Always wanted to try your hand at Cake Decorating?

nerdache-cakes:

Voting for Round 1 ends Tomorrow!

Fan Art Submission period for Round 2 ends on May 15th. So don’t forget to submit your art HERE.

[See official rules and requirements here]

*First place prize is your Korra fan art being made into a cake, a Nerdache-Cakes T-Shirt and an edible figure/cake in the character of your choice! 

*2nd place prize will be given to runner-up winner.

(Source: nerdache-cakes)

• Whip up your butter! First on the lowest speed, then gradually increasing to the highest speed for 3-5 minutes.
• No matter what flavor buttercream you are making, a teaspoon of honey while mixing gives it the smoothest flavor and keeps it from separating.
• Add powdered sugar to your butter, whip some more and then add your flavorings.
• After your buttercream is done, let rest, then put it in the fridge. After 5 minutes, take it back out and whip up again. (What you are doing is adding air to your mix.)
• Use the wire whisk rather than the paddle.
• A teeny bit of whipping cream always adds great flavor and stabilizes!

(Source: amateurcakehour)

Pro Tip #18:

Do not use Instagram to take photos of your cakes/cupcakes.

I will find you if you do.

(Source: amateurcakehour)

Decorating tips are tools in the baker’s belt. Very small, easily lost tools. Here’s a tip list of your basic tips.

Tip List:

round tips

Used for outlining details, filling and piping in areas, writing and printing messages, figure piping, dots, balls, beads, stringwork, lattice and lacework, vines, flower centers and floral work. These tips are smooth and round. 

leaf tips

Create perfect floral enhancements. The v-shaped openings of these tips give leaves pointed ends. With any leaf tip you can make plain, ruffled or stand-up leaves. 

drop flower tips

Make pretty one-squeeze flowers—these are the easiest flowers for a beginning decorator to do. The number of cuts on the end of the tip determines the number of petals the flower will have. Each drop flower tip can produce two different flower varieties—plain or swirled. 

ruffle tips

Ruffle tips have a teardrop-like shaped opening that yields ribbons, swags, bows, streamers, scallops, ruffles and special effects. 

basketweave tips

Basketweave tips are wonderful for woven designs. These decorating tips have a smooth side for making smooth, wide icing stripes and/or one serrated side for making ribbed, wide icing stripes. 

rose tips

Rose tips have an opening that is wide at one end, narrow at the other. Using rose tips you can make a variety of petals that form flowers like the rose, carnation, daisy, pansy and more. Roses are typically created using tip 12 or tip 104 decorating tips.

specialty tips

Specialty tips add a totally different look! This family includes tips with very distinctive design. Use them to make ring candleholders, deeply ridged shell borders, Christmas trees, hearts, three-dimensional and ridged ruffles.

star tips

Star tips produce the most popular decorations—deeply grooved shells, stars, fleur-de-lis, rosettes and flowers. The most popular star tips used are numbered 13 through 22. 

multi-opening tips

Pipe rows and clusters of strings, beads, scallops, even grass and hair! 

Begin with your basic group of tips—round tips 3 and 12, star tips 16, 18 and 21, basketweave tip 47, leaf tips 67 and 352, rose tip 104 and drop flower tip 2D. A good collection of tips would also include a range of sizes in each family. It’s also a good idea to have several of those tips you use most often, so that you don’t have to clean a tip each time you change icing color.

Metal tips can be used with decorating bags of any kind. All standard size decorating tips can be used with a Wilton standard coupler. A coupler is a two-piece device that fits onto your decorating bag and holds the decorating tip in place. It’s a great convenience when you want to change decorating tips without changing bags, such as when you are using different tips with the same color icing. The coupler base goes inside the cut bag to hold the tip in place, while the coupler ring twists around the base on the outside of the bag to attach the tip. Just twist off the ring to change tips.

Standard tips can also fit on Wilton Tube Icings when a coupler is used. Tube Icings give the decorator a fast way to add small amounts of color to a cake.

View our decorating techniques section to see all the techniques you can create using decorating tips.

Care and Storage

Your decorating tips must be designed for precision and durability. Wilton tips are made of non-rusting, nickel-plated brass. Their seamless design and finely-cut openings will help create precision decorations. The optimal way to store decorating tips is upright, on pegs. This protects the finely cut ends from being bent out of shape. With proper care and storage, your decorating tips will last a lifetime!

