I did a cake for a baby shower and I made it out buttercream but I did the handles for the basket out of gumpaste/fondant. But it started sagging and destroying my basketweave design. I got it to stay and hid it with flowers. I'm praying that it stays up until we cut the cake. I will up load the picture later. But the handles giving me grief. I did not think it would be a pain.

Help any one?

Personally, I would use straight gumpaste (not fondant plus Tylose or anything with fondant). Straight up gumpaste, once dry, remains rock hard.

I prefer Nicholas Lodge's gumpaste recipe, which is found on his website: www dot nicholaslodge dot com

Sherri

Also, for things like this, its a good idea to use a heavy floral wire thorugh the middle of the handle. This also gives you something to poke into the cake, or if the handle is on the outside of the cake, poke it into the cake board, so that it sticks up striaght... Make sure you let it dry all the way hard. As Cakepro said, straight gumpaste is the best for this. If you need to dry it fast (within a day) you can put it in your oven with ONLY the light on. Don't open the door, or you'll let the heat out....turn it over once to make sure you get both sides dry...

gumpaste will soften and break if it is stuck dwn into the BC ( ask m e how I know, LOL)


use straight fondant but you have to make it wayyyyyyyyyyyyy ahead so it is rock hard dry. attach sucker sticks to the ends of the handle and stick that down into the cake and secure with some melted choc .

JMO, that is how I do it.

a mix is fine for modelling, but for something like that I would use gumpaste or even pastillage, it dries rock hard and is very light. a wire inside is also a good idea

Dangit, I always forget about using sucker sticks. Could have used them in a cake yesterday and saved myself the headache of protecting the cake from touching wire!! Grrr

the other thing i do is:

since the GP will soften and break if it is down in the BC, I will paint any part of the handle that will be in touch with BC with melted choc and let that dry. only stick the part with choc down into the cake, and that will protect it from softening and breaking.

Not sure of the buttercream issue because it is not a popular medium here in Australia - BUT you can do fantastic handles by covering PVC tubing with fondant/modelling paste and using a couple of skewers/toothpicks to secure to cake (toothpick goes inside of tubing) you get a good "bendable" curve in the handle and it can be dried insitu on the cake. Thickness of the tubing dictates the size of the finished handles.

Sorry for the HIJACK

Sugarshack!

I need you to tell me how long GP takes before it will start to break down. I made a bunch of small calla lillies to put on top of cupcakes that will have a swirl of BC on the top. I'm not putting the lillies on until I'm at the event but the cupcakes are due about 3 hours before the shower!! Are they going to melt away in that time? I'm just sticking the bottom of the calla into the top of the swirl but you have me worried now!

I do have white choc that I can dip the bottoms in if I have to tonight.

Thanks for the info.

double post.

Well part of the icing fell as we were driving to the shower. At least one side so I patched it up once we arrived. You couldn't see it but it was because I just stuck the handles down into the cake. I'll know the next time. Everyone loved it I did the WASC with raspberry filling. That was the first time I used the recipe. I did post the picture up in the gallery I was proud accept for those handles.

Thank you everyone for your imput.