Hi, everybody! My name is Sandy Sheppard. I am a master cake decorator. I have been in business now for many years on my own, but I have been decorating over 25 years and I am here today to show you to begin with a few basic tools for starting, working in the field of cake decorating.
Some of them you're going to be very familiar with, hopefully you have many of these things right in your own home in kitchen, but others might be new to you. So, we'll show you as we go along. Obviously, one of the things you'll need as in cake decorator is an apron, believe it or not, icing and cakes are very messy job. So I always keep an apron around.
I also find towels very handy whether I am washing and cleaning things, or wiping things dry whatever, but anyways, you've got those at home. A pair of scissors, I'll show you a few uses for them. Obviously, you're going to need an icing spatula something that will scrap out the bowls when you're working or if you're making a cake, you want to spread that batter before you put it into your pans.
Tossing things aside is the easy way for me to know what I've already talked about. Scotch tape, yes, we will be using scotch tape, toothpicks are a great thing for using your food colors, and I'll talk about food colors on another day. Skewers; many bakers, when they test a cake to tell if it's done, use a toothpick to test it. I burned my arm once, I use a skewer now, so it works much better for me, but that's what a skewer is used for. Airtight containers; whether you use some thing like this or even the small convenient ones, they work great.
Now, let me show you a few things that you may not have in your home, and talk about that. There are many types of cake decorating tips starting off with some round ones. This is a number 3 in my left hand, in my right-hand is a number 12, as you can see when the number is smaller so is the tip, and larger the tip gets larger.
Those round tips are used for writing and for figure piping, and then we have star tips. The star tips are used for the stars, for your shells and many other techniques. The one in my left hand is a number 16 and the one in my right is a 22. They also range in sizes, and we have some other specialty tips, these are leaf tips. This is a number 67 and this is my favorite, a number 349, it's little V shape, works very well. We also have rose tips; everyone is always interested in making a rose. They come very tiny, I believe this is a 101, 104 is the most commonly used, and a 124 is even larger.
We have other specialty tips. This one is called a basket weave and that's its main purpose and these are both drop flower tips, as you can see they come in sizes too. This little tool is the greatest for helping you to work with cake decorating. You're going to put this in your cake decorating bag, and this part fits on the outside with a tip in between.
So, when you are cake decorating and you are working on, you're writing a message and all of a sudden you're ready to do some flowers, you want to use the same color. If your icing is the proper consistency, you can take out that tip, put on your rose tip and keep working with the same color without having to stop and change or fill up another bag.
Speaking of bags, you have different ones available to you in the market. These are called feather weight bags. They are a light plastic material, that work fairly well and last a long time, they are very durable. We also have plastic disposable bags. Sorry, I didn't have any small ones on hand. These are mine that I use most often, and we have parchment triangles, and if you tune in another video, I'll show you how to make a parchment triangle into a nice cone, so that you can work with that.
You also will probably want to invest in a few spatulas. This is my favorite one for icing cakes with because of the angle design. While I am working on a cake, I am not going to get my knuckles into the icing because that allows for some extra room, that a straight spatula doesn't. The smaller spatula I use for stirring up my colored icing, as well as small techniques. You may want to invest in a very nice, this is my special tool, and I have to be careful. I keep it in plastic, because it is very sharp and I have cut myself just by touching that blade, but this is wonderful tool for trimming off edges and leveling your cakes, let's put it back in its package.
Another thing you may not be familiar with are cardboard circles. When I am working with a cake, say an eight inch cake, I'll use one for the same, that is the same size as the cake, this is an eight inch circle and I will use two to put together for my base and cover it with a nice, decorative foil, so that it will look nice, once I set my cake on top of it and I have a nice border all the way around. Speaking of that foil, here is the roll of it. You can use regular aluminum foil as well, but this is a nice pretty pattern in it, and it's great.
Another thing that you might not happen to have are little paste food colors. This is pink or rose pink, which is my favorite pink color. They come in sizes that are half of this, which is a half ounce and these are one ounce sizes. They last to a very long time, but I use so much that I get mine in larger containers. An extremely helpful tool with cake decorating is a turntable. I bought this lovely little gem at a place out in Missouri, a Walnut Factory, but you can find similar ones to this at your local department stores and step on a larger scale, normally, about 12 to 14 inches round.
Another thing I use frequently is wax paper. For your information, most of all of these things that I have shown you, these cake decorating tips, the parchment bags and these food colors can be bought at any cake in candy supply store.
Let's get started and show you how to do some cake decorating. Thank you!
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services