There are so many plusses and
minuses to cake decorating. Starting off with the plusses (my favorite) the
simplicity of it. Decorating a cake can be as simple as just a little bit of
frosting to spice up the flavor. That’s it. And I am relieved that my first
week encompasses those simple frosting techniques. Although, the downside of
this does mean that at some point, I will have to face the complexities like
fondant and making shapes out of the cake. But, we are not there yet and week
one was a piece of cake…literally.
Although simply frosting a cake
may seem easy, it is most definitely not. I decided to start the first week off
by frosting a batch of cupcakes rather than jumping straight into the cake.
See, by using a cupcake I am able to get 24 mini-cakes to practice on. So it’s
okay if I happen to screw up the first 23 cupcakes (trust me, it’s been done),
because I still have that final cake to make up for the mistakes. But you
cannot do that with a cake. If you mess up, you have to bake a whole new cake,
and that’s just a waste of time. So please, fancy the simple, yet complex, art
of the frosting.
Crumb Coat
Sometimes perfecting and
learning the basics is the easiest way to get by in the world. The crumb coat
can turn your final decorated cake from “eh, that’s neat” to “WOW! Where can I
learn that?”
So, what really is a crumb coat?
A crumb coat is the base coat of icing to a cake. Some refer to it as the dirty
icing, which sounds gross to me. I’ll stick to crumb coat. So a crumb coat is
not very difficult. It is typically used for layered cakes to help keep all the
crumbs under the first coat of icing so it does not mess up any following
decorations you may have. A typical birthday cake will have two layers of
frosting, the first being the crumb coat. By using the crumb coat, it makes the
final product more clean and less rough or dirty.
The crumb coat is really quite
simple. You’re supposed to have a cake board and a turntable and a bunch of
other fancy tools. But, the gist of it is you take a relatively large glob of
frosting and you just plop it right on the top of the cake or cupcake. With
layered cakes, the frosting that binds each later together is spread around the
sides and taken off. The one trick to the crumb coat is that every once in a
while, you must clean the offset, or angled, spatula so that you are not
frosting any crumbs into the cake.
This video I found, which is
actually part of a whole cake decorating series, shows the crumb coat step of
the cake decorating process. It will be the first of many of the videos I will
show you in this series. Buckle you’re seatbelts, you’re in for a ride!!
Lastly, the most ideal step of
the crumb coat. It must must must muusstt be chilled after. Anything above
20-30 minutes will do the trick. It’s ideal because if you do not let the
frosting chill, your second layer of frosting will mess with the crumb coat. All
your hard work for the smooth decoration is thrown away and you end up with a
messy cake once again.
Possible Benefits
I was really happy on Sunday
night when I happened to stumble across a CNN article. It was called “This is
your brain on crafting” and it talked about a lady that had PTSD and picked up
knitting as a hobby to get away from thinking about the trauma she went
through. The article further develops into how crafting can “help those who
suffer from anxiety, depression, or chronic pain… it may also relieve stress,
increase happiness…” (cnn.com). My immediate thought was that I was so relieved
to read that. Cake decorating is clearly crafting, no matter how simple or
complex the baker makes it. But I read on, and the article quotes a clinical
neuropsychologist. It was Catherine Carey Levisay, I don’t know if you know
her, but she is married to the CEO of Craftsy.com. Anyway, Levisay says,
“There’s promising evidence… that creating – whether it be through art, music,
cooking, quilting, sewing, drawing, photography (or) cake decorating – is
beneficial to us in a number of important ways.” She even included cake
decorating! I was ecstatic to hear this because now there is almost proof, and
a neuropsychologist believes, that crafting can be a stress reliever. That was
the entire purpose of me picking cake decorating. It was to discover a stress
reliever. I took a risk without being certain that cake decorating would help,
but now I know it does, and I’m very exited to give purpose to my TED talk!!! I
will now begin to rate myself on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being no stress
and 10 being a lot of stress, to start a little experiment of my own with the
effects of cake decorating to me. It may not prove much since it is only one
person, but I like the idea of my experiment. Here’s the link to the article in
case you are inclined to read it:
The Grand Finale
Surprise!! The finale is my
decorations! My (slightly annoying) parents decided to accidentally forget to
get me frosting. Of course I knew they were going to do that, so I looked up a
concoction of my own. Making frosting really is not very hard. So here’s my
recipe:
Ingredients-
·
1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
·
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine softened
·
4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
(approximately 1 lb.)
·
2 tablespoons milk
Directions
- In large bowl, beat shortening and butter with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla.
- Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry.
- Gradually add milk; beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.
This recipe may be used throughout the rest of the project.
I know it would be cool to make my own frosting every time but I also think
that would take too much time. I might end up doing it though just to see how I
can maybe adapt it to make it my own.
Then terror struck. After starting the process of frosting my cupcakes, I came
to a quick realization. I was unable to decorate the cupcakes like any of the
videos where the cupcake was covered on the top and the sides too. Even by
folding down the liners, the cupcakes were too small to cover the sides. It got
all over my fingers, which was a sticky mess. In the end, when I continued to
turn the cupcake, my fingers would just ruin the frosting on the sides.
Here are my first and last attempts to frosting the whole
cupcake side-by-side
You can see that I did improve in making it looks smoother,
but the bottoms of the cupcakes are messy.
As a result, I readjusted to frosting only the tops of the
cupcakes but still using the technique of the crumb coat to make my cupcakes
look as delectable as possible.
You can see that the cupcake naturally looks much cleaner
even though it is just the crumb coat. I would like to note, that after the crumb coat and the
cooling of the frosting in the fridge for about 10 minutes, there was a
remarkable difference in the ease of the frosting (shown right)
Signing off,
The next Cake Boss
Comments:
Lizzy Cutler
Toni Mcfarland
Jacob Cohen
Comments:
Lizzy Cutler
Toni Mcfarland
Jacob Cohen
