Standing girl Cake Decorating and Baking Tutorial

Valentina points out that children’s head’s tend to be a lot more rounded at the top and as well the eyes are a little lower than the centre of the face. Basically you want to leave more space at the top of the head and move all the features down a little but don’t worry. Valentina will keep us right.

For the full course see Mother and daughter playtime

Be very careful when cutting your little ball of sugarpaste in half that they are indeed two halves and as equal as possible. It will very quickly show if one is bigger than the other and the eyes will not look the same as each other. If you get this part right you are on the road to success. Make sure the eye sockets are deep enough so that the whites do not bulge out and not too deep that the sink in…of course you can always add a little more sugarpaste if you do this but that is a slippery slope.

The same techniques are used when making the ears for the mother’s head but of course the placement and sizes of the ears are different. The ears are actually placed slightly lower than the eyes and again make sure that the pieces of sugarpaste you roll into shape for the ears are as equally sized as possible.

Valentina uses flower paste the same colour as the cake for this lesson and shows us how to make tiny cute shoes that the little girl will be wearing. You may want to avoid coffee before this stage as you will need a steady hand. The cutters that she uses are included in this set.

Much the same technique as used for making the mother’s legs but of course you will be referring to a smaller template and shaping them slightly differently. They key is to make sure that you are using the exact same amount of sugarpaste for each leg and keep checking them against each other refer to your template.

This lesson is a lot simpler than making the body for the mother as there is a lot less shape to it. Again refer to the templates provided and make sure you have clean hands.

Valentina starts off by rolling out some pink sugarpaste but not too thinly as she uses an impression mat on it to add some nice detail. If you roll it too thin the detail will not show properly so beware of that. Use a circle cutter to cut out a half circle at the top of the dress to allow it to wrap around the neck of the body. Then it’s just a case of cutting it to size and then wrapping it round the body with a little edible glue or water to secure it. For the skirt she uses a frill cutter and then goes round the edges with a ball tool to add shape and adds them in strips around the body at different heights.

To add prettiness to the child’s clothes Valentina adds edible pearl balls b indenting the dress with the small end of a ball tool and placing the balls in with a little edible glue. She then makes simple sugar roses which she decorates the base of the cake with. For the roses she uses a very simple, effective and quick technique which you will use time and time again.

Some quick and basic modelling here which will seem like child’s play compared to making the mother and daughter. Valentina shows us how to make a cute little ragdoll that the child will be holding.

Now that you have made and completed the mother you will be an expert so this lesson will be a breeze. The exact same techniques used but of course a slightly different shape and size. Use the templates available and again double check your sugarpaste amounts and you will be fine.

You may want to have cotton buds and high percentage alcohol to hand at this stage so you can clean any mistakes you might make. To start off Valentina cuts out tiny circles of green sugarpaste with a piping nozzle which she uses for the iris’ of the eyes. She then mixes a small amount of green and black paint (Lustre mixed with vodka) and then paints very fine detail over the green sugarpaste while attached to the head. You are aiming to paint very faint lines that go from the centre of the eye out. It may help to study your own eye for a moment and copy what you see. Don’t get too carried away of course. We don’t need to paint blood vessels or anything like that. For the pupils she adds a tiny dot of black paint with the a very small ball tool which is a lot easier than using a tiny dot of sugarpaste.

Valentina shows us how to finish off the eyes by adding eyeliner and eyebrows with some black paint and very thin sausages of black and brown sugarpaste. Of course the girls eyes are made slightly differently from the mother’s as she is a little young for eye make up! She then adds a little bit of rose dust to their cheeks to bring them to life with light strokes starting from the edge of the mouth toward out.

First of all we need to finish the eyes by adding little specs of white to bring a little life to them. You could try and paint them but you may find you have more control by attaching tiny balls of white sugarpaste which is what Valentina does. When attaching the heads make sure they are not too soft before doing so as they might change shape as you put them on.

For the child’s hair Valentina uses leftover sugarpaste she used for the Mother with a little more yellow mixed in to make it a little lighter. She then shapes it around the head in a similar way to the mother’s and then adds a pony tail by making a large thick tear drop shape of sugarpaste stuck to the back of the head and resting over her left shoulder which looks very cute.