tutorial

Halloween Mummy Cake Tutorial

October 16, 2020 By Ashley Leave a Comment

I’ve really been loving working with wafer paper lately, wafer flowers in particular, and while I was working on some flowers and planning out some tutorials, the idea for this mummy cake popped in my head. I sketched it out and couldn’t wait to get started. And now, I’m super excited to share it with you. I’ve got a few Halloween tutorials lined up to share in the coming weeks and this Halloween mummy cake tutorial is definitely one of my favorites. Not only is it super cute, and perfect for any Halloween gathering, but it’s super easy to make, you only need a few supplies and it is not at all time consuming as it may look.

Supplies:

3 tier cake (I used 6×5, 8×5 and 10×5 tiers), stacked and covered in white/off-white fondant

Fondant: bright green, white and black (alternatively, modeling chocolate will work here too) – I used Satin Ice

Circle cutters: 1 1/2″ (38mm), 1″ (25mm), 5/8″ (16mm)

Piping tip #3 OR piping tip #4

Wafer paper

Piping gel

Plastic Wrap/clingfilm

Light brown petal dust ( I used Spanish Moss)

Dusting brush

Small brush for piping gel

Making mummy eyes

I opted to go with more of a cartoonish look for my mummy eyes. Super creepy eyes would also be fun here. To make the eyes, you need a few different size round cutters, as well as black, white and green fondant. Plastic wrap is also needed. This helps to make the eyes have more rounded edges and more of a puffed look.

1. Roll the white fondant out to 1/4″ thick. Lay the plastic wrap over the fondant. Cut out two rounds with the largest, 1 1/2″ cutter over the plastic wrap. Set aside.

2. Roll the green fondant out to 1/4″ thick. Lay the plastic wrap over the fondant. Cut out two rounds with the medium sized, 1″ cutter over the plastic wrap.

3. Brush the back of the green circles with a small amount of piping gel. Place the green circles onto the white rounds. I placed mine on randomly.

4. Roll the black fondant out to 1/4″ thick. Lay the plastic wrap over the fondant. Cut out two rounds with the smallest, 5/8″ cutter over the plastic wrap.

5. Brush the back of the black circles with a small amount of piping gel. Place circles onto the green rounds. Again, I placed mine sort of randomly.

6. Thinly roll out some white paste. Use a piping tip size 3 or 4 to cut out 2-3 small circles for each eye. One of the circles goes on the black round, or pupil, and the others are placed the randomly on the green part. Use just a tiny amount of piping gel to attach.

7. With a dusting brush, lightly dust brown petal dust over the white parts of the eye. Add very little at a time. You want just a little bit of color.

Now, the black background for the eyes needs to be placed on the cake before attaching the eyes. To do this, cut out a section of fondant in the center of the middle tier, that is just a little bit bigger than the size of the eyes. Roll out some black fondant the same thickness as the fondant on your cake, and place into the hole. Cut off any overhanging black fondant. The idea here is to make the black fondant flush with the cake, rather than adding an additional layer of fondant on top. Adding an additional layer makes it look a bit too bulky and the black will show more through the wafer paper more once they’re attached.

Brush the back of the eyes with piping gel and place them onto the black fondant.

Wafer Paper Strips

I’ll admit, I thought this part of the cake was going to take me a while. But once the strips are cut and dusted, it takes no time to put them on the cake. Cut the strips on the long side of the wafer paper with a pair of scissors, cutting them from 1/2″ to 1″. I didn’t measure my strips at all so no need to be exact, nor do they need to be perfectly straight. No worries if the wafer rips, or is damaged in any way – use it! I used 15-20 wafer sheets for my strips, but this amount will vary from person to person.

Assembling the mummy cake

With a dusting brush, on the rough side of the wafer paper, lightly dust random areas of the strips with the light brown petal dust. Make sure to keep a variety from strip to strip. You don’t want them to all look the same. I kept my dusting pretty light, but if you’re wanting more of an aged, deeper, darker and dirty mummy, use a darker shade of brown petal dust (or 2) to dust on the strips as well.

I tried to hide most of the ends of the wafer strips, so it has more of a wrapped look, and doesn’t look so segmented. Tuck the ends of the strips as you place them onto the cake. You can definitely keep some of the ends revealed as I did in some areas. Also note that you do not have to cover every inch of the fondant. A few areas peeking through is no big deal. It still blends in and looks cohesive.

Once all the strips are on the cake, go back with your dusting brush and add some more color to the strips if you would like. Also, dust over the exposed fondant so that it blends in more with the wafer paper.

