Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi again madeitwithlove

I am as the title states a little confused over the above. I am making a chocolate drip cake and am going to ganache and cover with sugar paste but not sure about which drip recipe to follow. I spoke to somebody recently who advised just melted chocolate with a little vegetable oil. But who much is a little? Also I have seen a recipe for a 50/50 ratio chocolate to cream. Please can you give me idea on what would be best?

Many thanks
xx

HI madeitwithlove

I just wanted to let you know that the chocolate drip cake I made was a huge success. It was delicious and very much appreciated by the recipient. The chocolate drip worked beautifully and I crowned the top of the cake with a lovely selection of assorted chocolatey sweets. The only downside was the very soft sugar paste which broke up when applied to the cake, resulting in me having to re-ice it. The sugar paste was Renshaws and is one I wouldn’t use again in a hurry. Perhaps it was a bad batch, but disappointing nonetheless.

xx

Personally, I would use 50/50 ratio cream and choccy recipe or use royal icing. Did you see today’s pearl wedding cake tutorial? Paul melts down fondant with some water to make a thin enough royal icing type solution to make the drip. A lot people do use oil to thin candy melts for making the drips. I would say start with a table spoon first and see what it looks like. If it’s still too thick, warm the candy melts again and add a little more oil. If you’re using white or milk chocolate (not candy melts) don’t use oil, it will make it too thin and difficult to set.

Thanks very much again. No.I didn’t see the pearl wedding cake tutorial but what a good idea. Ok I will do the 50/50 ganache recipe which sounds good. The other question to ask is how much quantity of ganache recipe would you suggest for a 10inch round 4inch cake please? Oh and I just wondered if it’s ok to cover the whole cake in sugar paste rather than leave the top bare? I just spotted Lindy Smith’s video about a drip cake and she doesn’t ice the top of the cake. Personally I don’t fancy doing that as I feel the cake would retain more moisture if the whole cake was covered in sugar paste. Any further advice would be fantastic thanks.

xx

You won’t need that much. I suppose if you use 300 cream and 300 choccy, that’s 600g of ganache. Eyeball it to see whether you think theres enough. If you made more it wouldn’t be wasted because you could increase the ratio to make a covering ganache for a later project. Better to have more than not enough. Lindy does things her own way, most people just ice the whole cake. I’ve done a couple of drip cakes but only on ganached covered cake. Alllow the ganache to cool down before dripping it. I find using a piping bag gives good control.

Thanks so much again madeitwithlove. That’s given me a far better idea of how to proceed.

Have a good evening. xx

You’re welcome bellscakes. I off to sleep now, it’s gone midnight! nitey nite xx

I’m so pleased everything went well, thank you for taking the time to give feed back 🙂
Unfortunately the Renshaw paste hasn’t had very good reviews by many members. If you type in the search box ‘Renshaw’s sugarpaste’ you’ll see the problem has been ongoing for a long time. There are several threads over a number of pages which you might find an interesting read. Rest assured you didn’t have a bad batch.

Well done with the drip cake, you won’t worry so much now if you get another order for same. xx