Fondant: Versatile and Smooth

Fondant is perhaps the most widely recognized among the trio, cherished for its smooth texture and versatility in cake decoration. It is made primarily from icing sugar, fat, water, and edible gums, resulting in a pliable dough-like consistency. Fondant can be rolled out thinly and draped over cakes to create a flawless finish, making it ideal for wedding cakes, birthday cakes, and intricate designs. Fondant provides a clean, polished look, making it perfect for covering entire cakes. Fondant can be shaped, molded, and cut into various designs, such as simple flowers, ribbons, and textures, to add a decorative touch to cakes and cupcakes. Its usability is limited to sculpting intricate shapes and figures due to its soft and stretchy characteristics, which are quite needed for coating cakes perfectly without cracking.

Pastillage: Sturdy and Quick-Drying

Pastillage is a firmer and quicker-drying medium compared to fondant. It is made from powdered sugar, gelatin, water, and gums like tragacanth or tylose powder. It has no fat content; therefore, it dries very quickly and is able to hold intricate shapes without the need for internal support. Pastillage is favored for creating very small to very large decorative elements that require stability and detail. Pastillage’s strength and rigidity make it ideal for constructing architectural elements like buildings, fences, and columns on cakes. It can be rolled thinly and cut into precise shapes to create edible decorations such as plaques, borders, and geometric patterns. Pastillage decorations and centerpieces are durable and lightweight, making them suitable for cakes that need to be transported over long distances. Objects created with pastillage can be stored for years as long as they are protected from humidity and dust. Spraying dried pastillage pieces with confectioner glaze will eliminate sagging caused by humidity.

Gum Paste: Flexible and Edible

Gum paste, also known as sugar paste or flower paste, is a pliable, edible medium commonly used for crafting delicate and realistic sugar flowers and intricate details. It is made from similar ingredients as fondant like icing sugar, fat, and water; however, it has increased amounts of edible gums, giving it elasticity and strength once dried. Gum paste remains soft and flexible for an extended period, allowing for intricate detailing and lifelike floral arrangements. Gum paste has a consistency between Fondant and pastillage which makes it the preferred medium for many applications. Its elasticity makes gum paste ideal for creating figurines, and intricate details such as lace, ruffles, and delicate filigree on cakes. Gum paste decorations can be made well in advance and stored for future use, making it convenient for complex cake designs. Large figurines made with gum paste would still need internal support.

In conclusion, while fondant, pastillage, and gum paste share similarities as edible decorating mediums, each serves distinct purposes in cake decoration. Fondant offers a smooth finish and versatility, pastillage provides strength and quick drying for structural elements, and gum paste allows for intricate detailing and lifelike sugar creations. By understanding the unique properties of each medium, bakers and decorators can choose the most suitable option for their specific design needs, ensuring stunning and delicious creations every time. The best option is obtaining all three in the kitchen because there will be a need for each of them in different locations. There is no paste that we can do everything with. If you see a beautiful cake it is beautiful because it is coated with fondant, and flowers are done with gum paste but all the branches are created with pastillage which gives height and a realistic edge to the whole design.

All young people come to a point in their lives where they must decide on their career and what they want to do with their life. It is far more preferable to make money from a profession one enjoys, but for many, finding such a career is difficult. I believe cake decorating is one that does not go into that list. I see endless possibilities to express oneself and feel motivated for doing something enjoyable while making a living. A coincidence brought me to the pastry kitchen when I was 17. I fell in love from the very first day with the whole concept of pastry in general. With all respect to chefs, I noticed that it was very different from cooking. It was a craft where an artist can perform visual art in greater freedom than many other related professions. Visually, you can only do so much with food, but with cake, the skies the limit!

Pastry art and cake decorating is the combination of artistry, carpentry, architecture, engineering, chemistry, painting, sculpting, and computing. Then of course there’s baking, cooking and more.

Materials used in pastry art are so flexible and versatile that you can create working platforms beyond the kitchen bench. For example, sculptors use clay or stone to perform art. Clay has only one condition of elasticity that all techniques must marry with. The quality of stone carving can be achieved only in one direction which you can chisel out but not add on. Without going too deep with philosophy, let us see what areas you can work on to become a good cake decorator. In this article, I would like to express my thoughts on what it means to be a pastry artist with the hope to help you find a gateway to a new place with a new title…a good cake decorator. There is a great demand for pastry chefs and an even greater demand for pastry artists as there is a significant difference between the two. We all know how to become a pastry chef, and in my opinion, the following issues are critical and worth considering in order to achieve a certain level of knowledge that will lead you to become a good cake decorator.

1.Artistry

I’d like to start from the very beginning of the journey where we have to understand and accept that artistry is the most important ingredient of the recipe. Where do we find that? Well, it is in you and you just have to find out how to release it towards your fingertips under the supervision of your brain. Usually, when we meet people for the first time, we tell them our name and follow with what we do for a living or hobby. Sometimes it could be “I’m an engineer”, or it could be “I’m a doctor”, or maybe “I’m a window cleaner”. If we’ve studied or had qualifications we are allowed to add professional or casual titles to our names. Even if you greet people with “I’m a rocket scientist”, they will give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you say “I’m an artist”, often people’s first thought is “Oh yeah, sure!”. It sometimes feels like it is a little arrogant and strange to call yourself an artist because you sort of have to prove it first. It is a title that should be determined by others opinions and not your own. It is kind of similar for pastry chefs, and one must go through quite a few stepping stones to become a pastry artist or a good cake decorator. Basically the following matters are the stepping stones.

2. Enthusiasm (oil)

This is probably one of the most essential needs in all aspects. It lubricates every action and produces all the extra energy needed to complete that last painful part of an exercise. While most would say “no need” or “not necessary”, a person with enthusiasm will say “I will do the most I can”. If you have the willingness to achieve the title of ‘artist’, you must have an ample reservoir of this “oil” inside you.

