Criss Cut Lines On Cake

Decorating By dcabrera Updated 12 Aug 2008 , 5:14pm by ceshell

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ladybuglau Posted 23 Jul 2008 , 5:53pm
post #31 of 36

Do you mean wiltons gum tex disolved in water? Or the actual gumpaste broken apart in water? I just bought the gumtex and I'm thinking of returning it. The pre packaged stuff seems easier.[/quote]

use actual gumpaste mixed into hot water, it really works like glue. I tried mixing gumtex into hot water btw, guess what I got?
...Jello thumbsdown.gif
lol

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OCakes Posted 24 Jul 2008 , 12:36am
post #32 of 36

Thank you! Sometimes I step-up to the soap box! =)

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ceshell Posted 12 Aug 2008 , 4:38am
post #33 of 36

Re: dragees, unless things have changed recently, they are not actually illegal in California. That's a popular misconception that most people (especially retailers) tend to perpetuate. The "prohibition" if you can call it that, is a result of an environmental lawyer who made dragees a pet project. His stand is that the silver used to coat dragees is real silver, i.e. a metal, and thus a dangerous toxic substance that can accumulate in your body over time.

Manufacturers/sellers tried to argue that they wrote "not to be eaten" on the package and he was like, yeah right, you're going to pick 24 silver balls off your Christmas cookie. He somehow had enough power/$$ to bring lawsuits against enough parties that companies decided it wasn't worth the $ to defend themselves in a court of law to try to prove that dragees were not harmful to humans. So they all decided to stop selling them in CA. Literally every time he found someone selling to CA he would go after them. So it became common knowledge that you can't sell dragees in/to CA...kind of turned into the assumption that it is illegal to do so but no LAW actually exists to that effect.

IMHO that's why you can still find them at some smaller cake shops, but they won't advertise that they sell them. They probably figure, this guy is not touring the state looking for dragees, he just went after major sellers first (i.e. supermarkets...remember when you could buy them in supermarkets?) and stores that sell on the net, basically if it's easy for him to track them down they know he'll nail them.

Here's a great article about it, from 2005 http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/18/magazine/tm-dragee51

I can only assume sellers still won't ship them to us Californians even if we enlighten them, they'd prob. be afraid we're actually spies for the guy and conducting a sting operation or something lol. I wouldn't mind the "ban" (or whatever you call it) so much if it was proven that they really are toxic, then I'd just be like *shrug* ok they're cool but they're poison, I really don't need to put poison on my cake, even in trace amounts. But he's never proven that they ARE toxic, it's just an assumption so that's what chaps my butt!

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Tellis12 Posted 12 Aug 2008 , 2:13pm
post #34 of 36

I have one of these impression mats but the one time I tried to use it on my bc covered cake, it didn't work at all! it just made some sticky looking lines. What did I do wrong? Does the icing have to be especially thick?

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OCakes Posted 12 Aug 2008 , 3:18pm
post #35 of 36

ceshell - that is SO messed-up!! I cannot believe that guy - what is his POINT!?? He can use all those resources to HELP people. I'm so annoyed with people like that, and I'm going to my supplier tomorrow, who is pretty small & I'll check if she carries them & after reading your article link, maybe I'll print it & show her. I wish all those places would band together & go after HIM. It's not that big of a deal not to have dragees - but I don't think you could eat enough to equal a quarter (well, if you really wanted to, but from cake or cookies?)... and I survived after swallowing a quarter when I was a little kid... how is he an expert? What a weirdo.

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ceshell Posted 12 Aug 2008 , 5:14pm
post #36 of 36

Yah, I agree, it's frustrating. But he thinks he IS helping people. Maybe he is, I haven't done the research on it so I suppose I can't really judge. I just don't think his position is helped by the fact that dragees have been around for decades upon decades and there is not (to my knowledge) a single documented case of them making anyone sick/accumulation of the metal in anyone's body. I'm all for people protecting the consumer but not when the danger has not actually been established. Sigh icon_rolleyes.gif

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