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.

Cakes, Bakes and Things You can Take!

   In my last post, I talked about how important it is to me and my bakery partner/husband that our bakery offer real food made with real ingredients by us in our shop. Today I thought I would tell you a little bit about what we plan to actually offer in our shop.

One of our Custom Cakes

   Since the Frosted Fox Cake Shop is a cake shop, our main focus is, of course, cake! We aim to provide delicious and beautiful custom cakes for weddings, birthdays, showers, graduations, retirements and any other festivity where a cake would be appreciated (hint: all of them). We have decided to offer a wide range of cake flavors, filling options and icing varieties which are sure to please everybody. We'll have classics like chocolate cake, red velvet, white cake, yellow cake and carrot. We will also have more unusual options like apple, banana, pumpkin and peanut butter. For our current list of flavors options you can check out our website www.frostedfoxcakeshop.com. I promise I will write a post soon about what designing and making a custom cake is like, but for now, I'm going to try to stay focused on tell you about the rest of our shop's offerings.
If you want to see some photos of cakes I've made, check out this link for our custom cakes.

Pumpkin cupcake with cinnamon cream
cheese icing

   I wish I could have birthday cake everyday, but sadly, that's not how life usually pans out. So, for the other 364 days a year, we wanted to offer a wider variety of smaller treats. Little sweets that don't require a special occasion. Staying with the cake theme for a moment, we'll have cupcakes as well as some delicious smaller cakes that will be ready to pick up without having to place an order ahead of time. We'll offer delicious classic combinations like chocolate mousse cake, yellow cake with chocolate icing, red velvet with cream cheese and lemon cake with cream cheese icing. We'll also cycle in different combinations as specials. How will we come up with some of our options? We'll poll our friends, family and customers! I'm envisioning some kind of bracket system, or perhaps a prize for best suggestion.

A test batch of Sean's favorite
cookies, mmm&mmm's

   Even though cakes are my passion, it was really important to us that our shop have options for our neighbors to come in every day just to get a nibble to satisfy their sweet tooth. We wanted to offer more than just cakes and cupcakes, so we decided we would offer a line of delicious, family friendly cookies, brownies and bars. Of course, we had to offer chocolate chip cookies which are my personal favorite. There's also a super chocolatey double chocolate chip cookie which always seems to disappear from our kitchen whenever we make them. We have a killer raspberry bar that's topped with our own granola which has already proven to be a fan favorite. There are a lot too many choices to go into here, but you can check out our full list of cookies and bars here.  Thirsty? We will be offering simple coffee options, teas and a range of other beverages perfect with a cookie, brownie or cupcake.
   So that's what we are starting with. I'm hopeful we can expand our menu as our business grows. There are a lot of baked goods that we will be offering as rotating specials that will hopefully become staples over time. We will be focusing primarily on sweet items, at least to start. For my next post, I'll be talking about the aesthetic choices one is faced with when opening a bakery. From the look of our cakes to the style of the shop!