3. Research

All art is copied from somewhere or something. The key here is to find the right thing to be copied. If an artist is painting a picture from their imagination, they are still copying from their mind or their imagination. So the whole ‘art’ thing is really, nothing more than copying something. Even the most original idea that we think came from nowhere, probably came from somewhere in our subconscious, which is known to store every single bit of information it has ever come across in our lifetime. So even when we think we aren’t copying, we probably are. Of course, it’s not ok to just plain copy someone else’s work but it’s ok to copy specific elements from different peoples work to make it your own. In other words, be inspired by someone else’s work. Today, with the internet, there is an almost infinite amount of information and material that is accessible to us to draw inspiration from. So put your special cake decorator glasses on and look at the world around you while trying to visualise everything as if it were made out of chocolate, sugar and cake.

4. Personal Development

For me, life is a school, and we learn all the way, to the end of it. You will never graduate from this school unless you want to give up and stop learning and start folding back. You have to develop yourself by filling your memory with as much information about pastry art beyond a teacher’s instructions. See what others do. See what magazines are talking about. What is happening in another part of the world? What is the story behind popular recipes and methods? Find yourself a mentor or two. Which country is famous for what products or designs? Who is well known as a pastry artist? What did they do to achieve that? Can I also do that? Google it. Join the groups. Socialize with like minds. Bring number one and two together to achieve number three of yours.

5. Training

I strongly believe we were all born with the ability to create things, and every one of us has the artistic ability with different depths inside us. Some of us need to be boosted with additional training. This may not necessarily be pastry art training. Take some training with drawing, painting, modelling etc. Pastry art is visual communication so any skill or ability that helps you communicate an idea visually with your cake decorating is a privilege to have. While you surf the internet ocean of information, trying not to drown, don’t forget that physical books are like little islands that you can step on and rest on. So carefully select and collect some books to create your own little library of knowledge.

6. Perfectionism

Some of us are content with what we do and resist doing it better while some of us are never satisfied with what we do and are constantly challenging ourselves. We must believe the reality of perfection is that we can only get closer to it but can never reach it. So always trying to do so, will always leave us somewhere along the way dissatisfied with our efforts. Every time we try to make something perfect, we will fail because there is simply no answer to what is perfect. Thank God for that! It would be like knowing the exact time of your death. Imagine travelling until you find the wall of infinity, what will you find behind the wall? So if you want to be an artist of any kind, never stop searching for perfection, and find your motivation and voice on this road of discovery.

7. Product Knowledge

I always said to my students, you can be a better driver if you know what is happening mechanically, when you accelerate. Same for us in the kitchen, we can be better pastry chefs if we build a relationship with our recipes and ingredients. We have to know their attitude in different conditions. Let’s think about chocolate as an edible substance. Sometimes it works like clay if you add some glucose in it, and sometimes like a stone which you chisel out, but you can also add on. You can paint with chocolate when you add additional cocoa butter or pour it onto trays in any thickness, and cut it into shapes at the right time that immediately stand vertical. You can pour it in moulds. You can add some alcohol in it to pipe nice curves, and the beauty is you can combine all these into one even using chocolate as glue. What freedom! You can even make moulds out of other pastry substances like gelatine. Different sugar dough and mixtures like pastillage, marzipan and royal icing also offer multiple possibilities in their own attitude. You can only learn these kinds of basics when things happen and if you don’t miss the chance to observe and record. Pastry artists without basic pastry knowledge will struggle somewhere along the way. My best advice is to look at the relationships between ingredients and their optimum ratios in combinations.

There is one worry about the product knowledge which is how we deal with chemicals. I believe the amount of chemicals being used conveniently in the pastry industry, has caused the decline in developing young chefs. I don’t think we can avoid it completely, but we can minimize the use of it and try to learn traditional methods and be proud of it.

8. Productivity

Pastry artists must practice in an economical sense and be employer-friendly. It also goes even if you are the boss of yourself. You may not hold your job as a pastry chef if you try to be a pastry artist and take longer to produce a picture frame than the picture itself. A good example; Chinese brush painting is when the artist can draw a goldfish in a matter of seconds but it is still highly recognised as an art. They have developed methods upon methods to be able to do it so well and so quick and they never stop asking the same question… “How can I do it faster and better?”. They must find an answer to this question every time. So, after all cake decorating is a profession that should be sustained with sufficient income and as much as we would like to, we should try not to mix it with an art execution that has no time budget.

9. Computer Literacy

Today’s technology renews itself at a very fast rate. Not only cake decorators but every single profession must keep up with these constant changes in technology. It is important not to miss the train. Become involved with technology to try to find different and more innovative ways to do things to stand out from others. This means photography, graphic design, digital marketing and social media, web design and development, research, spreadsheets and so on. All these things can be tremendously useful for cake decorators and their businesses.

10. Courses

Take some pastry art courses wherever possible. If you are unable to attend any classes due to economic or geographic limitations, there are plenty of online resources that are affordable and accessible to learn from and expand your knowledge. You have to equip yourself with as many individual technical methods as possible. How to temper chocolate, how to whip a cream, how to make a sugar rose, these are just a few of hundreds of individual methods that have been learned with their special points of what makes things good or just okay. The bigger your repertoire, the better cake decorator you will be.

11. Competitions

Now it’s time to prove yourself and find out if you are ready to be called a pastry/cake artist. Competitions are the way to go. I competed in five international competitions and have won 15 gold medals, mostly with distinction, and have twice been awarded most outstanding pastry chef and artist. I also ended up judging those competitions, and it was during this time that I learnt the most. After every competition, your perception changes and you want to try it again and again. Each competition has to be taken as a serious project and you have to be a project manager. The main tasks of a project should be chopped into smaller doable steps to be able to properly visualise and organise your available time and create a schedule for executing a detailed plan. This is where you learn self-discipline, or else you will leave everything to the last minute and fail.

12. Leadership

If you succeed in all the matters I’ve mentioned, you can be considered a pastry artist who can decorate cakes. If you also develop your artistic skills in parallel to productive professional knowledge, most probably you will be asked to lead others. Being a good leader, starts from the point that you yourself become a mentor for others, and knowing at which point it is time to start teaching and encouraging people with what you have learned.

