Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi guys I’ve been doing a lot of cakes lately so I’ve started buying things in bulk. Including my icing. I’ve found that covering paste is so much cheaper so I thought I’d try it. My cakes haven’t been as neat. I thought it was me at first not ganching right or something. So I went back to an early tutorial and did it all step buy step with Paul. Yet still it cracked and ripped and was a mess. Do you think it’s the paste something I’m doing or do you think it could be that I’m mixing coloured sugar paste with the covering paste that’s causing me problems. On the plus side I’m getting great at hiding mistakes lol :). Thanks in advance for your help. Lisa.

Hi Lisa

Covering paste, I think is sometimes called covapaste (not 100% sure of that). It’s basic paste often used for large cakes and not quite as refined as the more expensive brands. I’ve never heard anyone else on the site say they’ve had problems with it and I haven’t tried to google any discussions otherwise.
Any sugarpaste can rip and crack so it’s not necessarily this brand. If you’ve been using a little too much icing sugar this can cause the problems you have described. I can’t see how adding softer coloured paste can affect it so adversely, although sometimes if you more colour the consistency can change.
Kneading in some shortening like trex into the paste can very much help reduce ripping and cracking but most of all using as little icing sugar helps most. Instead rub a little shortening on your roll out surface then roll out as quickly as possible to prevent the sugarpaste drying out in the air. I’ve experienced small cracks around the edges of cakes. If this is happening to you rub a little trex on the cracks which will help soften the sugarpaste and stop the cracks splitting any further.
I’m sure many other members will share their hints and tips too. Hope my contribution helps.

Thank you I will try all of that. Hopefully it will work better. I’m using Renshaws so it should be ok. Maybe I’m just rolling it to thin. Trust me to have a problem no one else does 🙂

Tearing and ripping are common problems Lisa. Everyone at some point will experience similar things on all brands of paste. It’s just a case of trying different ways of eliminating them. Hope you get on ok. x