Use to cut fondant or gumpaste decorations for your holiday and winter cakes.
3 snowflakes (4¾”, 3¾”, and 2¼” diameters) and 2 cutout shapes.
Happy Holidays from SugarEd!
Use to cut fondant or gumpaste decorations for your holiday and winter cakes.
Happy Holidays from SugarEd!
My dear friend Kim linked me to a cake by another artist that was the perfect inspiration for the wave scene. Thank you Kim! You saved my booty!
I knew I needed an armature of some kind to mold white modeling chocolate over. PVC pipe was too thick. I tried Tinker Toys but they were too thick and bulky as well. Double thickness 18 gauge wire wrapped in floral tape did the trick. (You see two in this picture because I did not like the first rib cage I made and started over.)
It was sturdy enough to hold the weight of the modeling chocolate. When I formed him out of the wire, I left about 5 inches of extra wire below the feet, which went down into the dummy while I made him. That extra wire later went thru the surf board and down into the wave to anchor him in place.
I then molded the modeling chocolate around the wires to form his body parts. After he was firm, I used petal dusts to give him some creepy color.
The surf board was cut from thin Styrofoam. I printed out a paper template of the board using clip art. You see the reject skeleton lying there because I used him to help determine the size of the surfboard.
After I cut out the styro, I rounded the sides of the boards with another piece of styro , using it as sanding paper. (Learned that in a Colette Peters demo.)
Then it was time to form the wave out of modeling chocolate. I used both white and dark chocolate paste, because I had both on hand. It weighed a ton too! Again I used the reject surf board and skele to help me determine the size and shape of the wave. I made the wave on top of a thin piece of foam core board.
Another view of the wave. It didn’t look like much of anything at this point and I was a tad worried if I would get the wave to come out looking right.
To make the palm trees, I used plastic hidden pillars and wrapped them in brown fondant with tylose added.
I scored the sides with a skewer to make the palm bark look, and threaded them over another skewer to let them dry firm.
I airbrushed them to give them depth of color. They were not as dark as they are showing up in these photos. The palm leaves were made from fondant using a generic leaf cutter. Each was individually wired, then wired together in a bunch, and then that was threaded down into the hole of the pillar.
I rough iced the wave in blue buttercream, and then came back with very thin white buttercream and brushed it on with a small fan brush to create the foam of the crashing wave. Processed graham crackers were glued to the white fondant with piping gel. The skewers are marking the holes I dug down into the modeling chocolate. Once I arrived at the party, I put the surf board on the wave, and threaded the skeleton’s leg wires down thru the board and into the wave.
That was a wild two days! 27 hours of filming to get 7 hours of footage. It was long and hard, but also tons of fun and worth every minute. You guys know Wendy is the unsung hero of shooting these DVDs. The behind the scenes work she does cannot be described. I literally could not do it without her. And of course, the great video team of Trish and Todd from Video Specialties.
Here are a few snapshots taken on Monday and Tuesday:
Now I am off to join the witness protection program, because Wendy is going to hunt me down and kill me for posting those pics.
I have been working hard these last 2 weeks getting ready for our new DVD. We are filming tomorrow and Tuesday. Wish me, Wendy, Todd and Trish good luck and pray I do not screw up anything!
I am very excited about our new project, and will give you more details later. If you received our newsletter a while back asking your opinion about the next two DVD topics, I can tell you it is one of those two topics. And we are going to have a Name the DVD Contestin the upcoming weeks so put your thinking hats on and start coming up with fun creative titles for those 2 topics. You might win a free copy of the new DVD!
Recently I used the pumpkin cutter set we featured in a SugarEd free gift promotion to make some cookies using poured fondant and rolled fondant. I cannot locate this exact set anywhere retail, but set 1872 here looks to be very similar.
After baking the cookies, I made poured fondant:
6 cups confectioners’ sugar (I often add 1-2 cups more sugar to make it a bit thicker, optional)
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 teaspoon almond extract ,optional
1 teaspoon vanilla, optional
DIRECTIONS:
In a saucepan, combine confectioner’s sugar, water and corn syrup. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until it reaches a temperature of 92 degrees F (33 degrees C.) Mixture should be thin enough to pour, but thick enough to coat cookie. Add food coloring to desired color and stir thoroughly.
