I am making a castle cake and wanted to make the brick or rock pattern on the cake. How would I do that in buttercream icing? Help, please!

The pattern is most often achieved by using what is called impression mats.They are plastic bendable mats that you press against the crusted BC icing and it leaves the pattern.They can be purchased at sugarcraft.com and earlene moores websites.

Is there something else that I can use? It's for next week.

I use lego blocks on fondant....i do not know how that would work on BC though...

Good Luck..

Yeah...steal some of your kids toys!!They make great impressions!!

Okay, I was thinking that. Would that push in the icing, not pull it out? I mean would that reverse the effect. Does that make sense?

If the icing is crusted enough it should leave a nice impression.Don't force it too hard or you will tear the icing.

I would think (keyword:think) that as long as the icing is crusted and you don't push too hard it should be ok..

I just did a castle covered in fondant and i used a ruler to make the horizontal lines so they would be straight (I just pressed the side of the ruler into the fondant) and used a butter knife to make the vertical lines and offset each row so it looked like a brick pattern. On BC i would let it set up really well so it gets a good crust.

I have attached a picture so you can see.

Hope this helps.

Than you guys. I'm going to try it. I'll keep you posted.

Montibellesbakery- there was no picture attached. Can you try it again?

You all are the best!
Michelle

I'm trying again to post the picture. If it doesn't work, you can click on the link below and see a picture of it, although it's not as close a shot as the one i am trying to attach here.

http://www.teamtreadway.com/photogallery.html?sid=11313
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I made a castle cake for my daughter's 4th birthday. I couldn't find anything to use to imprint on the buttercream so I used a basketweave tip with the smooth side out. I made a brick or stone about a half inch long and then left a small space before I did the next one. On the next row I just offset them. It was so incredibly easy. I will include a picture of it.

Thank you all sooo much! This is very helpful!

Hope this isn't too late...

You can use a big round tip like Tip 12 and pipe balls onto your cake. Afterwards, you can press them down so they're flat. I saw someone else do it on their cake. I'll try and find it for you.

Here's the link to it. It's so beautiful!

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=coppermine&file=displayimage&meta=search&type=full&cat=0&pos=133

llee815, there was noting in the search string. Where did you find it?

Really? Sorry about that. I made sure the link worked before I posted. Ok, here's a copy of it. Let me know if you need anything else.

I thought this was really cool when I first found it. It is a technique by Dolores McCann at sugarcraft.com from an AOL chat on August 20th 1998. If you need this right away it won't work, but if you need it later and don't want to buy a mat, it sounds neat. (Cool and neat in one paragraph--really showing my age here....LOL) You could do a cobblestone pattern this way as well, I'd bet. She says:

A 'technique' that I (Dolores) came up with recently was from desperation. I needed to make 'brick' on the sides of my castle cake and I didn't want to sit and draw lines all over that big cake....besides, the lines/mortar of brick, should be receding, not protruding. So, this is what I did: I found a 'brick' pattern in my computer graphics program - PRINT ARTIST. I sized it to what I thought the sizes of my bricks should be by inserting the brick pattern in a document in my word processor and decreased the size. I made 4 printouts since one was not large enough to cover the entire side of the cake. I taped the patterns together as one large one...big enough to imprint one side all at once. Then I laid a sheet of baking parchment over the brick pattern. With tip 2 I piped piping gel on the parchment following the lines of the brick pattern. I let this dry for 2-4 days. This technique worked fine for making brick patterns on rolled fondant and also on buttercream. Just let the buttercream crust a little bit so the pattern won't stick. Imprint fondant right away. Eventually this pattern will dry out and fall apart, but it worked for 3-4 weeks for me anyway. Wish I could think of a good way to make the gel stay stuck on the parchment forever. This didn't take me nearly as long as it would have to draw all those 'brick' lines and they were really even and consistent. And I have my pattern and can do it again if I need to.

For some reason, I can't give you the link, it just comes up sugarcraft.com Sorry

Here are her directions.

The lettering and the door are made from Royal Icing. I printed it out and outlined in Royal icing then let it dry. The brickwork is done with a #12. Just do one at a time and overlap them on each row. Then press them down with my finger for the flat effect. The courtyard bricking is in white like the walkway. And the color was light purple (to go with the Disney paper products and b/c she said she wanted a purple castle). Not including baking time, I think I spent 14 hours decorating.

OOOOOOOOO Lots of info. Thank you guys. I have lots to practice.

The castle cakes are gorgeous!!! I want to make one soon!! This post had a lot of great info in it too!! Thanks to everyone for sharing with us!

Marialoves cakes, so sorry, I haven't been able to spend much time at the computer, so I did not see your post. I am including a picture that shows a bit more detail of the castle - although it is just a little bit of it in the corner of the picture. But it does show how I used the basket weave tip to make the stones on the castle.

Thank you guys soo much. The cake really came out nice, but the posted picture is soooo small, you can't see anything . I'll upload the picture again when I get home and hope that helps.

Let me see if I can post the picture here.......

How did you guys post the picture in the message?

Yeah, I figured it out