Art of Cooking Cake Decorating - Sarah Seeliger

Cake Decorating - Art of Cooking

Today in Art of Cooking, we decorated cakes using fondant. The cakes we were going to decorate were made beforehand along with icing, and the fondant was dyed beforehand, as well. The first thing we had to do to decorate the cakes was cut them into layers. This was quite stressful because if the cake wasn't cut in a straight line all around, it would end up crooked once the decorating was finished. Something that made cutting the cakes especially difficult was that the cakes were circular. After cutting the cakes into layers and stacking them, we stuck toothpicks in a line all on the same side of the cake to make sure the orientation of all the layers of the cake were the same. The next step in decorating the cake was to ice the top. Once the top was iced, the toothpicks were removed and the sides of the cake were iced. Icing the sides of the cake was hard because the way the knife had to be held was very awkward. 

When the icing was finished, fondant was rolled out and laid over the cake. This portion of the cake decorating was very satisfying because the fondant was very smooth and laid over the cake perfectly. After laying the fondant over the cake, a tool was used to smooth out any final air bubbles or wrinkles on the top and sides. Once the fondant was smoothed out, the sides of the fondant were pressed very tightly to the sides of the cake, and the extra was cut off. The final step of decorating the cakes was to cut the shapes for our designs out of fondant and secure them onto the cakes using water.