feel free to message us with any questions you have!

Cake Conventions and Royal Icing!

   Sorry for the long delay between posts! We had a busy weekend at the ICES conventions in Omaha and we've been playing around with our new decorating toys ever since we got home. My intention is to continue with our little series on icings and talk about royal icing today. Luckily, royal icing and ICES go together like, well, cake and icing.

One of the award winning cakes at the ICES show! This cake traveled all the way from Sri Langka and it's covered with
delicate royal icing string work! Everything red on the cake is super fine piped royal icing.

Me and ICES Hall of Fame Winner Dominic Palazzo!
Bonus: this lady photobombed the crap out of us!

   What's ICES? Well, I'm glad you asked. ICES stands for the International Cake Exploration Society. It was founded 40 years ago and is made up of professional and hobby decorators as well as anyone else who is really interested in the sugar arts. My husband and I joined ICES this past year and this convention was the first time we attended one of the society's meetings. There were demonstrations, hands on classes, a cake competition and a pretty sweet vendor room. What's cool about the ICES show is that there are a lot of really wonderful, world-class, master sugar artists and cake decorators. There are a ton of great tools, supplies and techniques to explore while attending the show. It's a cool place to go to get inspired and to learn something new.

    Now, if I'm being completely honest, the convention wasn't exactly what I was expecting. It seems that membership may be slowing a little bit and attendance at the conventions has been down. My hope is that in future years it will peak again. Apparently Omaha was a little hard for some people to get to. But, we saw great demonstrations and met some great people. I'm already hoping to attend the next convention on the cake circuit (The America's Cake and Sugarcraft Fair) but it depends on whether or not the shop is open by the time the event takes place in Orlando. Also, for the record, we learned at the convention that ICES seems to be pronounced to rhyme with "Pisces."

The central cake is a great examples of many different uses of royal icing.

   So, how does royal icing tie in well with the ICES convention? Well, just about all of the classic decorating techniques utilize royal icing as their medium. Royal icing is basically an icing made of egg whites and confectioner's sugar. Sometimes people add meringue powder, lemon juice or cream of tartar. Sometimes I simply mix confectioner's sugar and water if I need to let the icing flow over a surface (imagine the top of a decorated cookie). You can adjust the consistency of royal icing depending on your desired application, sometimes it is better that it be stiff, and sometimes a more liquid icing is required.

This gorgeous cake has a ton of amazing royal icing piping, collars, brush embroidery and gumpaste flowers!
Note how the lattice work on the second and top tiers stand away form the cake!

   When do you use royal icing? You can ice an entire cake with royal icing if you like, although in the US most people don't ice their cakes with royal icing. It's more common to see it on British cakes where the cake itself is usually very dense fruit cake that doesn't need to be refrigerated. Royal icing will tend to set into a hard shell, so that's another reason why people in the US don't usually use it. I tend to think of royal icing as being a better fit for icing cookies, gingerbread houses or for additional decorating on top of the base layer of fondant or butter cream.

This rounded white mounds are made by
criss-crossing piped strands of royal icing to
 create the"cushion lattice" technique.

    There are many techniques for decorating a cake that require royal icing. String work is a type of decorating that requires the strength and setting ability of royal icing. Collars and color-flow use royal icing to make solid plaques of royal icing. You can also make "lace points" by piping royal icing onto acetate or parchment into pretty designs, then letting it set up stiff, removing it from the sheet and attaching it to the cake.

    Of course, you can also pipe many kinds of flowers with

The central rose on this cake is a
great example of brush embroidery.

royal icing. What's cool about piping flowers our of royal icing is that you can let them set up hard and then apply them to your cake in really cool ways. Once they are set you can paint details onto them as well! Another technique that I love which uses royal icing is called "brush embroidery." With this technique, you pipe a thick outline of royal icing then, before it sets, you use a damp brush to pull the icing towards the center of the design to emulate the look of embroidery. In fact, I used brush embroidery on my wedding cakes!

I made these "UP" themed cookies for
a friend's baby shower. The cookies are iced
with royal icing.

   Another use for royal icing is to decorate cookies. You've probably seen cookies iced with royal icing in countless magazines and pinterest photos. You can either pipe an outline of color with the royal, then fill it in with a thinned out version, or you can dip the flat surface of the cookie into the icing and let that make a thin layer to cover the cookie. Once you've applied this first layer, if you work quickly you can pipe details in that will smooth out flush with the surface, drag a pin through to make designs or add sprinkles and attach other details. If you let the surface set you can pipe on additional details that will sit above the first layer to add depth and texture to your design.

