How to Fill Cakes

Have you ever done a layered cake with fun fillings? If you think it's hard, it's time to think again. I'll give you a step-by-step layout on how it's done. Below you can see the cake my daughter recently made. She baked 2 8" rounds and then sliced them horizontally to make four layers. This is easiest and most level if you use a cake slicer. This one is great for cakes less than 10" wide, and this one is perfect for larger cakes. If you don't have a slicer handy you can always use a long serrated knife but it's a lot harder to get the layers even. So you start with your clean surface, this time, the middle of the cake.

Next you take your frosting and outline the cake on top. This keeps the filling in between the cakes so it doesn't squish out and bulge the sides. This was just piped on with #7 tip.

Since she had some frozen pie filling, she just spooned some on and used a spatula to spread it. An angled spatula is actually easier for this job, especially if you are filling a large cake, but you can make do with a regular one if necessary.

Next she put on the top layer, then did the crumb coat. It's easiest to decorate a cold cake, so all of the layers were chilled before slicing. The extra advantage is that the crumb coat sets/dries faster on a cold cake. A crumb coat is used to seal all of the crumbs into the cake. That keeps the outer coat clean and looking nice. Make sure you scrape the crumbs off your blade into a small bowl or cup to keep the bigger bowl of frosting clean as you work.

Once the crumb coat has set, you put on your final layer. In this case she didn't do a second coat to the top of the cake because she knew it would be covered up, but if she had done a chocolate cate or tinted the frosting on the white cake she might have needed to do a top coat to make sure the cake color didn't come through.

Next she did a shell border around the bottom and top and filled it with cherry pie filling. It ended up being both pretty and very yummy. The main caveate she mentioned: Make sure you put the top border on first and give it a little time to dry before adding the cherries on top. If you top it before you put on the border the frosting won't stick and it'll slide off the sides when it has the cherries pushing against it.

How to Make Fondant Flowers

My daughter recently made a cake for a friend's bridal shower and was willing to share pictures on how it was done. She used a marshmallow fondant recipe one of my other daughter's picked up online, but you can use prepackaged fondant if you prefer and simply tint it whatever color you like.

Since she was working on a deadline and didn't have the usual petal and leaf cutout set made especially for these types of projects, she had to improvise and used the flower cut-outs.

Always remember that fondant dried out easily, so only work with a smal bit at a time, and keep the rest wrapped up tight in plastic wrap to keep it from drying out too quickly. She rolled out enough to cut six to eight pieces from at a time. Also, since she doesn't have a fondant rolling mat yet she used corn starch on the counter and rolling pin to keep the fondant from sticking. If the fondant got too dry to work with between rolling it out, she added a few drops of water to the small ball in her hand and worked it in. This can be messy and you don't want to add too much as it will make the fondant really sticky, but with care it can make the piece workable again.
She used the large cutout from the set and for the first row of petals cut out every-other petal.


This picture is really bad, but you can see she ran the toothpick through the cut peice, then wrapped it around the tip. Once she had the shape she wanted on the top petals, she pinched off the base part so the second set of petals would be even or nearly even with the inner row.

This is the second row of petals. She cut out one petal from the shape and added cut lines between the petals so they could overlap each other. when she slid it onto the toothpick, she also used a clean paintbrush from a kids' watercolor set that she bought just for fondant. She brushed a thin layer of water over the petals where they would overlap. Fondant will stick to itself easily with a touch of water. Be careful, though, not to let water drip on any parts that are going to be seen on the outside as water will leave marks behind to mar the surface.

For the third row she didn't cut any petals out, but still split the space between the petals. Then she took a toothpick and separated the petals and curved them back slightly to give them a slightly more realistic look. This really works best if you use thin pieces of fondant. These were rolled to 1/8 inch or thinner, but there may be some times when slightly thicker pieces will work fine.

Wile she was at it, she also made over 150 little flowers with the tiniest cutout in the set. Then she used the end of a chopstick (the fondant shaping foam and confectionarry tools would have bee much easier) and her finger to create a curve in the middle of the flowers.