When you have finished reading this article and you think you are not where you want to be, you have to go back to the day that you first wanted to decorate cakes and start your journey again. Find some answers to the question “what would I do differently?” Exactly at this point your pastry art will start developing. Today, I believe people’s comments that say I am a reasonably good cake decorator, but I have to add something else to that. I also understand the crucial importance of basics. This is all that I have done to be called a pastry ‘artist’ who decorate cakes GOOD.

1. Prepare the naked cake masked with ganache or buttercream twice and geometrically correct with 90-degree sides upwards and as sharp as possible edges. The sharper the edges when masked, the sharper the edges when coated. Then place it in the fridge (no longer than 30 minutes to avoid too much condensation).

2. Take measurements of the sides and top.

3. Roll four individual panels of fondant, for the sides, a little larger than needed and place them on individual square or rectangular corrugated cardboard platforms so that lifting and attaching can be done with comfort. Wait for 30 minutes for that fondant to become a little more firm and cut-table.

4. Roll fondant for the top surface, a little larger than needed and place on a firm temporary cake board, lightly dusted with starch, so that it does not stick to the board.

5. Place the cake upside down on the fondant and gently push down. The condensation should be enough for gluing otherwise use a small amount of water spray for moisture.

6. Cut 90-degree corners out of all four previously rolled out side panels.

7. Glue the sides by lifting the panels with the cardboard and pressing with the cardboard so that the geometrical shape will be maintained. Brush a little water around the joining corners.

8. Cut the extensions by using a sharp blade (box cutter) and fondant leveler to drive the blade straight downwards.

9. Remove all other extensions carefully using a blade.

10. Place actual cake board on the cake (bottom surface) and turn the entire cake upside down. Remove the temporary board from the top (the surface with the fondant). Brushing may be necessary to remove remaining starch.

There is currently no free video tutorial on this but I have shown it in a few premium tutorials. If you want me to make a video tutorial, please leave a comment.

Thank you

My Story

My love affair started with this building in 1992. It was just a few days before I first arrived to Australia. At that time it was named Conrad Jupiters and I had been appointed as Executive Pastry Chef to this Casino Hotel which belonged to the Hilton Group. It is the largest casino in Queensland and 7000 people visited daily at that time. I worked there for about 5 years until 1998 which was when started my own cake business. The building’s name changed twice since then. First it became Jupiters Casino and now it is called The Star Casino.

The second oblong shaped building in front of the casino was built in three years and recently opened its doors to hotels VIP guests. A grand breaking ceremony of this 6 star residential hotel was held in mid 2015 and I was very proud to be commissioned to build a sugar replica of it including the original Casino building. I took some pictures during the production and am happy to share with you while also expressing some of my thoughts. I also hope, this article would be a significant example of how to plan and put together such a building out of sugar.

Planning

There’s no doubt that everything has to start from producing a plan as a guideline. First we need a source of information or reference. Sometimes our sources of reference can vary in size, angles and views so we need to make adjustments. For this project I have referred to followings sources;

• Google maps
• Blue prints provided by event organizer
• Several pictures
• Several illustrations of building (3D renders from architects)
• My own observation

When all of these are ready on the table I had to answer following;

• How big is the centrepiece expected to be in general?
• What is the top view size to achieve that?
• What is the board size (includes landscape)?
• What will be the final height?
• When the centrepiece is finished, will it be transportable?

I started drawing the top view of the foot print meaning the shape of the area where the building touches to the ground. From there, I used semi transparent sheets to draw the upper levels by partially copying lower levels.

The following is the main principle to create an actual size plan referring to different pictures in the examples we have.

Reference Picture 1: Let’s name it P1 This picture is taken from the front view and from this, the width and height information is quite reliable, but not the depth.

Reference Picture 2: With this reference image taken from Google Maps, we can only see width and depth in its correct proportion, but not the height.

Next is the actual size plan of the top view. I wanted to have a width of 60cm which meant, according to P2, that the depth is 20cm.

Now for the actual size plan of the front view, we have to refer to P1 where the height is 1.5 times the width meaning if the width is 60cm, the height is 90cm.

I followed the simple principle 10ths of times to finish my actual size plan referring 10ths of different pictures.

Making Decisions

Once the plan is ready I had to make some further decisions by answering following questions;

• Q. What is the main pastes to be used?
• A. I always choose Pastillage for making buildings because of its strength. It is rigid when it completely dries and exact size walls and ceilings can be produced and joined after drying.

• Q. What is the material for the windows?
• A. For this matter, I decided to make an internal full height foil and drop cylindrical or rectangular shape PVC foil and by doing that I can illuminate the whole building with a few lights.

• Q. What is the glue to join the panels?
• A. Of course, royal icing is the best because it can be also used for some lines and can be cleaned with wet a brush.

• Q. What is the other material for extra support?
• A. Hidden polystyrene, PVC pipes wrapped in pastillage and corrugated cardboard.

Construction

Despite using Pastillage because it is rigid enough to construct very large architectural pieces together, additional support was needed so I used a long piece of PVC pipe going through the balconies. I also used a piece of folded cardboard to add additional support underneath the large connecting roof in between the two buildings. Specially shaped polystyrene was also helpful to create the slim tower in front of the original building. Not to forget I needed a very strong base board which would need to be a minimum of 20mm MDF or plywood. We could also glue and screw additional wooden bars underneath the board instead of using heavier and thicker board.

Templates and Holders

Basically, the old building begins with a large flat entry level as the vertical walls carry a big flat roof and from the top view the “V” shape building sits over that entry level. I made a special holder with polystyrene and white cardboard to achieve complete front and back walls with a rounded connection which also made it comfortable for cutting random windows and roof top pieces.

New, modern designed buildings are different. Each storey’s floor/ceiling was an individually produced oblong shape using a polystyrene holder and individually produced ceilings which were also the balconies for the next storey with a special template smaller oblong cut out in the centre. These same size centre cut outs all together will allow the tall one piece PVC foil to go all the way down at a later stage.

