Hanging Handbag Cake Decorating and Baking Tutorial

In this lesson Mayen shows us how to prepare and assemble to stand which once finished will be capable of carrying a significant amount of weight.  It’s also available on Etsy. Mayen recommends always thinking five steps ahead and pre-drilling all your holes so as to avoid splitting the wood. As the cakes made in the studio are never for consumption Mayen is concerned about doing the woodwork on the kitchen but of course make sure you do this in a non food environment. If you are confident doing this you can always get your local DIY store to help you.

So now it’s time to make the structure food safe. No one likes food that tastes of wood and and glue so let’s cover it up. Mayen shows us how to use a combination of cake card and tin foil to keep it safe and tasty. Watch out when using hot glue…it’ll get you!

Here Mayen shows us how to cut the cake so that it fits snuggly around the structure. You can use the template that she showed you how to make to keep you right and use your tasty ganache as glue to keep it all together.

Mayen continues to show us how to get the cake on and around the structure in preparation for carving.

So now we’re on to carving the cake and Mayen “eyeballs” it so no templates used but just careful carving. Mayen recommends using a turntable to so you can keep spinning the cake to make sure you are carving each side the same and creating uneven shapes.

Mayen starts of by using a slightly runnier consistency of ganache to do her first layer of ganache acting as her crumb coat which sets it up nicely for the second coat after being chilled. Once the second coat is on and has been left to set a little she then uses an acetate smoother (or thin plastic place mat) to smooth the ganache in preparation for being iced. The way to know if the ganache is ready to be smoothed is if in turns from a gloss to a mat finish when you run over it with the smoother.

In this lesson Mayen shows us how to create the design for the main body of the bag using strip cutters which speed things up quite a bit. Definitely worth purchasing. Just a roller and a stitchy tool and that’s all you need.

Here Mayen demonstrates just how handy those vinyl sheets are! I have personally never seen them used before but can definitely see the benefit of using them. It allows you to handle the sugarpaste and place it onto the cake without adding finger marks or inadvertently mishape it. Another clever thing Mayen does is uses shortening (trex) to coat the ganache before adding the sugarpaste as opposed to water or piping gel. Shortening is great because it is sticky but still allows you to move the sugarpaste around once it’s on and even remove it completely without any problems.

Just one last panel and then we have finished covering the cake. Mayen uses a lovely crocodile leather effect impression mat which works well with the handle and keeps the theme consistent. You can purchase one like it by clicking here.

So we’ve pretty much covered the cake and now it’s time to add the little bits like the lining and then cut a portion of the icing on top of the cake in preparation for the zipper. You can use an extruder to creating the lining or use your hands of even cake smoothers to roll out thin sausages.

In this lesson Mayen adds a nice zip to the top of the cake using a sipper mould which takes no time at all. She then creates a nice red badge for the front of the cake with Paul’s name inscribed on it. Not sure Paul would be in a rush to wear the bag but it looks lovely all the same!

In this final lesson Mayen shows us how finish it all off creating the last of the decorations and finishing them off with some lovely (non edible) paint. Mayen points out that though the paint causes the decorations to not be suitable for consumption it is very unlikely anyone would want to eat them anyway as they set very hard.

Here Mayen shares some ideas that you can use using the same techniques and stand to create completely different cakes as well as ideas on how to make this design unique to you.

We are sure you have some of your own ideas so please share your pictures with us on our facebook page as well as Mayne’s!

In this lesson, Paul provides some insider information for this cake including the cost to make it as well as how much you should price the cake at when selling it – vital information for any professional cake designer.