    In our shop we don't use royal icing too often. We do use it decorate cookies, but we will usually use butter cream or fondant for most of our cake and cupcake decorations. While string work, color flow and collars are really cool, they are very traditional and don't seem to appeal to the modern American bride as much as they used to. Now, it's totally possible that they will come back into vogue if ornate cakes cycle back into popularity. In the meantime, it's really important to have those skills in your repertoire so that you can play around with interesting ways to use them. The applications for royal icing are pretty endless, but be aware it can be susceptible to moisture and humidity. Next time, I'll talk about a newer product called "Sugarveil" which is being used to emulate some of the affects you can get from royal icing.

Gumpaste.... The Perfect Medium for Making Cake Decorations!

Gumpaste peonies and fondant ruffles make this cake super sweet!

 

Believe it or not, I made these
roses and blackberries with gumpaste!

   Let's take a little break from talking about the icings that cover a cake, and talk about one of the psuedo-icings that are used to decorate a cake. We're going to talk about gumpaste. Gumpaste is also sometime known as "sugar paste" and to the best of my knowledge they are the same, except that some people think that "sugar paste" sounds prettier. I mean, it does definitely sound prettier, but I am just used to calling it gumpaste. I admit that I switch between the two, so don't hold it against me if I do. I am calling it a pseudo-icing because it's edible, but you wouldn't really use it to ice a cake the way you might use buttercream, cream cheese icing or even fondant.

For this thin rose petal, I used gumpaste.
For the thicker look of the succulents, I used fondant.

    Gumpaste is similar to fondant in a lot of ways. Like fondant, gumpaste is basically an edible sugar dough, but unlike fondant it has some additional ingredients that allow it to stretch thinner and harden faster and drier than fondant would. This makes it better than fondant for making decorations to top a cake. While gumpaste is totally edible, I wouldn't really recommend eating it because it won't really taste very good and it will be very crunchy (imagine eating a sweet porcelain tea cup). Fondant is much better for covering a cake, it tastes better and won't totally dry out. When it comes to making decorations, I tend of think of fondant as play dough and gumpaste as porcelein. Both work for different applications.

Wilton brand makes a
gumpaste that you can
find in craft stores.

    You can make gumpaste yourself from scratch, but like fondant, this is a product that I purchase. It's just more reliable than making it and since you're not supposed to eat it anyway, I'm not as concerned about making it as I am with making the rest of the cake from scratch. If you are interested in playing around with it, you can find it at most craft stores or order it online.

Here are just a few gumpaste cutters.
There are literally hundreds of
special tools for making gumpaste
decorations!

   Whenever you use gumpaste, there are a few things that are
important to bear in mind. It is very important to keep the gumpaste covered in plastic wrap while you work with it, otherwise it will begin to dry out. If that happens, instead of beautiful smooth elastic flower petals, you will get cracks and tears and it won't be pretty. Generally you want to roll the gumpaste out until it is very thin, this makes for the most delicate and realistic flowers, bows, and other decorations. You can use a clean pasta roller to make this easier. After you've cut out the shapes you want, you can use a spongy base and a "ball tool" to thin the edges and create a ruffled or cupped affect. There are a wide variety of gumpaste cutters, molds and tools to get all kinds of different effects when you work. I'll try to go into some of them in a later post.

I started with white gumpaste
and dyed it to make these
different shades! You can see
way I allow my decorations
to dry.

    The gumpaste starts out white, but it can be colored with food coloring (powders or gels will work best without making it too sticky). You can also spray the finished decorations using an airbrush and special thin airbrush ready food coloring. Then, you can create an even more detailed and realistic look by dusting your decorations with petal or luster dusts that will give your decor a more full, natural look. If you are building something that requires attaching pieces together you can use "gum tragacanth" or thinned out gumpaste as edible glue. I simply paint it on where I need it and glue the pieces to one another.