As a result with the complete plan on the table I was able to produce following templates and holders.
• Templates for all walls with indication of level height and window sizes.
• Templates for all roofs and ceilings with centre cut outs.
• Large “V” shape holder with rounded connections to dry casino walls in the right shape.
• Oblong shape polystyrene holders to shape new building walls.

Preparing Parts

The fun starts right here. Till this point, there was only thinking, deciding, drawing lines on paper and preparing templates and holders. I have to say that it is quite important to go through all these steps thoroughly before doing anything else. Also, all the success will depend on how correctly and accurately you do these planning steps. From this point, you will need lots of trays and shelf space to get things properly sorted and stored to dry. Most of the preparations involve rolling and cutting flat pieces in the right numbers and shapes, out if correct colour premixed Pastillage. Using very sharp blades instead of a knife is very important to achieve sharp and clean cuts.

Assembling

This is my favourite part of the process. Every piece you put together shows the difference and makes you wonder a little more about how it is developing so far. What I would like to emphasize and recommend to you at this stage is not to rush to finish. Each step should be easy to do if the previous step was taken correctly. For me, the technique of achieving this is doing a simple brain storming using yellow sticky note tags. Write every short step you can think off individually on tags without worrying about the order of things. Once you can see all the small steps involved, it is much easier to see a global map of whats involved and then you can put them in the correct order as good as you can. Just simulate the process in your mind one or two times and you will easily realize that some of the steps need to be relocated and some new additional steps need to be added. As a result of this you only worry about each step at a time and you will have a comfortable, relaxing work flow with joy.

Landscape

When all elements have come together on the ground, doing the landscaping is the finishing touche. This needs the same amount of attention to make things even better. At this point using a couple of different techniques is necessary. For small cars, I simply cut them from a block of unkneaded firm fondant in different colours with a blade. For trees, I used forest green royal icing and oats mixture 1 to 1 ratio. For streets I had a smart idea where I covered the whole board with tar colour fondant and then rolled out a grassy green fondant on top of that. Then I cut out the streets from the green fondant which made the streets automatically appear.

Lights

For this kind of project I always use remote controlled multi-colour LED lights. Not to forget I also used opaque white cellophane sheets together with a one-piece internal PVC sheet as windows to spread light evenly. Specially when I set the fading different colours slowly as a special effect, I like it most.

Conclusion

An project of this scale does not come everyday and I also didn’t want to make them more than a few times a year. With these lights in place and functioning with a touch of a button, my sugar replica of the Star Casino & Darling Apartments was completed. I delivered it to the event and it is well received. It was featured in some newspapers and covered on TV news.

As my final words I would like to say, to me it wasn’t a cake or centrepiece, it was a project and I was a project manager rather than a Cake Decorator or a Pastry Chef. I think some of you know exactly what I mean.

Thanks for reading and I hope you got something out of it.

Compete to Win

To my knowledge, the most important stepping stone in the pastry career is competition.
We are all born to compete, it is an instinct and we do that every day. The award comes in so many different forms. Good feeling about our self when we achieve something better than others. A pat on our shoulder from the boss or even facial expressions from a friend that makes you feel preferred instead of others. These are all little awards that we receive every day. I believe there is always before and after in any work, relation or situation after a little award like that. If receiving awards in any form become an addiction and when we understand the benefit we want to do good all the time that we develop good character and success geared personality.

Pastry Competitions

International or regional Pastry competitions organised in almost every major city by chefs associations and related organisations around the world. The most talked about one is in the USA – The World Pastry Championship which happens every second year internationally and draws the most attention amongst the top professionals. The Award is 50000. – US$ shared amongst the top 3 positions. This is probably the main reason why this competition more popular than the one in Lyon, France. 12 countries compete just like in the Olympics, 13 hours’ battle in individual partitioned kitchens live in front of an audience and 24-panel judges. You can’t even bring your apricot jam with you, everything has to be prepared from scratch. I was fortunate to be one of the judges in the 2002 and 2004 competition. The most amazing experience is to witness the result of two years’ preparations executed in front of your eyes in such intensity. One of the reporters asked me a question – What was I looking for as a judge besides the criteria we follow; the answer was quite short for consumable products: new smartness. You can actually say new ideas, new presentation ¸new this and that. But all the components to create an impressive entry have to be done and presented in a smart way. That means the idea should give to other colleges “wow I can also do that”. At the same time, the same piece must create an image for a consumer “how on earth they can do that”. If entries non-consumable means like centrepieces the answer will be different and short. New compliment We are creating 3-dimensional objects from edible substances taking nonfood objects as inspirations so we all know that they are more to view than consume. Pastry centrepieces must create an enjoyable pathway to our eyes on the way to food. They must create a new relation and complementation between eyes and food, between food and nonfood.

We don’t have to go to the USA or France to compete. Smaller scale competitions happen around us. Beside live competitions, there are also other categories available to enter with pre-prepared items like themed cakes, multiple desserts or edible centrepieces. As a Pastry Chef who has competed and judged in many competitions and the true experience before and after effects, in followings, I would like to point a couple of importance and examples to encourage young professionals and emphasize the self-learning pathway.

Decisions

This is the most important part of the whole event. Decide to compete with desire and decide to win with self-respect. Do the most difficult thing which is applying a strict discipline to you. Do not start a competition with an attitude of “see what happens” – take it seriously because this is a big deal and it is the most important stepping stone of your career.

Study the Criteria

I have seen competitors realised after so many weeks of preparations that their entry does not comply with the criteria. In fact, that happened to me once. (Only once) It is quite essential to read the entire criteria to understand the requirements and do everything else after. At this stage, you should decide your category of entry.

Research

Information has never been so much accessible and free before and it is getting so phenomenal. Make an intensive research about past competitions on the internet without having any decision of what to do and spend a great deal of quality time to load your mind with visual information, to set your standard in parallel with your confidence. Target your best level, be realistic and don’t aim the unreachable.

The Idea

You have your determination and already know the criteria in and out. Research is going on. You should be able to decide exactly what to do. Take a big breath, fantasize your piece on display, copy that and start sketching with pencil on paper and don’t start with anything else before the idea has been shaped in an actual size drawing. All dimensions- front, side and top view complete. And then do your model with cardboards, papers or Styrofoam, anything to create a 3-dimensional nonfood model to look at it and have guidance. When this model in front of you, you can take the measurement, prepare a list of actions, tasks and so on. This will be your map to draw the action plan.