Some notes on serving

Wafer paper is edible, but people don’t generally want to eat it. It’s also a bit of a pain to try to cut through. Before serving this cake, I recommend removing the wafer as you slice and serve it. Also, because wafer paper is easily effected by humidity and water, I would not refrigerate this cake once it’s done. Add the wafer just before delivering the cake if it is for a client or friend.

I hope you guys love this super cute mummy tutorial like I do! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below or on social. If you make this cake, tag me on Instagram – I would LOVE to see it!

Enjoy!

Ash xx

For more autumn themed tutorials, check out these posts:

Black Cocoa Sugar Cookies + Decorated Pumpkins Tutorial

Floral Piped Royal Icing Cake Tutorial

Vintage Gilded Buttercream Cake Tutorial

August 5, 2020 By Ashley Leave a Comment

After working with mostly fondant over the years, I’ve been playing around with buttercream a lot lately, and I’m loving it. I love the messy nature of buttercream, where flaws and rustic application can make a design look stunning. Buttercream doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s delicious and adaptable, and wild like nature, imperfect, and more often than not, celebrated for its messiness. Perfectly iced buttercream cakes won’t be found in this post – in a different post another time, I’m sure. And so, I’ve created this buttercream beauty for a giveaway with Iron Orchid Designs over on my Instagram feed. I know you guys have heard me talk about these fab products before, but this time, I’m using them on buttercream. My vintage gilded buttercream cake incorporates easy and fast buttercream techniques that can be adapted to almost any buttercream cake design.

How to create rough edge buttercream

The color of this bottom tier is one of my favorites. I’m obsessed with this wine color buttercream. I have made this color plenty of times using gum paste, and I wanted to recreate the color to use as the bottom tier of my cake. To color this tier, I used both oil based candy color and gel color. I mixed equal parts of red and purple candy color, and added a touch of black gel color. Mix the purple and red first and let the buttercream develop for a few hours. Check out my post on How to Color Buttercream to see my techniques on how to achieve dark and vibrant colors. Then add a bit of black to just darken the buttercream a few shades. Keep in mind, the buttercream will darken a bit as it sits.

The top two tiers have a base color of dusty cream. To achieve this color, I mixed small, equal amounts of Americolor soft brown and ivory. My ivory gel color has a bit of an orange hue, so I mix the ivory with the soft brown to lessen the warm undertones.

The rough edge buttercream look has been super popular since Megan and Harry’s royal wedding cake. It’s also super easy to achieve. Rough edged buttercream is a total time saver – no need to use acrylics or the upside down method for a perfectly smooth top.

After filling and crumb coating the cake, chill the cake until it’s firm, for a couple hours or so. Smooth buttercream over the top of the cake, smoothing it out past the edges. Coat the sides of the cake with buttercream, layering it on, especially towards the top. How much buttercream you bulk up at the top edges of the cake will determine how tall and thick the rough edges are. Use a bench scraper to scrape off the excess and smooth the sides. Don’t worry about perfectly smooth buttercream, as I said before, imperfect is what we’re going for in this design. Chill the cakes, only chilling the top two tiers for about 5 minutes. You want the buttercream to set just slightly to keep it in place when adding additional colors on top. You do not want the buttercream to fully set up, as it can change color when scraping the cake. This is particularly true with buttercream based buttercream.

Creating the watercolor buttercream effect

On the top two tiers, under the gold stamped design, is a minimal buttercream watercolor effect. Both shades were created using very little amounts of claret gel color by ProGel. With a small offset spatula or a palette knife, place patches of buttercream around the cake, starting with the darker color. Use a bench scraper to even out the color around the cake. Add the lighter color, then repeat with the darker color until you’re satisfied with the color. I chose lighter colors for this cake so that the colors sort of blend together for a minimal, blended watercolor effect.

When choosing colors for the watercolor technique, you want to be sure that the colors look good together and will also blend well. You don’t want the colors to mix together and turn strange and unappetizing colors. I like to use buttercream colors that are made with the same combination of gel colors, or colors that are made by combining different buttercream colors together. Chill the watercolor cakes until the buttercream is firm. The buttercream needs to be thoroughly cold in order to stamp the pattern onto the cake, otherwise the buttercream will stick to the stamp, or squish out the sides.

Creating the vintage stamped effect

The stamp set that I used is the rose toile stamp from Iron Orchid Designs. I also used a craft brayer roller, mine is from Iron Orchid, but this one works well too. You will need parchment paper, or wax paper, and gold edible paint. I recommend this one, or you can create a gold paint with edible gold dust and a clear alcohol. If you choose to make your own, you will need more than half of a small pot of gold dust. Mix the alcohol with the dust until you it’s a thicker liquid. It needs to be thick enough to coat the stamp, but thin enough to be able to easy transfer to the cake.