    Once you have made your decorations, you should let them sit for a few days before you attempt to add petal dusts or use them on a cake, otherwise they will be too soft and saggy to use. Sometimes, if you are working on a more complicated decoration, you may have to work in stages, allowing the first pieces to dry before adding more. In this way, gumpaste decorations can be very time consuming to make and require a high skill level from the decorator.  In the decorating world there are real masters of sugar paste like Sylvia Weinstock and Ron Ben Israel, who are both known for their exquisite and realistic sugar paste flowers. A wedding cakes from either of their shops can cost thousands and thousands of dollars!

The flowers, foxes, acorns and mushrooms are all gumpaste!

    It's a lot of fun working with gumpaste. I really love making flowers and other delicate decorations using it as a medium. It takes a lot of patience and organization to make sure that your pieces turn out well (and don't take you a million years). While I really love making the decorations, since they are very time consuming to make, they can be quite expensive. Some clients prefer to use real flowers on their cakes since they can be less expensive. Now that you know a little bit about gumpaste, consider using it for decorations on your cake. I think it can be well worth the cost to have a truly breathtaking centerpiece cake complete with amazing gumpaste decorations! Check out the rest of our photos on our website www.frostedfoxcakeshop.com for more examples of gumpaste and fondant decorated cakes.

Cream Cheese, Not Just For Bagels!

   Let's continue our discussion of icings with a perennial fan favorite, that's right, we're going to talk

This doesn't even have cream cheese in it!

about CREAM CHEESE ICING! It's SO delicious! Doesn't it just sound delightful? Don't you just want to scoop it up with a spoon and eat it on a chocolate chip cookie? I do, I really really do. Now, you can buy it in a can from the supermarket, but it's just not going to be the same as the really real good stuff. I strongly recommend making it yourself, it's pretty easy to make and it will actually have cream cheese! Like everything, though, it does have its drawbacks. It's definitely more challenging to work with than buttercream icing, and it is a lot pickier when it comes to what temperatures it likes.

Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Icing!

    

   Cream Cheese Icing is a delicious alternative to buttercream. Some people can find buttercream to be a little too, well, buttery (not me, but some people do). Cream cheese icing has a pleasantly grainy quality to it (sounds weird, I know) and it develops a nice kind of crust that some people like on their icings. It's also sweeter than our buttercream, so for people who really love their desserts sweet, cream cheese icing is a great option. 

 
  Do you love red velvet cake? You actually love cream cheese icing. Do you love carrot cake? You probably ALSO secretly love cream cheese icing. There are quite a few cakes that are almost always iced with cream cheese icing because it really complements the cake. While buttercream is great, I can't really think of that many cakes that must be made with buttercream icing to be right. It has a real nostalgia quality that just can't be matched.

You can color your cream cheese icing
like I did on these pumpkin cupcakes.

    If you've never had cream cheese icing, it is a lot like the american style buttercream we talked about in an earlier post. It's pretty simple to make. For ours we beat together a pound of room temperature cream cheese with 12 oz of room temperature butter. Then we add in 28.8 oz of sifted confectioner's sugar. Once it's all in, we add 1/3 fl. oz of vanilla (2 teaspoons) and let the kitchenaid beat the crap out of it until it is stiff and white. So, making it is pretty darn easy. However, any cake decorator can tell you that sometimes it just doesn't want to cooperate when you start to ice your cake.

These Carrot cupcakes want to warn you:
Beware the dark side of cream cheese icing!

    The dark side of cream cheese icing is that you have to get the consistency just right when icing the cake, or it can be really frustrating. It has a tendency to be gooey, sticky, soft and stiff (in a bad way) all at the same time. So what can happen is that your beautiful sharp corners that you worked so hard to achieve at the top of your cake will start to droop and sag, making them a rounded mess. You're sides start to slope so that your icing is thicker at the base than the top! You're icing can be sticky and stiff in a way that simply pulls crumbs off the cake and into the icing. Worst of all, if you room is too warm, it can be a real struggle to stop the icing from basically melting all over your cake! But fear not, it just takes some practice and some know-how to get it to be your friend. I've worked with it for about 8 years now and can get it to be as pretty as my buttercream cakes.

    Here are my tips for icing a cake with cream cheese icing if you want to make your life a little easier and your cake a little nicer:

   DO work with it cold, the colder it is, the stiffer it will be. 

   DON'T try to work with it in a hot kitchen or when the icing is warm. The warmer it is, the meltier, gooier and messier it will be. This makes it really hard to get clean edges and corners.

   DO make sure the cake you are icing is nice and chilled, frozen is ideal. 