Plan the Planning

You have to believe that planning is essential. Action without a plan is like a blindfold walking in a maze and hitting walls all the time to find the door to the next room. The whole event will be a trial and error instead of an effective progress. Plan the planning, look at your model and sketch, list down every part of action including decision makings, findings, purchasing, partial finishings, presentations without missing any little bit. Make sure you write all those little tasks in yellow tags so that you can categorize them again into different areas. Use large surfaces like glass top table or a large window to relocate tags to groups.

Schedule

This means a clear instruction to yourself that you have to worry only that particular tasks in that allocated time frame. So line up tasks vertically and time slices. I suggest to plot days horizontally and highlight the areas horizontally to allocate time for each task. Sometimes you have to worry about a few things at the same time – to hit two birds with one stone. Using Microsoft Excel will be a good idea unless you have other scheduling software. The correct scheduling will make you confident and be able to use your mind without disturbance for each task at the time.

Trial

Nothing is more educational than the actual trial. If you do something the first time you can never do your best at once. Now is the time to be fussy with yourself. Even you are happy with what you did first time next will be better. More trial will create a better result for sure.

Execution

Good execution will be as good as your plan. The most important thing is a good line up of small actions to create the flow of good results. What has to be done first to do things next easier- the question has to be answered in the planning stage to result in good execution. Work clean all the time and clean your tools and hands as often as possible. A clean knife cuts better than dirty sharp ones. Clean hands mold better too.

Entry

Make sure you have prepared your knee-path and check every point before takeoff. I have seen competitors forget to put their tags in front of their entry. It is like a newborn baby without a name. You must plan all matters of presentation as good as the execution.

After Entry

After the result you must have more interest to find out what went wrong than what was achieved. Even you lost the distinction with one point try to find out why and work on it. Don’t forget that your experience and your new and better self is a much bigger award that whatever people put around your neck. You had been not only a pastry chef competing others, more importantly, you been managing a project and knowing many others yet to come.

Link: Serdar Yener’s Interview by American Cake Decorating Magazine (AUGUST 2016)

Scanned pages of the article in the printed version…

Consultation

Sometime ago, a customer asked me to make a wedding cake with a large Disney castle on top. They wanted a unique couple figurine somewhere on the cake which was to be in a Sleeping Beauty theme. The groom was to be dressed as a special Knight in armor and of course the bride to be dressed as a sleeping beauty princess. On their first visit I spent about half an hour with them and tried to get as much information as possible. During a consultation like this, I am especially interested to know what the bride sees in her imagination when she closes her eyes. I wasn’t getting much of a clear picture from her and that was a good thing because then the cake comes more from my imagination and this much more enjoyable of course. I also asked her to stand up and show me, by lifting her arm, what her expectation of the cake height was, regardless of how many portions it will be. The height she showed me indicated that they needed to buy far more cake than they need. Okay, so that was enough information to start a design on paper, that met their requirements and purposes. At that stage of the consultation, I didn’t need to close my eyes to see the complete design…I just had to scribble some lines on an A4 page and hope that the quick sketched design I offered includes all the components they wanted while also meeting their budget.

The Idea

I stopped asking questions and started sketching and explaining exactly what was on my mind. This is the special moment in a consultation, of planting a belief in the customers mind that they can trust you and that they are in the right place. At this stage, there’s no need to go into too much detail and I just try to present the idea quite generally, to leave some space for myself to move and make further spontaneous decisions.

A 50cm high castle that will be placed on a 30cm dummy cake. The centre pillar should have a 25cm clearance between the second and third tier, so that I can make this area a medieval backdrop for where the special couple will be placed. The bottom two tiers will be placed on top of each other and textured like a building façade relevant to that time. The cake will be finished with red roses climbing on vine branches. As I was drawing, the bride had an idea and asked me to add thorns to the branches to resemble the story of Sleeping Beauty. It made complete sense to me. When the drawing was finished I could see the complete satisfaction from their faces. They smiled and asked, “how much?”. I then explained to them how I price the cake with an itemisation process and that I would send them the quotation via email. It was all done and agreed and the project started. The rest of the day I was working on some other cakes but my mind was partially engaged with this cake. The first challenge was to finish the cake in the next 4 days. The second challenge was that I had to do all the other ordered cakes at the same time. The event was held 80km away and transport was also another challenge but not a big deal if I planned accordingly and mad the cake in two pieces.

Reference Images

When you have such a short time, you need to be able to make quick decisions and get your hands on the sugar as soon as possible. So I needed to have reference pictures of a castle to do my actual size sketch and as always, Google Images comes very handy.

The Plan

A large piece of paper, measuring tape and a bold pencil to get started. Without being too fussy, I used the reference images to draw a very rough sketch. I stuck two pieces of drawing paper (70cm x 50cm) horizontally so I had a drawing space of about 100cm x 70cm and I promised customer that the cake would be a total height of 100cm. So the drawing had to touch the lower and upper edges of the paper and everything had to fit in between these two lines. I needed to make sure I stuck to the following guidelines through out the process…