Roll the craft roller through the edible paint. Roll off any excess, then roll over the stamp to coat. Do not saturate the stamp so that’s dripping, but ensure that the stamp is damp with color. Carefully lift the stamp and place against the cake. Carefully, and lightly press to the cake, taking care not to press IN to the cake, though it’s likely you will get some pressed in impressions. This is totally ok – it goes with the vintage design. Gently and lightly run your fingers over the stamp to stamp the pattern onto the cake.

You can also use the roller to roll over the stamp. I use this method when using the stamp on a flat surface, like a cookie, or paneled fondant or if I am trying to achieve full design coverage with the stamp. For this cake, I went with a more aged, almost peeling vintage-y look. I achieved this look by pressing over the stamp in select areas, leaving some spots light or bare. Then take a fine paintbrush and go over any areas you would like darkened, or more filled in.

Let the stamped impressions dry before stacking the cakes. After stacking the cakes, add any florals. For this cake, I used gum paste/sugar heirloom roses, anemones, roses, heritage roses, petunias, blossoms, and rose leaves. Use any flowers that compliment your color scheme, or even skip flowers – the cake is beautiful enough on its own!

For more cake tutorials, check out these posts:

Woodland Tree Stump Tutorial

Mini Tutorial: Romantic Roses Cake

Mini Tutorial: White on White Baroque Cake

Tutorial: Speckled Egg Cookies

April 8, 2020 By Ashley Leave a Comment

Today, I’m sharing this tutorial for an easy and fast way to decorate some Easter themed cookies. These speckled egg cookies are great to decorate with the kiddos and make super cute Easter basket gifts. The sugar cookie recipe I use for my speckled egg cookies is my go-to recipe. They are easy to roll out and they hold their shape when baked. They’re easily adaptable – you can add in your favorite spices, extracts, herbs, and more. You can find the recipe for my sugar cookies on my Snowflake Sugar Cookie post.

I used an oval cookie cutter to cut out my cookies, and I tapered one end, by hand, to have a slightly pointed egg shape. You can also use a larger circle cutter and shape it to look like an egg. Alternatively, you can use a sharp knife and cut out an egg shape, with or without a template. I don’t buy a lot of cookie cutters since I don’t use them often so I tend to make do with what I have.

Once you cut out your cookies, they need to be chilled. Chilling is important with sugar cookies as it helps them retain their shape. Once the cookies have been chilled throughly, they are then baked and cooled completely. While the cookies are cooling, I make the royal icing. The recipe for my royal icing can also be found on my Snowflake Sugar Cookie post.

I made three different colors of royal icing to replicate the colors of Cadbury mini eggs – robin’s egg blue, dusty pink and golden yellow. To mix color into royal icing, be sure to add very little at a time using toothpicks. Royal icing takes on color really well and can get too saturated really fast. Keep in mind that it will also darken a shade or two after it is colored. These are the gel colors I used to color my royal icing:

Robin’s egg blue: royal blue and ivory

Golden yellow: gold, and lemon yellow

Dusty pink – electric pink, and ivory

Ivory helps to tone down the hues so that the colors aren’t overly bright. Ivory is super necessary to have on hand for coloring royal icing, glaze, fondant, gum paste, etc.

One of the main issues that I hear from readers regarding royal icing, is that they are unsure of what the consistency needs to be for outlining and flooding, and if it is necessary to have multiple consistencies. I’m a no-fuss, one piping bag per color sort of cookie decorator, so I use a medium consistency for both outlining and flooding. This royal icing consistency post by Sweetopia is super helpful when determining if your icing is ready, so be sure to check it out. Royal Icing post coming from me in the near-ish future.

I used a PME tip #4 to outline my royal icing. I flooded the cookie with an Ateco #12 tip. After flooding the cookie, lightly shake it to distribute the icing and create a smooth and even surface. Outline, flood and let the cookies dry completely on the surface.

For the brown splatter effect, I mixed cocoa powder with a little bit of alcohol until a liquid paste (or slurry) forms. You can also use extracts instead of alcohol. Aim to use an extract that will compliment the flavor of your cookies and/or icing. I also made a metallic gold splatter using edible gold luster dust.

