whats the best and easiest way to add horizontal lines to a cake, my fear is it wont be straight lines.
Are you making them out of buttercream or out of fondant?
Not knowing what your working with...
Fondant? Wax paper transfer
Evenly spaced textured buttercream? Cake comb
Wide stripes on buttercream? Off set spatula
NorCal, I don't know if you're like me today, but I am SOOOO supposed to be working, not posting :) This place is dangerous! :)
Brookebakescakes, lol yes this is an interesting community. I have 1/2 dozen recipes that I need to be finalizing, but it's way too hot to bake. Do you by chance bake pie? I'm working on hand pies, but having a hard time with my blackberry filling. No matter what I add as thickener, the blackberry juices ooze out. I even tried draining first.
Lol I'm glad I'm not alone ;)
hmm, good question...corn starch, flower, how about gelatin? Either way, that sounds delicious!! If nothing else, I guess just put less in each pie so they can't run out as easy?
@Norcalhiker Pies are meant to ooze :) Are you overfilling them perhaps? Just think they will boil and bubble in the oven and rise up and exit through the steam vents. I have not heard of flour or gelatine being used on baked pies. Most fruits gel on their own, especially berries, or you can add pectin or apples in the mix. When you say hand pie, are you talking about hand-raised pie? As in the dough made with hot water, fat and flour and formed around a jar?
@Jenmarlene Wilton sells a marking tool that you can use to draw lines around a cake that will all be the same distance from the bottom, provided you are holding the tool at right angles. http://www.wilton.com/store/site/product.cfm?id=2C61B096-1E0B-C910-EAE02E9BA668ADD2&killnav=1
You can cut lines using a tool like this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00794FOI8/?tag=cakecentral-20 it comes in different widths to suit.
You can even use your stainless steel ruler on modelling paste to cut ribbons with a wheel used to cut an Italian round food with lots of cheese, can't write its name because a well known company enters its URL automatically (!!!!) - I do think this website has been hacked. As the modelling paste dries faster than fondant, you can roll it up on itself, position it on the bottom of your cake and unroll slowly, sticking it to the cake with some water. As long as the bottom of the ribbon touches the dish/disc you'll be OK. If you wanted the ribbon to be in the middle of the cake, then measure the height of the cake, take away the height of the ribbon and divide what's left by 2. Then measure this distance from the bottom of the cake and you'll know where to place bottom of the ribbon. You can insert toothpicks along regular intervals to help you and remove them once the ribbon has dried and is secure. Then use a bit of gunge to hide the tiny holes if they bother you. Or stick a flower or pearl. You'll find something that pleases you.
JenMarlene, my deepest apologies for inserting another topic into your thread; I hope you will excuse my transgression.
brookbakescake: I've tried tapioca starch, cornstarch, potato starch, flour. The only fruit filling that oozes juice from the steam holes is the blackberry. Then the pies stick to the parchment paper:(
shockolata, I'm making hand held pies, savory and sweet. They are about 3" in diameter. All the fillings do bubble up a bit through the steam slits, but are contained. but the blackberry always oozes everywhere the sugar burns then and the pies stick to the parchment
Yeah, I would just put less filling in them. Then bring them over and I'll try one :)
shock: it's not a hack, I promise! It's that cc has made an advertising deal.
@Norcalhiker Do you turn the fruit into jam before using it in the pie? Do you chill your jam and dough before baking? Would using a silicon mat help with the sticking? I don't know how you make pies over in the USA, which is why I found the recommendation for flour etc strange. I think if you cook the fruit into a jam (which will get rid of the water and thus the steam that makes it bubble over) it will be easier to handle. (I have never baked with raw fruit.) Also instead of making slits on such a small pie, can you not use a skewer to make a couple of holes or one slightly larger one? You only need one vent truly - everything else is probably just for the beauty of it. Also important to make the hole after you egg glaze the top so that the egg doesn't block the steam vent. I can also see you are losing filling via the edges. I recommend instead of using a fork which can cut into the pastry, use the back of a wooden spoon or a cake pop stick to create a nice border.