• Board had to be 20cm larger than the cake which would give me 10 cm space all around after the cake is on the board. Matching material will be white velvet. The lower cake was 45cm so the board had to be 65 cm.
• I was only able to transport no more than 70cm (that’s the maximum height that would fit in the delivery car) and the customer wanted to keep the pillar area and the castle after the event. For a secure transport I decided to make the cake in two parts. So one is the lower two cakes with the pillars (but the pillars and the special couple can be removed). The second part was the third tear, which is dummy cake and the castle joint together. After arrival I have to only place the castle on top of the pillars. This kind of construction needs comprehensive thinking and all potential problems (as much as possible) must be solved on paper first.
• Red roses attached to a 3 part vine system (that looks like one piece when the cake is assembled) and nothing must break when the cake is dismantled.
• I had to make the castle parts on the same day as the plan. So that there is no chance to make the plan too complicated, I referred to the few reference pictures that I had which were all illustrations but slightly different from one another. I had to visually identify the simple geometrical shapes that made up the castle so that I can easily reproduce it on the same day colour it the next day. I drew a rough side view and a top view.
• All decisions about textures, colours and facade designs had to resemble medieval times and fairytale stories.
• When deciding on construction, I tried to keep thicknesses of the pipes and sizes of the boards according to what I had available in my cake workshop so that I wouldn’t have to lose more time for shopping. Thank god always have a good stock of PVC pipes, bolts and nuts, long threaded rods etc. We buy all our wooden boards in bulk and have just about every size with pre-drilled holes in the centre, always ready to go. If something missing was missing, there is also a hardware shop that’s in walking distance away.
• In addition, I decided to place LED lights in the castle so I had to think about, and draw on the plan, how to place the wires and how to hide the battery etc. The switch must be behind the cake but not too obvious.

So after about 2 hours, taking all of the above into consideration, the cake plan was ready on paper and I could now refer to it for measurements and guidance. I looked at my plan and gathered all the necessary construction parts according to the plan. I cut the Styrofoam dummy cake with my self-made Styrofoam cutter, which was an assembly of a car battery charger and a guitar string. I gathered all the right size tubes to roll the towers around and made my individual lists of items according to different actions. It was now around midday and I knew how to accomplish just about every step to finish the cake.

Preparations

Only 4 days for this kind of work is actually very short. I had to make sure that each days work made life easier for the next day. It is always important to divide sugar work in different stages and give enough drying time in between to make the process easier for every stage. My 500g pastillage blocks are always ready to go. They are quite hard to start with but after 20 to 25 seconds in the microwave and bit of kneading, it gets to the perfect condition. For the first day, I aimed to have the following items completed…

• All the cylindrical towers rolled around the right size pipes and the windows cut out accordingly while the paste is still soft.
• All the square towers individual walls and windows.
• All the walls connecting individual round and square towers.
• All the roofs, spires and fascia pieces.
• All the walls centre post and the floor coverage for the centre pillar.
• All items textured accordingly. I used plastic texture sheets to create bricks and floor pavers.
• The basic body parts of the special couple also with white pastillage.
• I also made some sugar sticks in different thicknesses just as stand by preparation without knowing exactly where will I use them.

The Cake

In the freezer and the fridge, we have 3 basic flavours in stock (dark mud, white mud and Delish) that are always layered and ready to go. We batch bake and sandwich 150kg of cake in different sizes all at once. So mixing, baking and sandwiching the white mud cake for the first and second tier of this cake was not an issue. The only work in relation to the cakes, was giving a good crumb coat, chocolate skin, and masking twice. The cakes were ready to coat with fondant before lunchtime. I left the cakes in the fridge so that I could coat them at the end of the day after they are nice and firm.

Preparations

All the walls and towers needed to have some joining work. Square towers were glued. Some towers needed a second layer of stripes, like observation decks, balconies, entrances etc. I used a little white chocolate to get things to hold immediately and if I saw chocolate that was too visible, I used some royal icing to cover these areas and also to fill any large gaps. I made sure all individual blocks were as straight as possible. I continued with doing a little more work on the couple. The previously made basic body parts were nice and dry. I added the upper body parts and arms easily and left the rest for the next day.

Colouring

My aim was to give a little background colour to the castle blocks and the medieval walls. Illustrations and pictures of Disney castles really varied in colours. I remembered when I was in Anaheim Disney castle which was washed with purplish pinkish lights at nighttime. I decided to give very light purplish/greyish airbrush to ready-glued one-piece pillar level and individual castle blocks for two reasons. One, because I wanted to see brick textures better because airbrush makes the indentations more visible. Secondly, because I was going to use white royal icing to give a lot more details and the airbrushing would also help to make the piping’s appear nicer. So I did the airbrushing (lightly) and I also placed all the roofs, spires and fascia parts on a separate tray to spray them all with edible gold (edible gold dust mixed with alcohol).

Lights

When I decided to use LED lights inside the castle I needed to do few earlier steps accordingly so that I don’t straggle later. I cut out some extra windows randomly beside the symmetrical ones and I made sure these windows were located more on the front side of the towers. Some towers had multiple levels; I had to cut out big enough holes so the wires could easily go through them. I placed opaque white cellophane sheets inside the towers so no light bulbs will be directly visible and the light would be softer. I placed all the towers in place and decided which ones will contain the light and how high the bulbs will be positioned. I used 9 in 1 set of LED lights with 1 metre thin wires attached to each bulb. All 9 wires combined to a small battery box with a switch. Using a Styrofoam dummy cake underneath the castle gave me the following possibilities…

• Mapping and carving large enough indentations into the Styrafoam to keep the wire below the surface. I folded and squashed the the wires into the indentations and fastened them with a “U” shaped pin to keep them tidy.
• Poking the skewers in pre-decided locations for taping the wires around so that bulbs can be located in the right height. I used 5 locations for the 9 bulbs so some towers have more than 1 bulb.
• Exactly behind the cake, I curved a cave out of the Styrafoam to place the battery box and make sure only the switch was accessible from the outside.

After all the carving poking and placing finished I tried the lights and all was working. So using a Styrafoam dummy cake made it very helpful to hide all the lighting systems.

Construction

The centre pillar part, including the base and top were already glued with hot glue gun so that they were one piece. Now I just had to cover the large base with velvet and protective cellophane sheet and place the base tier of the cake in the centre in order to start fondant coating work.

Fondant Coating

All the cakes were perfectly masked and ready to coat. I coated the first tier and right after, the second tier, with 3mm thick fondant. I lifted the second tier before the cake got too soft (from sitting in room temperature for too long after coming from the fridge) and placed it on top of the first tier. In between each tier, I used a thin cardboard cake base. A cake this size, when coated right after coming from the fridge, will easily start to sweat depending on the humidity in the air so I left the cake in an air conditioned environment and gave it till the next day to dry. By this time it was late enough to go home and get some sleep and have a fresh start the next day.

