Cake Decorating

I am still studying the art of cake decorating, however, there are a couple of tricks I have learned to help with the decorating process. 

Back in January, I was making a cake for my son's birthday - the Vegas Golden Knights (VGK). 

The steps I followed to get a decent looking cake with minimal effort are the following:

1. Find and print the image that you would like to reproduce on the cake. Print the image to the final size you need. 

2. Take parchment paper, place it on top of the printed image and using a pencil trace some of the main parts. The details you can add directly on the cake. The main parts of the image will give you reference points for adding the details. For the VGK image, I traced the shield and the outer edges of the helmet.

3. Cut the traced image on the line.

4. Place the cut image on the cake where you would like the final image to appear.

5. Trace the image with a toothpick into the icing crumb coat.

6. Trace and fill in the toothpicked image with icing using the piping tip of your choice. Here I used a number 16 Wilton star tip. On other cakes I have also used a number 3 Wilton tip for the tracing and filled in the areas with the number 16 Wilton tip. 

As you can see in the image below, I traced the shield with the yellow, filled in the space between the shield and the helmet in black. I work with the printed image beside me for reference. 

Once I got to the helmet, I piped icing in the areas that I was certain - the white line on the left side, tracing the right and the lower edge with yellow and then slowly working my way towards the middle adding the details as I went along. 

The cake is far from perfect. There is still so much for me to learn but this method of cake decorating has helped me a lot over the years. 

Digitized Beach

In this digitizing exercise I learned and tried to do a gradient effect from red to yellow in the sky and create the waves with an uneven jagged edge stitch. 

Here is the digitized computer image. This is what I see in my Embird software, however, it doesn't always stitch out the way you see it. 

I was excited to see how the design would stitch out, specially the waves. Unfortunately because of the lack of contrast between the water, sand and wave thread colour the details are lost and hard to see.

This design was quite the learning experience. I love the image on the computer and it didn't take me long to digitize. However, when I stitched it out, I learned that: 

• I had some pull compensation issues in the trunk of the tree and on the left side of the scene. 
• The palm tree leaves end up to be about 4 layers of stitches. It is very stiff and some of the under layers should have been removed in my design.

I love the stitch pattern selected for the water and the digitized method for the waves and sky. I will definitely use the elements I learned in this exercise again in future designs.

The mug rug is actually straight and square but because the thickness of the stitches, it warped the edges of the final product.

We learn by trying, by studying what went well and also what items didn't work out. 

It's only by Plan - Do - Review do we learn.