You need a nice, dense, firm cake to carve a cake. Pound cakes generally work best. If you are making a large figure, you may need to stack and fill several layers of cake. Secure the cake with a dowel rod down the center to help stabilize it before you start carving.
PS - The correct spelling of the word is sculpture.
If you let us know what project you're planning to make, we can help you more specifically. To start out with, you'll need a dense cake like a pound cake to carve, and I start my students out with paper templates to help them carve the shapes.
I have a tutorial website that might give you some ideas of the process that goes into sculpting cakes.
www.cakedalaska.com
Deanna
What size dowel rods do you find useful for these cakes? I've been using bamboo skewers for now - but my cakes usually only travel from the kitchen to the living room anyway. But someday . . . my cakes might travel past my property line! TIA
I personally wouldn't use bamboo skewers to transport a cake any distance whatsoever. The smallest supports I use are boba (bubble) tea straws. Large cakes are supported by Wilton's hidden pillars. For any through-doweling that needs to be done, I use food-safe 1/4" dowels made by Wilton. Be careful using dowels from the hardware store! Some of them are chemically treated and aren't meant to be near food.
HTH,
Deanna
Be careful using dowels from the hardware store! Some of them are chemically treated and aren't meant to be near food.
Gee, I wouldn't have thought of that, although I definately would have wrapped them in plastic AND foil first anyway.
These "bubble" tea straws, I've never heard of. Where would one get them?
You can order the bubble tea straws online, or if you're fortunate enough to have an Asian grocery store near you, you can buy them there or have them order them for you. I pay 99 cents for a pack of 50, and usually can cut the straws down into three pieces each.
When you're hammering a through-dowel down through the center of multiple cake tiers, I'm not sure how you'd keep the foil and plastic wrap from coming off, so best to err on the side of caution and keep the supports food safe... If you can assemble a cake on-site and don't need to through-dowel them, using a single-plate system like Wilton's plates and hidden pillars keeps the cake sturdily supported.
Deanna
Thank you very much Deanna!!
Unrelated question: (I live in Canada, so it may be different here anyway), Where can I buy glycerine (sp?)
At the local grocery store? Drug Store? or Michaels?
I rarely use glycerin, but what I have is Wilton's little bottle of it, and I bought it at a craft store. Michael's would have it, and it comes in the same size/shape bottle as their small bottles of vanilla and butter flavorings. A friend of mine who uses a lot of it buys it in big bottles at the health food store, and she says she asks for the kind used for making soap and lotion. I've never done that, though, so I can't personally vouch for it.
Deanna
Thank you for your advice, Deanna. Love your sculptured cakes tutorial!
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