The following day, everything was ready to work with. The condensation on the cakes surfaces were dry. The castle blocks were ready to pipe on. The couple figurines were ready have face details, armor (for the knight groom), clothing etc. Flowers were all dry and ready for me to grab (thanks to my wife Jo). Although there were still countless steps in front of me, I could now just start from anywhere and engage my self with each task while clearly being able to think about what I am going to do next. This could be a horribly slow process and any wrong step could potentially follow with struggle. I took the yellow tags and wrote down every step in front of me without thinking about what to do first or last (I highly recommend this method of planning in your own cake decorating projects). After I have all the steps written out, I can easily re-arrange them to ensure that each steps makes the next step easier. Best part of this method is it allows you to focus on one simple task at a time to avoid getting overwhelmed with the work ahead. This strategy of project management can be applied to any project, not just cake decorating.

Piping Work for the Castle

As I looked at my reference pictures, I see that there are so many things I could incorporate and I could just add details for days but this is not a exhibition centrepiece. I wanted to finish castle with as much details as possible but there is no need to go in and be absolutely precise with all the details I see in the reference images. Also I didn’t have to follow the exact architecture as long as I stayed in a typical or similar silhouette. For the next two hours, I took one block at a time in my hand or in front of me and piped all the decorations, lines, window frames and ornaments etc. I used my own discretion to created a “look like” style. This is about giving the cake an appearance of being very detailed, while still keeping things realistic in terms of time.

After this, I let all the piping dry while I covered the top surface and the side of dummy cake with textured pastillage. 5 light posts were the only objects visible over the clean paved surface. Placing and gluing towers over the posts was yet to come.

Main Assembling

This part of the story is very hard to explain in writing. I just keep on adding things side by side and check to see if it looks good. If I don’t like the position of something, I change it, relocate, re-glue etc. Even on some areas quickly improvise and add small blocks underneath the towers just to enhance the profile/silhouette . I just kept adding more piping and small objects around to give the castle a more medieval feeling. This part of the process can sometimes feel like you are in a trance or ‘in the zone’. It’s like there is an orchestra performance and at the end there is a standing ovation and applause. So another two to three hours, the castle was there to gain the first “wow” from my wife.

For the rest of the day I worked little further with the special couple, nicely cleaning up and spent some time with other cake orders. Tomorrow is the finishing day and the remaining 5% of work feels manageable. Happy.

Final Assembling

So now I know that all the difficult steps are behind me but I have to still do the remaining steps as quickly as possible without any mistakes, which will cost extra time. So I did a little brain storming again, wrote down everything on yellow tags and got things in a queue. Nothing is complicated but I still have to finish all the other cakes for the week too. In general, the remaining work was…

• Making facade work on the lower cakes.
• Placing the wooden door on the centre pillar.
• Putting the finishing touches.
• Placing on the special couple.
• Placing vines in 3 different levels and making them look like one.
• Carefully arranging red roses in moderate numbers.

So finally I did it all and called my wife over for quality control. It is kind of important to stand back and look at the cake and officially declare that it is finished. Because when you are constantly looking at same object you can easily become ‘object blind’ so it’s good to ask another person’s as they can immediately identify if something is missing or not. My wife Jo is the best person to do that and criticise me.

Thank you for reading this story today and I wish you cakey days!

More importantly, I want to share the process that is used so that you can apply it to other 3D cakes of this nature. This cake was actually made a very long time ago but I use the same technique for a lot of different 3D cakes. I do not have step by step photos for the process of the cake (since it was made a long time ago), however I will try to show and explain as much as I can with drawings.

Cake Modelling Paste

The detail in the head is primarily the result of a method that involves shaping a basic form, coating it with a chocolate layer, and then adding a layer of “mixed cake” over the chocolate. This final layer of mixed cake allows for sculpting and modelling with more detail. It would be very difficult to try to “carve” a cake into a detailed form for the head, especially when it is quite a small area. So using mixed cake to shape the head in more detail works pretty well.

Ultimately, the ideal type of consistency you would want when working with any modelling material, is something that is pliable, responsive and strong enough to hold and keep its position. For example, something like artists modelling clay, or even children’s Playdoh is pretty good.

So what about when it comes to cake? Well, there is a way to create a Playdoh-like material, with cake. If you take a layered cake (sponge and ganache), and just mix and knead it until the sponge and the ganache are completely mixed together. What you end up with is a paste that you can use to model and sculpt certain areas of your cake. Due to the butter content in the ganache (specifically referring to layered mud cake), if you put this mixed cake into the fridge for a while, it will get pretty hard. On the flip side, if you knead it and play with it too much in your hands, the butter will melt and it will get too soft to work with. So as long as you can maintain the right balance and keep it within that optimal range in temperature, you can use this mixed cake to get quite detailed with your modelling.

Try not to use this mixed cake paste too much on the cake because although it is technically still “cake”, it has lost the texture of a typical cake so someone might bite into a big chunk of textureless cake which may not be the best eating experience. All the small air bubbles in the sponge have been squished out so when someone eats it, it may feel like they are eating a paste or an under baked sponge or something like that. Because of this, it should only be used where necessary and in small amounts.

Please note: This method will only work with cakes that have a hard setting cream layer and a heavier type of sponge. For example, butter sponge with butter cream, or mud cake sponge with ganache. It may not work as effective with a softer type of sponge. Another thing that I should mention is that this cake paste is not really for the tiny little parts. The ears, horns, eyes and nostrils are still created with fondant, after the head is coated with fondant. I would say that mixed cake is more for the smaller parts of the cake shaping stage, rather than the final detailing stage.

Chocolate Power

Sometimes when making a cake, there are certain parts that are susceptible to collapsing or deforming when the cake settles at room temperature. For example, in the case of the giraffe cake, the neck is supported with a metal threaded rod (covered with a plastic tube) but the head is protruding outwards from the neck so the head may be prone to collapsing later if not supported correctly. So what I usually do in this situation is carve the basic shape of the head, then cover the area with a layer of chocolate, then add more details over the chocolate layer using the cake paste. I have written about this technique in a previous article where I use it to strengthen tiers of wedding cakes.

