I am making a groom's cake next week with an ice cream theme, including a round cake to look like a tub of ice cream, with a half-ball cake next to it to look like a bowl of ice cream with toppings.

I'm trying to decide how to do the scoops of ice cream in the bowl. I could just do mini-ball cakes covered in icing, but I remember the cake Susan O'Boyle Jacobson did for the FN Candy castles compeition right before she passed away had turrets topped by scoops of "ice cream". I remember she developed a technique for making them, so that she ended up with a material that scooped and looked just like ice cream and was stable under the hot lights, but I can't for the life of me remember just what she used. Does anyone else know?

She melted candy melts and then added some water slowly to seize them a bit and then used an ice cream scoop.

Rae

Thanks! That was what I was guessing, but I couldn't remember and wondered if she added something else that would keep it somewhat soft, like ice cream. So I guess it's just a matter of how much water to add, and timing when to scoop?

The other thing I was considering is just using chilled buttercream. That would probably scoop similar to ice cream. Hmmm, would people rather have giant blobs of icing, giant blobs of candy melts, or less realistic iced miniball cakes...?

I just saw the siezed chocolate technique on an older episode of Ultimate Cake Off.

I saw this technique on the food stylists episode of Challenge. They had to make "photographable" food and used really stiff buttercream to look like scoops of ice cream.

I also remember seeing cookies that looked exactly like scoops of ice cream