I saw a picture in the gallery that mentioned the pin priock method and i was just curious

It's when you take your picture, place it directly on the cake and prick it with a needle all around the lines of the image. This transfers the image to your cake. Then you can pipe and fill it in directly on the cake.

Michelle

You pin prick the picture first then you place it on the cake.
You pass your hand softly on the picture and when you lift it up , you can see the pattern. Then you trace and fill the image with icing.

How close do you make your pin pricks?

Just bumping this topic up ... hoping to get an answer to my question:

How close do you make your pin pricks?


Sabbrina

The pin prick method is fantastic for people with no artistic ability - me! I used it for the Clifford cookie on the cake in my photos. I cut out the image I wanted, pricked holes in any of the lines that I was going to use, placed the image on my cookie dough, cut out the cookie and reinserted the pin in the holes to make impressions in the dough. Then baked cookie and the holes were still there as a guide to what went where.

Sabrina - put the holes as close together as you need. I used many, many holes because I'm not a good judge of distance, proportion, etc. and I wanted a very close replica. If you're better at these things or just want a general idea, you could do your holes further apart.

Prick it close enough so that you can see your lines to follow.

as close as you need them to follow the pattern....you can space them far apart but if it's an intricate pattern or you're trying to write a word or something it's probably better to do them closer together. You just lay the pattern on a pillow or piece of styrofoam and prick with the needle all along the pattern...then place the piece of paper on the cake and gently smooth with your hand...when the needle pokes through the paper it makes the paper slightly bumpy on the backside of the paper...like a bunch of raised little bumps....when you put that on the cake, rub it gently, and then remove the paper it will leave small little indents in your cake...making a dot to dot picture for you !!! Then it's easy to go in with some Bc in a piping bag and fill in to make your pattern

Thanks everyone for clarifying the pin prick method for me. I always thought that you had to make the holes and then lay the paper on your cake and put your needle through the holes you just made to get the outline. I have never done it because of that reason ... lol

Now I finally understand how to do it right. This sounds so much less time consuming than doing a Buttercream transfer. The last one of those I did ... took me 3 hours to do it and then as I was putting the layer of icing on top and pressing it down to get rid of the bubbles I smeared it a bit. All the work for nothing! Ugh.

Anyway, I can't wait to try this method

Thanks,
Sabbrina