@Jenmarlene hope one of the methods I wrote above in answer to your query helps. And also from me: sorry for hijacking your thread :)
nch -- don't worry -- would be my pleasure to eat all the messy ones for you --
but in the meantime while i can't remember making blackberry exactly but if you put enough starch in there you should be able to slice them like cake servings -- maybe you need more starchs -- but come to think of it i would cook it first to remove the water and i'd also toss in a tart apple (peeled cored of course) to cook down while the water cooks out to add the pectin
best bb pies to you
when i make 'chapple' tarts which is apple plus cherry -- my cherries seem to leak out after the apple juices firm up from the flour -- but i'm not cooking them down in advance and i actually take them out of the oven early and harvest all the baked out juju that cooked out and return the little pies to the oven to finish baking --
but there's also some streusel topping that overflows with that and it becomes this incredible chapple caramel oh my goodness! an unintentional by-product that over shadows the tart! heheheheh
so you might want to cook it down in advance to thicken it or harvest the blackberry caramel before it burns -- yahoo
best
Shockolata & K8memphis, great suggestions re: cooking sow the fruit. Pie was always my nemesis. I re gently wasted $200 on a pie class that taught me nothing. The instructor insisted to never cook the fruit, but I'm thinking she was wrong. she swore it would thicken while baking--didn't of course. So Thursday I'm going to make test batch 4, cook down fruit.
shockolata, love the tip on crimping yes the fork was very inefficient
K8 you are a baker after my own heart--harvesting what others would consider discards. I love it!
funny I've lurked on this site 4-5 yrs now never commented until a few weeks ago cuz I wasn't sure I had anything to contribute to the conversations . But I find this is an excellent community of bakers who offer a lot. Glad I finally walked inside
@Norcalhiker like I said, we do things differently on the other side of the pond. :) I have never tasted american pie so can't say if it is better or not, but I am sure if you cook the blackberries, they should thicken nicely as they do contain pectin. But as they are sensitive fruits, don't overstir ;) Are you taking the pies on a hike? At Yosemite maybe?
Shockolata, Oh I wish I were in Yosemite! I'm actually developing 10 recipes to sell at farmer's markets for next season: 3 cookies; sweet rolls; fruit hand pies: savory vegetable hand pies; granola; granola bars; brownie; a Mediterranean donut called a loukoumades.
A dear friend from Mexico stated she was not impressed with American baked goods because even in the high-end bakeries, everything lacked flavor and/or was full of sugar. She said she loves my baked goods because there's flavor. She made me think about my approach to baking, how I focused on purity of ingredients, not necessarily flavor in of itself. I live in the California wine country, considered by many to be a food Mecca. Yet. Macarons are tooth achingly sweet; fruit pies lack bright fruit flavor; piecrust and cake is bland. Absent are rich savory pies. I'm now very conscious of flavor. I am on a quest to bring not just great texture, look, and feel to my baking, but remarkable flavor as well. But it's a challenge. First I must imagine that which does not exist, then bake what I imagine.
@Norcalhiker OMG! You'll be serving loukoumades? You'll be doing good business then! But they need to be freshly cooked and eaten warm or they won't be as nice. I make them from time to time (being Greek) but the honey and cinnamon do not agree with me so I now serve them with maple syrup and when I am feeling particularly naughty with a scoop of vanilla ice cream as well. Mmm! Here's a pic where you can tell they are homemade by the different shapes they get. In special places in Greece, they use a cutting machine that poops balls into the hot oil. Good luck with your project!
Poops donuts?! You reminded me of this little gadget: Nothing like a freshly fried donut/funnel cake! If they don't hold up well after being fried, you could always sell a dry mix for them.
This thread has added 4 inches to my waistline
Shockolata--oh yes I want so much to serve a handmade loukoumades. Yummy yummy yummy! I love all things honey!!!! Greek food is soooooo delicious--so much flavor and color a fest for the eyes and the tongue.
brookebakescakes, lol, that machine really looks like it's pooping donuts:)
Loukoumades have a totally different texture to doughnuts or churros. They are crisp on the outside and there is not much on the inside, so basically you squash them with your fork, cut a piece, swish it in the syrup and direct it towards your lips. It is such an easy thing to make (yeast, flour and water only) that it would be highway robbery to sell a packet mix. Still, I think someone did sell packet loukoumades in Greece with a bit of syrup in a plastic pouch... sacrilege!
@pastrypet We gave our ideas for straight lines and links. The OP never got back to tell us whether he/she is going to try any of them. As the forum does not send notifications on answers, he/she may have forgotten about it or think that nobody cared to reply. We are a chatty bunch, though, aren't we? :)
Shockolata, you mean I get bombarded with emails everytime someone answers after me on a forum, but the OP never gets a message??
Pastrypet, 1. We offered suggestions, tips, links, and even asked for clarification as her question lacked clarity. 2. We apologized profusely for the transgression. 3. We could point out that you simply commented to scold, and in fact never offered any suggestions to the poster...but that would be very rude of us.
@Brookebakescake if you are getting bombarded by emails in the last few days, you are one of the lucky ones! We are not getting notifications. Admin is aware of it and trying to resolve issue. Sometimes there might be a popup about a response but if you click on it nothing appears and then it all disappears.
@Shockolata Yeah, I'm gettin' em. I'm going to turn off notification in fact. I'm in the forum so much (I have so much work I *should* be doing), that I don't miss a reply usually.
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