Make sure not to overheat. Overheating will cause the mixture to crystallize and show sugar crystals once dried. It may also become too thick to flow well.
I take it off the heat to pour over the cookies. It will thicken up as it cools. If it gets too thick to flow well, gently heat it back up until it is thin enough again. Again, be careful not to overheat it at any time. If you do it will give you trouble. You will get mad. You will say bad words. You might throw cookies across the room. …..Just sayin’.
I hold the cookie in one hand over the pot and spoon the icing over it, allowing the excess to flow back into the pot.
Coat entire cookie. (I do normally wear gloves for this but was so excited to do this tutorial it slipped my mind.)
Lay it on wax paper or parchment. I do not like to put my cookies on cooling/cookie racks because the icing hardens and sticks to the rack. Then when you release the cookie from the rack it messes up your pretty cookie edge.
See that pool of icing? No worries. When it is all dry and hardened, you scrape that excess off with a palette or exacto knife and you end up with a perfectly clean edged cookie.
Hold the large cookie with both hands and tap the sides of your hands on the edge of the pot to get all the excess icing flowing off the cookie.
Slide the bottom of the cookie along the edge of the pot as you take it out to scrape off any more excess.
This is where you get so excited because you have this adorable Jack o’ lantern cookie looking back at you! Place him on the parchment too and leave them alone for a while till fully hardened. I leave them for at least a few hours before I clean them up.Rolled fondant covered:
Roll out your orange fondant and cut out the shape with the cookie cutter you used to make the cookie. Smear a little thinned buttercream onto the cookie to make it stick.Airbrushing:
Airbrushing adds more depth and dimension and interest to your cookies. It is not necessary to do this, but I like what it adds to the look. I gave it a light overall coating of orange color.
You can vary the colors if you like. You can add some yellow to give it bright highlights or add some brown to make it more rustic.
Hey guys! So what did you think of our episode? Pretty fun, huh?
We had such a great time! Both of the other teams were incredibly talented and nice, and we all left the best of friends. We had a great time messing with Norm both on and off the set; he is a great sport and a really nice guy.
Here are a few more pictures I can share with you now:
Last minute shopping for supplies. I made sure we had enough snacks.
Lots of chocolate curls and ruffles and flowers.
Grooms cakes surround the main cake on a beautiful display board.
Mark’s cake was simply stunning:
And Rebecca’s masterpiece:
Doesn’t it just wreak glamour and class? Not. Hubby took all the bench seats out and we filled that thing to the brim. We had more of a Beverly Hillbillies meets cake decorating vibe going on.
My two sisters, Barb and Janice, decided to take another vehicle:
Next day was set up day in the vendor room.
I had large posters of each DVD title made to hang on the wall behind us.
They looked very impressive I think.
A dummy cake showing use of some of our tools.
I got all of us girls these matching T shirts. Aren’t they cute??? I got them from Vista Print. (Note: I will not beheld responsible for the money you spend if go to that site.)
You can also see the video HERE.
And this:
The Cookie Mama said…
Once again you make me laugh while I’m
The episode where I am one of 3 assistants to Rebecca Sutterby will air on October 5, 2009 at 10 PM EST on the TLC network.
The saga continues….
Well, I have made some progress. I think.
I have now converted it into my SugarEd office. The SugarEd stuff had overtaken my cake room, and the foyer, and the dining room, and part of the den. So it was time to give it a room of its own.
Now I have all my inventory, supplies, and 2 work stations in here. Even got my recliner so that after a long day at work, I can kick back and relax while watching the Young and Restless on nightly replay on Soap Net. (My one guilty pleasure.)Ah, feels good , yes, to have this room done.
But where in the heck did all of the junk go? Oi vay:
Into my older son’s now vacant room. He took his furniture off to his apartment at college. So now it’s filled with crap I still have go through and organize and purge. I am working on it bit by bit.
And looky what I found!