To keep tips in perfect decorating condition, wash after each use in hot, soapy water. Rinse in hot, clear water. If bits of icing clog the opening, gently use a tip brush to clean icing away. Air dry, or if using immediately, dry with a soft towel.

[Via Wilton.com]

(Source: amateurcakehour)

Most bakers buy their cupcake wrappers at cases of 75 for $3-5. Say I’m not right! But baking in bulk can get expensive that way.

Save money and go for large cases of 500 for $3.

I’m not even lying. 

HERE is where I purchase all my cupcake wrappers. You can buy them in almost any basic color/finish in large quantities at DA DA DA!- $3-6.

They also have inexpensive piping bags, stands, tips- almost anything cupcake/baking related- they have.

Honor upon your cupcakes.

-Ant

(Source: amateurcakehour)

Many often overlook the one thing that can make a cupcake… well, a cupcake.

THE DOME. 

If batter is measured out precisely, it will bake with a ‘dome’ over the wrappers edge and make a hill. 

Good cupcake dome:

Bad cupcake dome (Where is it?!):

 Overfilled cupcake dome:

(I know you are looking at the overfilled cupcake and thinking ‘Well, that’s just more cupcake to love!’ WRONG. Overfilled cupcake domes tend to take longer to bake in the middle- forcing you to continue to over-bake the sides! The edges will get crunchy and burnt while the cupcake in a whole is dry and over-baked.)

In the bakery, if I see a skimpy or overfilled cupcake dome it gets tossed or boxed to be given away. 

Quick Fix:

• Use an ice cream scoop to measure out your batter.
• If you’re trying out a new recipe and aren’t sure how it will rise, test out how extreme the rise is by scooping different amounts into multiple cupcake wrappers. It will save time, and you’ll be able to get perfect cupcakes every time.

A perfectly filled cupcake makes for easier frosting, packing and just looks better all around!

-Ant

(Source: amateurcakehour)

The Cupcake Diaries

By Katherine Kallinis and Sophie Kallinis LaMontagne

‘Recipes and Memories from the sisters of GeorgeTown Cupcake’

Review: 

Following their show’s success (TLC’s Series ‘DC CUPCAKES’ a show chronicling the cupcake adventures of business owners and bakers Katherine and Sophie, sisters who somehow manage to make things more difficult than need be) this all-to-well written book gives you a few of the sister’s recipes and a lot of their family’s backstory.

I say this because (If you’ve watched the show) the sisters themselves have a bit of the standard vocabulary and this book is just. so. wordy.

It for some reason gives you more information than you ever wanted to know about Katherine and Sophie’s Greek heritage and how they came to america.

If you like the typical ‘I baked with my grandmother since I was old enough to hold a mixing spoon and that’s why you should get cupcakes for your wedding’ story, then this is the book for you.

The recipes themselves are split over several chapters and all are introduced with a passage about how family is the most important thing there is. EVER. They are what I like to call ‘snobby’ recipes because they all call for European butter and the best chocolate money can buy. 

Let me just run over to my local bodega and buy some imported french chocolate. 

All the recipes are the standard chocolate and vanilla cake recipes with very specific baking instructions: ‘Always sift your flour’ and ‘Poke with a toothpick when ready’. They seemingly just add in different ingredients to make a new flavor.

Which explains why at the end of the book, they show that they have over 80 flavors available at their bakery. 

But shhh that’s a secret that they published in a book.

Final Looks: This book isn’t worth the $25 I spent on it. It was weaved by a very good PR person made to look like the sisters are the dream team: Two sisters empowered by their rich heritage and tight-knit family creating adorably simple cupcakes in a tiny house. Basically little to no new information on actual baking, nothing ingenious or new about their abilities and did nothing to prove to me that the people working in that bakery have any personalities at all.

Don’t even get me started on these… things they call ‘cupcake sculptures.’ (A foam structure that they stick mini cupcakes to with double sided tape.) Sometimes the sisters manage to cut out fondant circles and put them on the cupcakes. 

MASTERS OF FONDANT, RIGHT HUR.

Why publish a book with the word ‘RECIPES’ first if you are going to just fill it up with little house on a Greek hill stories? Someone didn’t get the memo that biographies are biographies and cook books are cook books. 

P.S: All the pink damaged my corneas. 

P.S.S: I’m not a doctor so I wouldn’t know that.

(Source: amateurcakehour)