Tuesday, 24 July 2012

Icing in the heat

Posted by Unknown at 12:00 pm
If the theory turns out to be right, that will be tremendously thick and tasty icing on the cake.

Brian Greene

Working with icing of any type can prove problematic, even back in the U.K I would sometimes have problems (a still warm oven and hot hands are not good for working with fondant!), but here it proves even worse to deal with!

A few weeks ago I made a gluten-free chocolate cake for my fiancé's sisters birthday.
I decorated the cake with fondant roses in blue (her favourite flower in her favourite colour - I wasn't being depressing I promise!), and a horse (yep, you guessed it, her favourite animal...this wasn't in blue obviously).

Everything was going well at first but then my creations started to melt and sweat! (I later found out that the humidity that day was 98%!) and no matter what I did I couldn't seem to make them any better.

20120724-102606.jpg


This prompted me to search for solutions.

A quick solution if you're doing any buttercream icing, add some cornflour to your mix, but be careful of the amount and only use in buttercream frosting, otherwise it'll make other frostings taste gritty.

As for our enemy fondant (or sugar paste/sugar dough depending on what you prefer) - try some CMC (if you can find it, sometimes it's called supergum or CMC gum) powder, working it well into your fondant.

Adding more icing sugar works for some (although I tried this on aforementioned cake and, as you can see, it didn't work).

Now every cake decorator knows not to put fondant in the fridge and in the U.K. I agree, although here its pretty much a must.

What I've done is refrigerate my cakes for about 10 minutes at a time so not to dry out the cake itself.

Yes, you'll see condensation spots form on your icing but if you're careful and don't touch them at all (it's hard to resist I know) they will disappear in an hour or less.

Have you any more tips or tricks for getting round this problem? If so please comment below or send me a message and I'll update this page, giving whoever provides the tips with full credit.

Happy baking!

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Tuesday, 24 July 2012

Icing in the heat

If the theory turns out to be right, that will be tremendously thick and tasty icing on the cake.

Brian Greene

Working with icing of any type can prove problematic, even back in the U.K I would sometimes have problems (a still warm oven and hot hands are not good for working with fondant!), but here it proves even worse to deal with!

A few weeks ago I made a gluten-free chocolate cake for my fiancé's sisters birthday.
I decorated the cake with fondant roses in blue (her favourite flower in her favourite colour - I wasn't being depressing I promise!), and a horse (yep, you guessed it, her favourite animal...this wasn't in blue obviously).

Everything was going well at first but then my creations started to melt and sweat! (I later found out that the humidity that day was 98%!) and no matter what I did I couldn't seem to make them any better.

20120724-102606.jpg


This prompted me to search for solutions.

A quick solution if you're doing any buttercream icing, add some cornflour to your mix, but be careful of the amount and only use in buttercream frosting, otherwise it'll make other frostings taste gritty.

As for our enemy fondant (or sugar paste/sugar dough depending on what you prefer) - try some CMC (if you can find it, sometimes it's called supergum or CMC gum) powder, working it well into your fondant.

Adding more icing sugar works for some (although I tried this on aforementioned cake and, as you can see, it didn't work).

Now every cake decorator knows not to put fondant in the fridge and in the U.K. I agree, although here its pretty much a must.

What I've done is refrigerate my cakes for about 10 minutes at a time so not to dry out the cake itself.

Yes, you'll see condensation spots form on your icing but if you're careful and don't touch them at all (it's hard to resist I know) they will disappear in an hour or less.

Have you any more tips or tricks for getting round this problem? If so please comment below or send me a message and I'll update this page, giving whoever provides the tips with full credit.

Happy baking!

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