Covering Cake Dummies
We get asked regularly how to cover cake dummies and what to use to stick the sugarpaste to the dummy. Quite honestly you can use marmalade, jam or even vodka but it works just as well with a little water and it saves you the extra cost! Be careful not to add too much otherwise you’ll end up with sticky icing! So here’s how…
Step 1: You will need to stick your Cake Dummy in place. You can use a number of things for this, such as: melted chocolate, edible glue, a blob of buttercream or royal icing…. personally I find a liquid that dries nice and firm the best, that way you can stop your dummy moving around the board and ensure it stays central. In the picture above we were using chocolate at the time so opted for that.
Step 2: Get that dummy placed centrally on your board and leave to set. On this cake we were making a wrapped parcel effect so decided to use the chamfered effect on the bottom so we could tuck our sugarpaste under. You can buy dummies in straight edge or chamfered (a smooth curved edge).
Step 3: Roll your sugarpaste. We used chocolate flavoured Renshaws for ours as it was for demonstrating our Chocolate Bow Tutorial. It helps to roll it in to a square shape when you are covering square cakes and rounds when covering rounds, this makes use of all the sugarpaste and means less is wasted.
Step 4: Use a tiny bit of water to brush lightly over your dummy, this will keep your sugarpaste in place. You can also use jam, marmalade or even white spirits. We find water great as it leaves no mess for when you want to strip your cake and re-use your cake dummy!
Step 5: Place the sugarpaste over the cake and smooth the edges, we used a smoother to smooth the flat side of the cake dummy. The palm of your hand works well for edges, especially if you see any small cracks appear… the heat from your hand helps warm the sugarpaste slightly for it to mould back together!
Step 6: Neaten your edges up with a knife cutting of any excess sugarpaste. You can knead any left over sugarpaste and store in a sealed bag and Tupperware box for future use. Did you know you can freeze sugarpaste for a further 6 months?! Just be sure to wrap your sugarpaste extremely well if you decide to do this as any air reaching the sugarpaste can effect the quality of it.
We finished our Cake Dummy off with a chocolate bow! Find out How To Create A Chocolate Bow.
You might also like:
The post Covering Cake Dummies appeared first on Cake It To The Max.