   DON'T get inpatient and try to ice your cake while it is still warm. You're just asking for crumbs, broken layers and heartache.

   DO beat the crap out of your icing with a kitchenaid. Beat it until it is quite white and stiff. This could take 5-10 minutes. It will start to get more matte looking, as well. 

   DON'T try to ice it with cream cheese icing that is yellowish, grainy, wet-looking, or sticky. Put that stuff on the mixer and let it go until it's white and stiff!

   DO plan to do a crumb coat, then freeze it solid before you apply your finish coat. This will give you the prettiest looking cake and keep crumbs out of the way. It will make your life much easier.

   DON'T try to use this icing if you cake is going to sit out in the sun or heat. It's just not going to stay nice, it will sag, droop and melt. Keep it in the AC, please. 

   DON'T try to ice a tiered cake with cream cheese icing. I mean, you can try, but I wouldn't recommend it (at least not the real stuff, I can't account for people who use cream cheese icing full or stabilizers, maybe theirs works on a 6 tiered wedding cake). The reason I don't use it is that it's just a softer icing that never really sets up with the same strength as buttercream or fondant. Your cake could start to smoosh under it's own weight. Cream cheese icing is much better suited to single tiers and cupcakes. 

   DO use cream cheese icing on your smaller cakes. It's just delicious and it works with so many different flavor combinations. It is a sweet icing, but it also has that great savory element from the cream cheese. I also highly recommend adding a little cinnamon and putting it on pumpkin pound cake!

   DON'T plan to use this for your piped decorations. Try buttercream instead, it will set up much better and be a more reliable piping consistency. 

   DON'T try to cover a cream cheese cake with fondant. Your edges won't look nice, use buttercream instead. 

   DO re-whip your cream cheese icing periodically, especially if you've had it in the fridge for more than an hour or two. 

DO add cinnamon and make
pumpkin cupcakes with Cinnamon
Cream Cheese icing!

     Those are some of the DO's and DON'Ts that I've learned over the years. Remember that every recipe is different, so feel free to experiment. You may have some tricks of your own for taming the beast. If it's still proving difficult, take heart, it can happen to all of us. For example, two weeks ago I drove some red velvet cake layers and a batch of cream cheese icing up to New Hampshire for my Nai Nai's 90th birthday. My first mistake was trying to work in a different kitchen, this is always a bad decision. Next, I really wanted to make this a strawberry short cake variation, so my filling was very loose, probably not the best plan for a cake getting cream cheese icing. I wasn't too worried though, until I put my mom's hand mixer into the icing and PROMPTLY KILLED THE MOTOR! This meant I wasn't going to be able to beat the icing to the proper consistency discussed above. This made icing the cake much much more challenging. After about 30 minutes in icing hell, and 2 crumb coats and some time in the freezer, I finally managed to get that icing to behave and was able to make a pretty looking cake for my Nai Nai. The moral of the story? Don't give up. When it doubt, let the cake chill and don't lose hope! The cake looked beautiful and tasted delicious, and in the end, that's what matters.

It all worked out in the end with this
red velvet/strawberry shortcake with cream cheese icing.

In Defense of Fondant

A fondant covered cake, complete with fondant ruffles.

      In my last post I wrote a lot about buttercream icing. Today I wanted to talk about another type of icing all together: FONDANT! I love working with fondant and many of my cakes are covered in fondant (you can see pictures here). Sadly, fondant has gotten a bad reputation as of late.  It seems that lots of people love the look, but have this idea that it tastes terrible. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to who say "I hate fondant! We DEFINITELY don't want fondant on our cake!" Well, today I'm going to make a controversial argument. A fondant cake can look great and taste great!

The center of this egg is also
fondant!

    You might be wondering "what exactly
 is fondant?" Fondant is a sugar based dough that can be kneaded, rolled thin, and smoothed over a cake. If you've ever seen a wedding cake with a super smooth look, it was probably covered with fondant. There are also different types of fondant. There is fondant that is stiff and intended to be rolled out and layered onto a cake and there is also fondant that is used in a more liquid form to create a glaze or a filling for a confection (picture the filling in a cadbury cream egg).
 

This is my favorite brand of fondant.