So using the method I have mentioned, lets take a look at the giraffe cake and see how it was done. Heres a diagram I have drawn to show how everything I have mentioned so far works.

Keep in mind that this is a side view so although you can’t see it here, the cake mix is used for the sides of the giraffe’s head as well.

As you can see in the diagram, the basic shape of the giraffe is formed, and then coated with a layer of chocolate. Then the detailed modelling is done over the chocolate using the cake paste. This allows further modelling to be done later, after the coating is done. If we did the cake mix first, then chocolate, it would be very difficult to apply the chocolate skin without changing the shapes you have already modelled with the cake mix.

Also take notice of the thickness of the chocolate. Notice how it is thicker near the base, and also take into account that since the chocolate is at least 2mm thick, it can change proportions (make the head too big etc). Because of this, it may be a good thing to make the head slightly smaller before the chocolate. Remember, there’s also a fondant coating coming as well! It’s a common mistake that I have made way too many times and you end up with a really big head that is out of proportion and looks a little cartoony instead of realistic.

This works for a lot of situations but what if the head was bigger, or protruding out a bit more, or you just wanted to be sure that nothing was going to happen to the head…then chocolate alone probably won’t do the job. Since the head of this giraffe is quite small, chocolate should do the job but if you wanted to be sure the head won’t collapse, another way to do it would be something like this…

Now you can see that the head is supported with a small platform (cut from 3mm thick acrylic sheet) secured in place with hexagonal nuts on the threaded rod. The metal used should be galvanised to prevent any metal contamination but to go one step further, the rod is covered with large plastic straws that fits perfectly and the hexagonal nuts are coated with chocolate before placing any cake on it. The chocolate helps separates the metal from the cake.

Coating

You may be wondering how the giraffe was coated with fondant, since it is such an awkward shape. Obviously it would be too difficult to just roll out a piece of fondant and unwrap it over the cake (like you would do with a regular wedding cake) because the neck and the head would cause the fondant to tear as its being unwrapped.

So basically, I coated the giraffe in three parts. Head, neck and body. First the head, was just a small piece placed over the head and slowly pressed on and around the snout. This piece ended around the start of the top of the neck. After coating the head, I rolled another rectangular piece and covered the neck vertically and used a blade to cut vertically along the neck to remove the excess. Then to cover the body, I rolled out a large piece of fondant, and cut a straight line from the centre out. This cut part would wrap around the neck and re join on the chest of the giraffe.

After all three parts were coated, the legs and the tail of the giraffe were modelled with fondant and glued to the cake with water. The ears and horns were also made with fondant and glued to the head with water. To blend all of these attached fondant parts (legs, ears, horns, tail) I just piped some royal icing along the edges and then smoothed the royal icing with a brush and water.

Airbrushing

After the giraffe was coated with fondant and all the extra parts were attached, it was ready to be airbrushed. There is no real trick to this. I just made sure I had plenty of reference images of giraffes and their unique fur pattern, and then just took it really slow and copied the reference images as much as I could. I guess a couple key points to mention would be to make sure you don’t rush. Just focus on a small section at a time. Also, as with most painting, start with the lighter colours and work your way to the darker colours. So I first air brushed the yellow, then orange, then brown, then black.

Conclusion

I hope you found this article helpful and learned something new that you can use in your own cake decorating ventures. Of course I am not saying that this is the only way to do this so if you have any ideas on different ways or would like to share the way you do would do it, I would love to hear your thoughts so please leave a comment Thanks for reading!

A coincidence brought me to the pastry kitchen when I was 17. I fell in love from the very first day with the whole concept of pastry in general. With all respect to chefs, I noticed that it was very different from cooking. It is a craft where an artist can perform visual art in greater freedom than many other related professions.

Pastry art is the combination of carpentry, architecture, engineering, chemistry, painting, 3D designs, and computing, besides just baking, cooking and lot more. Materials used in pastry are so flexible and versatile that you can create working platforms beyond the work bench.

For example, sculptors use clay or stone to perform art. Clay has only one condition of elasticity that all techniques must marry with. The quality of stone curving in one direction reminds me of a movie where the pilot crashes after trying to land an airplane with steering working in one direction.

Let’s think about chocolate as an edible substance. Sometimes it works like clay if you add some glucose in it, and sometimes like a stone which you chisel on, but it can also be painted with or poured onto trays in any thickness, and cut into shapes that immediately stand vertical. You can pour it in moulds. You can even make moulds out of other pastry substances like gelatine. You can add some alcohol in it to pipe nice curves, and the beauty is you can combine all these in to one even use chocolate as glue. What a freedom!

Different sugar dough and mixtures like pastillage, marzipan and royal icing also work like chocolate in their own attitude. I see endless possibilities to express oneself and feel motivated for doing something enjoyable while making a living.

Pastry art will only have an economical value if the performer thoroughly learns the basics and market recognitions are made achievable. Pastry artists without basic pastry knowledge will be unmarketable. Art in pastry can go all the way down to a little rosette on a cup cake, and there are so many nuances in basic piping that you can practice as much as you need.

So where is Australia’s position globally if we talk about pastry art? To answer this question, we have to look at a few different aspects, and honestly, we all have to accept that we are a couple steps behind middle European standard. We are very close but we have a bit more work to do.

I believe the biggest factor is the amount of chemicals we use conveniently in the pastry industry, which has cause the decline in developing young chefs. I don’t think we can avoid it completely, but we can encourage young chefs to learn traditional methods and be proud of it. That’s exactly what Europeans have done since the first egg was whipped. As long as the market doesn’t complain, there will be no change in industry direction to become more hesitant in the use of chemicals. But the question is, how does the market know the difference if they do not start tasting the chemical free products? Education on both ends, at the production and consuming site, is the key issue.

Aside from working many years in Europe and Asia, during my visits to USA and Japan I observed enough to see one significant difference. Tremendous amount of attention must be given to pastry products to make them presentable and pleasing to the eyes before having a bite. Exactly at this point pastry art starts.