Hi,

I was wondering if someone could help me with some ideas on how to splatter? I've seen some pretty cool cakes here on CC and wanted to do it for a 30th birthday cake I'm making tomorrow. Can I use straight gel colors mix with water ( I have no vodka left for applying) ?

Thanks!

water will take a long time to dry, try using clear vanilla instead of vodka

Thank you for the advise! So I just mix a bit of the gel/paste color with the extract? and just basically throw it on? LOL

Use a stiff brittle brush, hold it upside down, and stroke the bristles gently pulling them back and releasing them to cause them to splatter. You can use water, but it does take a little time to dry. That is okay if you have time for it to dry. The stiff brittle brush is great. I use this technique to splatter on my oil paintings. It works just as well on cake.

Check your extract bottles and choose the one that has the highest alcohol content. It might be lemon or vanilla *IF* it is *real* vanilla.
Yes, just mix the color w/the extract. Depending on how fine you want your splatters you can just load a fork or paint bursh or toothbrush (new, UNused - haha) to make it splatter. A toothbrush will give a very fine splattering - dip it in the color and use your thumb run over the bristles. Next would probably be a fork - let it drip off the tines; the paint brush could be flicked or shaken over the icing.

Do it outside. Definitely. I just did this and made a whopping mess. lol Wear gloves- sturdy ones. It's the only time I've ever had a green thumb.

LOL! All great advises! thank you everyone! So in the end, it really doesn't matter whether it's melted fondant, gel color etc..it all achieves the same effect? minus of course the mess, hahaha!

One more question thou. Does the gel color need to be a little bit thicker when splattering, then oppose to when painting on fondant?

I think different mediumns (melted fondant; gel color) will give slightly different finish but similar results. My thoughts on cinsistency would be yes, go a bit thicker than one would to paint with.

Almond extract works for mixing if you are out of vodka....

I have used a small 'nip', bottle of vodka and it was very cheap.

If you want to avoid a mess inside, while 'splattering', I would suggest putting your cake in side a very large 3 sided box. The box will catch the over splatter. and you can just throw it away when you are done.

Can anyone guide me to a photo of a cake with this effect I would like to see what it looks like TIA

hey, im brand new here.. so im not sure how to get around yet.. so I apologize for changing the subject,,, but, I saw somewhere on here.. lol.. about the shredded coconut...its huge.. and they were discussing how to shave it.... is this not sold anywhere? so in order to get big coconut flakes, I HAVE to shave it myself? thanks yall.

I did a google search for splatter cake.

One kind is with the toothbrush splatter effect that has little dots or tiny rounds of color ending up on the cake--very artsy, kinda like raindrops. If anyone does card crafting, this is a nice technique for the background of a card.

The other kind is a splatter like the artist Jackson Pollock did on canvas. Long-ish, thick-ish, ropey lengths of color on his canvas, and there were some images of this kind of splatter in my googled results.