If you're going to have roses, you obviously need leaves! Again, there were no cutters for leaves in stock, so she used the edge of a glass to cut each edge. If she had to do it again, she would have used a round cookie cutter because the glass didn't leave a crisp edge and they had to be trimmed with a knife to clean them up.

Next she used a toothpick to draw lines on the leaves.

Then she set everything out to dry since she made them several days in advance of the cake. Be aware that some colors fade a lot when the fondant dries. The pink faded to way less than half the original brilliancy as it dried, while the leaves only lightened a little bit.

A few days later she baked the cake, frosted it (crumb layer, then an outter layer), and rolled the purple fondant. Once that was ready, she used the toothpicks on the roses to stick the roses in the cake where she wanted them. If needed, they could have been cut off or trimmed back, but they were handy to creat the design she wanted.

The first of the small flowers were attached to the bottom of the cake with buttercream icing.

Then she used some yellow buttercream to put yellow dots in the flowers and the roses.

With a little extra playing, she finished up with the little flowers, tacking them and the leaves onto the cake with buttercream frosting. The green stems on the roses are also buttercream piped on with a small round tip, probably a #7. A slightly smaller circle tip, like a #4 made the dots in the flowers.

This cake was made using 2-8" round pans and it fit perfectly in one of these boxes.

Marshmallow fondant

1 16 oz package of mini marshmallows

1 Tbsp of water

2 tsp vanilla

Most of a 2 lb package of powdered sugar.

Heat the marshmallows slowly with the water and vanilla until they are melted, then begin encorporating the powdered sugar. You'll probably have about two cups of sugar left in your bag when the fondant reaches the right consistency. It's easiest to work with when it's a little warm, so if it gets cold, or you pull it out of the fridge to work with, zap in in the micro for 10-15 seconds to make it softer. Don't let it melt though!

This will make a pretty big batch of fondant, half a batch is generally enough for an eight-inch cake, unless you're doing fancy decorations with it, in which case you may need a bit extra. Another advantage of fondant is that it can be made in advance since it takes quite a bit of time to make and then tint it. The color has to be kneaded into the fondant, so it can take a while to reach the right color. It can also be kept for several weeks and then used if you have some left over. Tightly wrap any fondant in plastic wrap (some people suggest covering it with a light layer of shortening first) and then place in a zippered bag, taking as much air out of the bag as possible before sealing it. Many red colors will bleed into other balls of fondant, so make sure to wrap each color separately.

Simplify Pastry Making

Today I'm highlighting three more of the Wilton Better Baking Tools. This time we'll focus on tools designed for making pastry. All three of these items come with comfortable, ergonomic handles and are completely dishwasher safe.

This pastry blender is unlike anything else I've ever seen. Not only does it come with a cleaning rake or clip on the side that slides around the wires to loosen or remove butter when it begins to gum up the wires, but the wires themselves are different The two outside wires and the middle one are thicker to easily cut through thick pieces of butter or shortening. Then there are two thinner wires on each side of the middle wire to help blend finer pieces of butter into the dry ingredients. There's even a note on the back of the package that suggests using chilled butter makes for a delicate and flaky crust.

In my own experience, you can blend the dough as much as you need to before adding liquids to your pie crust, but once you add the water, vinegar, and/or egg, mix only until the dough is evenly moist to prevent the crust from coming out tough.

The pastry wheel has stainless steel blades in both straight and scalloped shapes. This allows you to shape your pastry however you like. This tool also boasts an easy rolling axle and the smooth wheel works great for cutting pasta as well!

I've always used one of those cheap pastry brushes to spread oils or butter mixtures at home. It works, but it doesn't clean up as easily as I would like. The Wilton Silicone Pastry Brush is wonderful. Instead of round bristles, these silicone bristles are curved to make channels that hold liquids. The bristles and lower end of the brush are heat resistant and can handle temperatures up to 500 degrees without melting!

To learn more about these great products and see what else is available, visit our Website.