Now, this is the messy part. If you have an airbrush box, do these next couple steps in the box. Otherwise, lay out some paper towels to catch the impending cocoa mess. Using a paintbrush that is designated for food only, or a small pastry brush, dip the brush into the liquid paste mixture and wipe off any dripping excess. Use your finger to flick the chocolate mixture from the brush onto the cookies. I do recommend that you practice on a paper towel first to get the hang of how much of the chocolate mix to add you your brush as well as a good distance to hold your brush from the cookies to achieve the overall technique. Variations splatter size looks best.

I repeated the same process with the gold, but I used much less of the splatter effect. I just wanted a little gold to pop on my cookies.

Let the cookies dry completely (preferably overnight) before storing or serving. Enjoy!

For another delicious Easter dessert, check out this recipe:

Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Brown Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

Mini Tutorial: Romantic Roses Cake

January 29, 2020 By Ashley Leave a Comment

[This post is written in partnership with Satin Ice. All text and opinions are 100% mine. Thank you for supporting brands that help me and my business grow!]

Valentine’s Day is the inspiration behind this “mini” tutorial for my Romantic Roses cake. This cake is sponsored by my sweet friends over at Satin Ice. Their new buttercream icing mix was perfect for palette knife buttercream painting. While this is actually a fondant covered cake, mixed media elements like buttercream and royal icing techniques – such as palette knife painting, detailed piping, buttercream flowers, etc. look amazing together and allows you to incorporate several different techniques.

I’m calling this a “mini” tutorial because I’m sharing how I made this cake, but it’s not a step by step detailed tutorial. The idea is to share how I created this cake, and to share a technique and some information for you to be able to replicate it on your cakes. A reader wrote to me recently asking for me to keep in mind beginner cake tutorials when creating tutorials. I will most definitely be creating tutorials for ALL skill levels and ALL sorts of cakes – birthday cakes, wedding cakes, themed cakes, holiday cakes, etc. Keep in mind that many of the techniques featured in my full or mini tutorials can be applied to any size or style of cake, and many are perfect for all skill levels. Trust me, I’m going to do my best to not let any of you leave a post empty handed.

After determining that palette knife buttercream painting was definitely on the table for this cake, and Valentine’s Day was an underlying theme, my mind went to color next. I wanted to incorporate dark reds, pinks, and blush tones. And what screams Valentine’s Day more than ROSES? To keep with rose theme, I created hybrid tea roses, heirloom roses, David Austin garden roses, and little climbing roses and rose buds. I also added in some rose leaves and some twisty vines.

I used Satin Ice fondant for this cake, which I colored with Crystal Colors petal dust in Champagne and Blush, mostly equal parts. I wanted a blush color for the cake but I wanted it more of a cool, muted, vintage-y tone and not so harshly pink. I’ve been experimenting with using dusts for coloring fondant simply to get more of a targeted color. I find that it’s a bit more difficult to achieve the desired color if I’m using gel colors. Food safe dusts come in such a large variety of colors which allows me to achieve the color I’m aiming for much easier. However, if you don’t have these colors, you can use Americolor electric pink and Wilton brown to achieve a similar color. Avoid Americolor brown – there’s a bit too much orange in it. Incorporate very little color gradually since gels are more concentrated.

I used the same petal dusts to color my buttercream to match the fondant, which was fairly simple to do since the buttercream mix is pure white. Satin Ice buttercream mix comes as a soft dough. To the dough, you add butter or shortening and water to create an American style buttercream. The buttercream mix is very customizable to most projects. It’s stiff enough for piping flowers and ruffles, but you can also make it soft enough to mimic the same consistency as a meringue based buttercream, which happens to be my favorite buttercream to use. To get that consistency, I added water 1/2 teaspoon at a time until it was soft and smooth, like peanut butter.

Because I wanted my palette knife painting to be focused around the sugar flowers, I placed the sugar flowers first. Once the flowers were placed, I created buttercream “petals” around the flowers, by pressing the buttercream coated palette knife up against the cake and gently pulling down and away, to create a slightly grooved petal. Take care not to place your petals too symmetrical. The petals can be different sizes and don’t have to be perfectly neat. Consider creating your petals based on the shape you want your petals to have and direction you want your painting to go. Once I finished the painting, I added some white sugar dragees that I painted gold with a mix of clear alcohol and gold dust.

And really, that’s it. A super simple technique just to get acquainted with palette knife buttercream painting. I’m totally in love with the technique and can’t wait to do some palette knife buttercream flowers. Let me know if you try this out!

Check out these posts for more sugar art tutorials:

Gum Paste Blackberries, Leaves and Blossoms tutorial

Essential Tools for Making Sugar Flowers

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