Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Trust me, I’m easily confused at the minute, full of a cold lol! I know MaisieFantasie’s work, never use any of her recipes though, I use Juliet Sear’s vanilla cake recipe which is 200g flour/sugar/butter/eggs, 1 tbspn vanilla bean paste and 1 tspn vanilla extract which does a 6″ round and I don’t have any issues with that one at all. I bake at 160 in a fan oven in greased/lined tins. I know some people also put a tray of boiling water in the bottom of the oven which helps with moisture.

I use either Cake Stuff or Cake Decorating Company depending on where I order from. If I’m stocking up on sugarpaste it’s cake stuff as I usually order several boxes at a time. If it’s just the odd thing I need I use CDC as they do free delivery over £25. Occasionally I use cake craft world but not often as their delivery fees are high and the odd order from Squires (usually when they have a sale on lol!)

I don’t centre dowel at all – I did a 5 tier cake with separators before Christmas and didn’t centre dowel and it was fine. I did assemble that one on site though as the separators were surrounded with sugar flowers but the venue gave me a really wobbly table and all the tables were really close together so it did leave me worried lol. All was fine though!

I usually transport up to 3 tiers assembled and anything over that I stack on site to avoid damage in transit and also because I can’t carry more than 3 tiers without my arms falling off. As long as you have the correct number of dowels in each tier you shouldn’t need a centre dowel. I use polydowels rather than plastic/wooden ones, they’re much stronger and feel really secure. I have no problems at all with them and quite often my cakes have a fruit top tier to support too.

Hope that helps,
Yvonne x

Hi,

I use the acrylic plates for ganaching for the simple fact that although you have a higher initial outlay cost, they’re washable and re-usable. The acrylic is 5mm thick. I usually ganache the acrylic board to a bigger one (I have several sets in various sizes – you could use a large cake drum instead) so I have a surface for my scraper when going round the cake. I then ganache my cake base card to the top of the ganaching plate, fill my cake as usual, put the ganache on the top of the cake and spread out, sprinkle with a little water so the top plate doesn’t become totally glued to the surface and put the top ganaching plate on. Then I ganache the sides and put it in the fridge to set.

When it’s set up, slide a hot palette knife between the top ganaching plate and surface of the cake and it should just pop off. If it starts to pull your chocolate put it back in the fridge as it’s not ready. Once the lid is off you can touch up little spots/indents with a small palette knife. You detach the cake card your cake is sitting on with the same method – hot palette knife between the card and ganaching plate.

There are 3 types of ganaching plates available. 2 work the same way with a top and bottom plate and these are from Cake Stuff or The Vanilla Valley. The 3rd is made by Choctastique and is from The Cake Decorating Company and these work a little differently as you create the lid separately. I have sets from all companies and they’re all as good as each other, I have no preference to which I use. It really all depended on where I was ordering from at the time I bought a new size.

Hope that helps
Yvonne x

Oh and just to add, I buy them in the size of my cake tins as in my experience the cakes shrink slightly and so you have a gap to work with x

As a guide, acrylic boards are around £10 pair for the smaller sizes 8″-10″ so if you’re planning on leaving them on as your cake base it will greatly increase the cost of your cake. You’re right that the majority of cake cards come up slightly smaller but with the way I do it (attaching the board to the acrylic plate) this actually helps avoid the accidental scraping of the foil (and saves you giving your expensive acrylic plates away!).

I use the acrylic boards that are the same size as my cake and matching cake cards. I’ve rarely had to trim a cake as they shrink slightly (I use Invicta or Silverwood pans) which always allows me a nice lip to give a good coat of ganache or buttercream. Never had an issue with the crust on my cakes being “too crusty” (if any of the recipes I use had an issue with crust they’d be overcooked so I would be baking again not trimming) but obviously this is personal preference. The only time I bake bigger and trim is anything over 12″ with one or two of my recipes due to the cooking time but I always use a heating core and baking them larger is purely a precaution (and I rarely make cakes over 12″).

