AHi I have just completed my sisters 16th birthday cake, and uploaded them into my album. She wanted rainbow & Tetris incorporated.
Can you please have a look and tell me whether its sell-worthy? Did I meet her criteria enough? I eventually want to make this a business. If you could tell me what I need to work on, that would be great!
Any advice/criticisms would be appreciated! Thanks :)
Can I very gently say, no, they're not sell-worthy at the moment? If her only criteria where tetris and rainbow, then yes, you met her criteria, but covering a cake with M&Ms isn't really very complicated. And your little tetris pieces are cute, but you need to work on icing your cupcakes a bit more neatly and smoothly.
Your daffodil cake is a pretty design, but you need to work on getting your icing under your fondant smoother so the fondant looks neater.
Having your own business is a great goal to have, but honestly, I think you need to do a fair bit more practise before you consider it.
AThank you for the honest opinion. I wanted good advice and I got it!
Icing cupcakes neatly is so hard! Lol. They never smooth out. I'll practice lots :)
Cake Journal has a good tutorial for getting cupcakes smooth using the Viva towel method. Viva in Australia isn't smooth like it is in the US, but I believe you can use just plain A4 printer paper for the same effect. I've used the edge of printer paper scraped over the surface to smooth curved surfaces.
Before I start I should say I am by no means an expert, I’m a novice but have been reading and looking at this site for a long time!
I think I may have decorated the items the other way around – tetris on the cake and rainbows on the cupcakes. The height of the cake would have given you more to work with and you could have made it look like the pieces were falling with a few at the bottom like mid game. The m&ms on the cupcakes would have hidden the unsmooth icing. I would also have turned the sweets round so you couldn’t seen the “m” (unless that was part of the feature).
Coloured cupcake cases/wrappers and/or decorating the board would have helped finish the overall look.
It’s a little hard to say for sure from the pictures but it looks to me like you may not have enough icing on the cupcakes, if you just have the bare minimum on I think it adds to the difficulty of making it smooth.
Good luck and enjoy your practicing!
Also, make sure you have enough tools in your arsenal. When I have the correct tools, my cakes look way better than if I try without them. For example, my fondant extractor is broken and so now when I try to make ropes by hand, they are uneven and look awful! As for smoothing cupcakes, you can always cover them in buttercream and then put fondant over the entire top (not just the accents), that's what I see the most of on this page when it comes to smooth cupcake tops. Keep practicing. Sometimes I have to make something 5 times before it looks right!
This may be a dumb question, but I can't figure out how to get to people's galleries to see their cakes!! Help!
AThanks for all the advice!
I have 3 family birthdays in the next month to practice :)
I am by no means an expert, but I do sell my cakes. First, I would say that the daffodil cake is very pretty. The only issue is that the fondant over it is a little bumpy from the frosting underneath, but that's not to say it is bad. I have seen plenty of people sell cakes like yours and laypeople be very impressed. And no, putting m & m's on a cake isn't the highest difficulty technique, but if it's what the customer wanted and enjoys, then what does it matter, right?
Hi baking-mama
I agree with the other posters that your daffodill cake is very pretty. However next time you are making the daffodills or any other sugar flowers, THINLY roll out the fondant or flower paste. Place cut out petals onto a foam pad and soften the edges - with a ball tool half on the paste and half on the pad. This will give your flowers a more delicate finish.
You have a great opportunity to practice, with 3 family cakes coming up. I wish you well on the road to success, good luck and happy baking!!!
Hope this helps!
Ok, but it's not very pretty. It's very very sloppy. But that's ok, was probably your first time right? Stripes are difficult to do, and take time and patience. But they are something that should look as best as possible.
Really, when someone is brave enough to ask a question like this, let's return the respect by being utterly honest. And if you do find that cake attractive, then something is off.
AFor your cupcakes the easiest remedy is to buy some disposable pastry/piping bags, or parchment paper (making cones out of parchment is fairly inexpensive), and some piping tips. As someone previously mentioned, having the proper tools will help immensely! However, starting out can be very expensive. It almost looks like you are using canned frosting (forgive me if I'm wrong) but that is so thick and very difficult to spread! There are some very simple frosting recipes on here that involve powdered sugar, butter, flavoring, and a bit of milk/cream and they are so much yummiest than canned frosting; with that said making your own frosting and using some piping tips will help you with icing your cupcakes.
For your cakes you want to get your frosting as smooth as possible, there are several techniques you can google (most are probably on this site in the tutorials section), someone previously mentioned a crusting buttercream (used with the Viva paper towel or a high density foam roller), the hot knife method, and my personal favorite the upside down frosting technique.
I only started decorating about a year ago, I still spend hours online googling 'fondant tutorials', watching videos on YouTube, pinterest, etc. there are also some very inexpensive online cake schools, I used 'My Cake School dot com' I believe it cost $30 for a year, well worth it! Melissa and her mother BeBe run the site, they have several video tutorials from 'baking a cake from scratch start to finish', all the frosting techniques I mentioned above, 'making all the different buttercreams', to 'building a football stadium cake', 'Noahs Arch Cake', and many, many, more. They add new tutorials each week, the have several recipes with explanations of which cakes are good for carving, covering with fondant, etc. they have a forum for members to share recipes and ask questions, request tutorials, and Melissa and BeBe are very quick to respond to any personal questions you may have. I have no affiliation with their site, it just helped me emmensly starting out and even now as I am still learning too!
As for your cakes, your just starting so try and be patient. You don't want to start taking orders if your not prepared, make cakes for friends and family (like you are) offer to do any and every cake you can for upcoming baby showers, birthdays, fundraisers, etc great practice. Maybe have your friends cover the ingredients until you get in a place where your more comfortable. Just don't be too hard on yourself and keep trying, someone else said the fact your asking for help shows your commitment, you'll get there. Take a look at Cake Wrecks website, your off to a good start!
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%