How to..........Make Sugar Roses

Sugar roses..........the flower every aspiring cake decorator wants to learn.  Yep they can be tricky but master the technique and you can create some really lovely decorations that will always impress.  I did consider posting my own step by step 'how to' but to be honest there's already plenty of tutorials out there online so I won't regurgitate the great stuff that's already out there, but I will let you in on a few of my hints and tips!!

Cake Gadget of the Week

OK so you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd accidently stumbled across a DIY blog for this weeks cake gadget.

Yes that really is a spirit level......on a cake.  But what else would you use to to check that your cake is really level on top?  Makes a lot of sense when you think about it and you can pick up these tiny spirit levels for pennies online.  Genius!

The Death of the Cookbook?

I came across this interesting article on the Guardian website this week about the increasing use of tablet devices in the kitchen and I wondered what you all thought about technology like this moving into the kitchen and whether our trusty cookbooks are going to become a thing of the past?

I for one have to say that I've been converted by the iPad.  I got one as a present for Christmas and it now pretty much lives in my kitchen which is great for me although probably not great for the iPad.  In addition much to my boyfriends dismay everytime he picks it up its covered in buttery fingerprints and/or a thin film of icing sugar, ooooops!  I do love it though, largely using it to access my favourite recipes on the web and via the odd useful app I've found.  With sites like BBC Food and culinary greats such as Delia, Nigella and Jamie all having an online presence the wealth of recipes available is very impressive!

How To...........make (almost!) perfect fondant stripes

Striped cakes seem to be the cake of the moment so thought I'd let you know how I go about getting (almost) perfect stripes on my fondant iced cakes. 

First off, creating the stripes.  You can do this by hand by rolling out some fondant, measuring and then cutting out stripes, however to get a really neat look its worth buying one of these handy little ribbon cutters such as this one by Wilton.  They look overly complicated but once you've got the hang of which spacers go where to get which size of ribbon they're super easy to use.  Just roll over the fondant and voila perfectly sized ribbons.

Now to add them to the cake.  Now you can be all mega technical about this if you like and measure round the cake working out where to place all the ribbons and how many you can fit on.  However if you're like me and prefer a speedier solution I find trial and error and trusting your eye works just as well.  Its easier to place four ribbons on the cake first (two opposite each other) to split the cake into quarters.  Place the four ribbons on the cake (with no water at this point) and have a good luck to see if they look even, if they don't move them around.  Once they look OK dab a bit of water on the back of each ribbon and gently place on the cake and press down.

Once you've got your four quarters sorted you can then fill in the gaps of each quarter.  This ensures you get the same amount of spacing between each ribbon and the same number of ribbons in each quarter.  Again just lay the ribbons on gently to start with to position them and once they look OK then stick onto the cake.

Here's one I made earlier.