I think whether you get them bigger to give a thicker coat of whatever you’re using is again, down to your personal preference but I agree that 9.5″ is too much (even for buttercream for my personal tastes) so if you are going to go bigger 9.25″ is probably your best bet.

Also, as a thought, if you leave the acrylic board attached to the cake, as these are quite thick, when you come to cover in sugarpaste you’ll get a ridge where the cake meets the thick board. Fine if you’re using ribbon as that will hide it but if you’re doing a wedding cake where you’re not using ribbons on the tiers but filling in the joins with royal icing to give a clean finish, that ridge will stand out like a sore thumb.

Hope that helps (and sorry for waffling lol!)
Yvonne

If you look at Paul’s tutorial in the free section on dowelling and stacking cakes, he does introduce poly dowels in one of the lessons. I think even the most experienced cakers have accidents once in a while, it’s all part of the learning curve and stays in our minds. Paul and David have their own disaster stories to tell too. What matters is how you deal with the accident. It always pays to take an emergency decorating kit with you when delivery a cake. I have a kit made up ready to grab and go just for that purpose. It includes a set of tools, extra decorations in case of breakages, gum glue, gumpaste, sugarpaste, extra dowels … basically any thing which would be useful. I do make up fresh royal icing or ganache for gluing bits back on. A bar of white chocolate or a few candy melts also come in useful to use as fast drying glue!
If you like the idea of a centre dowel please have a peek here: http://www.sturdycakestackers.com/
There are several threads on the site which cover transporting cakes here:
http://www.cakeflix.com/questions?s=transporting+cake

Enjoy learning! 🙂

Hi cakechef22

Cake boards come in all different depths and are used for different weights of cake. It’s up to you whether you want to use acrylic or the silver foil type. Most cake boards and card are now manufactured in cm so they will be slightly bigger than it’s inch counterpart eg if you need a 9″ cake board it will be slightly bigger in cm. This will give you the required lip when ganaching or icing. The large 12mm deep drums are used as the base board. For support boards which go in between stacked cakes ( on top of dowel), 2mm finished edged boards will support sponge cakes and the 3mm boards for fruit cakes or something a little more dense than a light sponge. There is also 1mm cards, these are good for displaying little models or very, very light sponge cakes.
Paul uses the silver foil type as do majority of cakers. If you’re a beginner I would recommend using the silver foil boards, drums and cards they are less expensive and do the job.

Hope this helps.

ps I don’t really know how the thickness of acrylic boards are graded. It may be that they just come in one thickness.

Thank you both so much for taking the time out to help me.

I am in the process of looking to purchase acrylic boards over cake drums, only because of stories I have been reading on what others prefer, which is if you scrape around the cake too hard there is a chance some of the foil may come away from the board. (Hazard)

I don’t like to keep the crust on my cakes and i’m aware that I waste a lot of edges, this is what I do!

If I got asked to bake a 9″round sponge I’d bake a 10″ instead, pop a 9″ cake board on top, cut it out and dis-guard the rest revealing a beautiful crustless sponge.

However I was given a cake board which is bang on 9″ I use it as my cutting guide board, I have also found that the cake cards from the £1 shop are really good and true to their size.

My last batch of cake drums came from The Cake Decorating Company. What i’m noticing is that the manufacturers are not cutting the cake drum bang on 10″ for example, i’m always finding that they are coming up slightly smaller, the worst one was 9.7″

Thank you for directing me where to get the boards I will purchase some from Vanilla Vally soon after I hear back from you.

THE BIG QUESTION IS:

What size board do I need? (Fondant will be going on top of the cake by the way)

My gut feeling is telling me to go for the 9.25″

9.5 seems too thick! I’m more thinking 9.5″ would be great for buttercream cakes, as it would give that nice 1/2″ thickness all round am I right?

I hope I receive a reply from you,

Thank you both once again.

kindest regards x

Hi Yvonne,
Thanks for getting back to me. Your not waffling, i’m the one doing that by confusing you lol!!

OMG i’m totally aware of the cost of the acrylic boards no way will I be using them as cake boards lol.