    You can try to make fondant yourself, it's basically just a ton of confectioners sugar, but it's sort of a nightmare to make and will probably either kill your mixer or your wrists. I prefer to buy mine (it's one of the few elements that we work with that we don't make ourselves. There are many different brands of fondant and some brands are better than others to work with or to eat. I find that the "Massa Ticino" fondant by Carma is both easy to use and tastes quite good! It's sweet without much additional flavor or an aftertaste, sort of like a marshmallow. It also holds up pretty well against high-humidity environment which can cause fondant to get slimy or melt if it absorbs too much moisture. It's definitely not the most affordable brand, but it's the one that I enjoy using and it has successfully converted many of the fondant-phobic into fondant-lovers (or at least they don't hate it anymore!)

Properly applied fondant is smooth
and has an even color tone.

      There are many reasons why it's a great idea to consider using fondant on your cake. It has a super smooth look that you just can't duplicate with buttercream. If you want a pure white cake, fondant is much whiter than buttercream (which is off-white). It is more resilient in the heat and can prevent your cake from melting or showing signs of melting. It provides more structure to a cake, particularly if you are going to be making a very large cake like a big wedding cake. It holds color better than buttercream icing, which means your black and orange halloween cake is less likely to stain the mouths of your guests. There are certain techniques and looks that are difficult or impossible to replicate in a different type of icing. Last but not least, some people even love the taste of a fondant!
   

A fondant sheeter rolls the fondant
out to the perfect thickness.

     Have I convinced you to give fondant a chance yet? Let me tell you how we use it, maybe that
will allay some of your fears.  We strongly recommend using fondant on any cakes larger than 2 tiers, especially if they are destined for a warm environment (which is anything above room temperature). We do this so that your cake will be safe and sound until it is served. Don't worry though, whenever we use fondant on a cake we always make sure that it sits on top of a nice, thick layer of vanilla buttercream icing. So you get the great flavor of the buttercream and the structure of the fondant. We also make sure to roll our fondant very thin with a sheeter (picture a giant pasta machine) so it doesn't affect the overall taste or texture of the cake very much.

Sean, my husband, is putting a crumb
coat on this cake.

    When I cover a cake with fondant I always start by giving the cake a nice, thick layer of buttercream icing. This is called the "crumb coat" and it seals all the crumbs into the cake and gives it super straight and smooth base. If you didn't crumb coat your cake with buttercream first, your fondant will probably look very lumpy and you may be able to see dark patches where your cake shows though. This is never a good look! Once you've crumbed your cake, put it it the fridge to let it set up like cold butter. This will help maintain your nice straight corners and sides. I usually begin to knead my fondant in confectioners sugar until I have a nice smooth ball. I squash it flat and begin to roll it out, either by hand or with the sheeter, until it is about 1/8" thick and wide enough to cover my cake completely. I use confectioner's sugar to prevent the fondant from sticking and I never flip it over to make sure the outer surface will be perfectly smooth and clean.

Not only is this cake covered
in a layer of fondant, but all
of the decorations are fondant
as well.

   
      This next part takes a little practice. I pick my fondant up and place it over my cake. I usually try to smooth the top down very quickly and then I smooth the fondant over the top 1" of the sides of the cake. It will look like a tablecloth, but if you carefully stretch the fondant while smoothing it against the sides of the cake you can work all the folds out until it is totally smooth without any rips, tears, divots or folds. Like I said, this takes some practice. I find that the taller a tier is, the more challenging it can be to smooth the sides without any marks. I also think it is easier to smooth a round cake than a square cake since it is more challenging to navigate the corners. If you have marks or aren't happy with the layer, you can carefully remove it, re-crumb your cake and try again. Another great hint is to use your decorating elements to hide any flaws you have. This can only do so much, though.

This close up of the house in
process shows how you can
texture fondant.

     Once the cake is successfully covered with fondant you can do all kinds of fun things to decorate it. You can pipe onto the cake with royal icing or buttercream. You an add texture to your cake with quilting, ruffles, crimpers, or an impression mat. You can paint directly onto your cake with an airbrush or by hand with buttercream or food coloring. You can roll out more fondant and cut out shapes, then stick them to your cake. You can also use fondant to make the decorations that will go onto you cake like figures, logos, molded items or even some flowers. It's a great way to make your decorations enjoyable to eat, as opposed to using gumpaste which is edible, but you really don't want to eat it.
 
    I hope I've convinced you that fondant can be a great addition to your cake. I really love working with it. Remember, if you still don't like it, you can just peel it off your slice of cake and stick to the buttercream!