I use a fan oven to bake my cakes, and to avoid dry crusts maybe I should do 1 of 2 things, either:

* Lower the temp to 150c instead of 160
* Try a different moist vanilla recipe (Currently use Masie Fantasie) have you heard of her?

I’m going to go with 9.25″ from Vanilla Vally.

I need to purchase some cake cards which company do you use for these please? I was thinking of trying Vanilla Vally’s one!

I have plans to drill a centre hole, for tiered cakes!

Thanks for all your help

Aww sorry to hear your poorly, hope you get well soon.

Juliet Sear! I must say, i’ve never heard of her before. Thank you for the recipe x
I love how you shop all over the place to get the best deals. Currently Vally are selling discounted ganache plates so I will grab some.

I have never heard of “polydowels” I will be looking into this. Regarding me centre dowelling, I had an accident the other day, I drove to my family function with a 2 tier (8″&10″ round) cake on a non slip mat in the boot of my car in a cake box of course, the 8″ slid off the cake card it was sitting on and got damaged.
Both cakes were crumbed with buttercream with a smear on the cake card to make it stick.

This is why I am desperate to learn the art of ganaching. If i’d had ganache at the bottom of that board i’m pretty sure the cake would not have slid off so easy.

Love you story about the 5 tier wow thats tall!!

Get well soon x

P.S
As you know i’m trying out recipes and the moment. I want to ask about your preference on butter please!
I use to use Tesco salted butter in the block. After doing research I came across a company called “Purple Cupcakes” and they swear by Stork for baking which i’m now trying .

Some say Stork isn’t a” quality butter” whats your opinion please ? what do you like ?

I have now upgraded to Lurpak lol…. only to make my buttercream. 1kg is too expensive for me to be messing around with, but it does produced a lovely buttercream filling.

Thank you made with love x
Great info, I will take a look thank you.

P.s what does the tick and no: mean/do on the left hand side please?

Lurpak is a good quality butter as are many others. Butter has a fat content of approx 84%, the rest of the content is made up of water. As long as the fat content is high it’s butter! Have a look on your butter packaging to see the contents. I don’t have any special preferences except if I’m buying fresh butter from our local farms and that’s more to support the farmer’s wife who makes it!
I don’t bake with any margarine but that’s my personl choice. Many people regard Stork as an excellent baking fat for making cakes and pastries. It gives a softer crumb which is not always conducive in cakes which require carving. I believe it’s great for cupcakes which have to be soft, moist and springy. I guess that is why the Purple cake company champions it. I know lots of others do too.
Some people use block margarine instead of the soft tub variety because it apparently does give a more butter cake type crumb.

Finally, the green tick means you have accepted that answer as the best for your inquiry. Unfortunately I can’t see where the ‘no:’ is. 🙂

ps EDIT: suddenly realised what you meant the no: that’s just marking up an answer if it has helped you.

I’m with MIWL on the stork/butter, I only use unsalted and tend to use Sainsbury’s own for baking but go with Lurpak for buttercream as it beats slightly whiter. The odd time we shop at a farm shop and get farm butter it never makes it as far as a cake I’m afraid 🙂

Oh dear, I can imagine what a nightmare the cake slipping was. Thankfully I’ve never had one completely topple/slide but I have had bits break off and like MIWL, I take a kit with me on deliveries just in case I need to fix something.

I usually use royal icing (the ready mix you add water to – I just mix a small amount in a bowl with a teaspoon when using it as glue) to hold the cake card to the iced base board/drum and then royal icing in between tiers when stacking. Ganache would work just as well as both set hard and are strong.

Thank you both for your replies.

A long time ago I read somewhere the fat content in butter should be in the eighties hence me using Tesco’s own brand, which its about 82/84 % fat cant remember at the top of my head.

I’ve own recently chanced to Stock which is only 72% fat thats not good, after reading what you said about the water content, (looks like i’ll be switching back lol) I need a good all rounder especially for carving.

Royal icing is definitely the way forward for me.