Royal Icing Remembrance Poppy

During the Olympics Opening Ceremony, there was a reference to Remembrance Day (aka Poppy Day or Armistice Day), which reminded me of these stunning black and red Remembrance Poppies. I had to try my hand at piping them, and here's what I came up with. Start by sticking a parchment paper square to a glue stick.

 Pipe a base using a round #12 tip and black stiff consistency royal icing. Hold the tip just above the parchment paper, squeeze until the icing starts to build up, and pull the tip straight upward for about half in inch before stopping pressure and pulling away. The base will probably resemble a Hershey's Kiss. Touch your fingertip to a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 blend of powdered sugar and cornstarch, and tap the peak flat.

 When the bases have had a chance to firm up for about 15 minutes or so, pipe a #16 star in the center. Flatten it with your fingertip as well.

 Pipe a total of five petals with a #104 petal tip and stiff consistency red royal icing (I used Super Red by AmeriColor; the black is Super Black). Attach a base to the nail gently by the paper with another dab from the glue stick. With the wide side of the tip #104 about halfway down the base, pipe a wraparound petal just over halfway around the base. I used a gentle in-and-out sawing motion to gently ruffle the icing

 Here's the second petal, which overlaps the beginning and end of the first petal.

 Pipe three more overlapping wraparound petals, being sure to completely cover the black base. If you make several dozen of them, they'd be a perfect, edible prop for a pretty nurse costume (serving poppies from a tray)

Royal Icing Tudor Rose

Continuing with projects inspired by the London Olympics, today's post is the Tudor Rose. This is a motif commonly seen in heraldry, but there is an actual version that grows in the dirt, too, which is the one I'm attempting to replicate. All you'll need to pipe this red-and-white rose are stiff consistency royal icing in white and red (I recommend Super Red by AmeriColor to color your icing a true red), a cheap brush from the craft store, a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch, parchment paper squares, a flower nail, a glue stick, a Styrofoam block to rest the nail in, round tip #12, and tip #97, which is used to pipe Victorian roses. That's a tip #97 on the left; on the right is a standard petal tip #104 (teardrop shaped)

Start by sticking a parchment square to the flower nail with a dab from the glue stick. 

 Pipe a base for each rose, and allow the bases to firm up. The bases are basically shaped like Hershey's Kisses, and are made by holding the round tip #12 perpendicular to and just above the surface, squeezing until the icing is the size of about a nickel, and slowly moving the tip upward and away from the surface before stopping pressure and pulling the tip straight up and away.

 Remember how important it is to allow the bases to firm up; you don't want them to flatten out under the weight of all those petals. Warning: graphic photos of icing gone wrong here.

 Work on each rose one at a time by returning them to the flower nail with a dab from the glue stick. Handle them only by the parchment paper. Start by piping the center petal that wraps around the tip of the base with the tip #97. You can read all of the specifics regarding angle, pressure, distance of each row of petals to the next, number of petals, etc. if you go to the Wilton site and read about The Wilton Rose.

 The main difference in using the tip #97 is the petals will curl over at the edges a little, which I think makes them look so much more realistic than the standard petal tip. Start by piping three overlapping petals around the center wraparound petal.

 Then, you'll want to make a striped bag. Paint a generous stripe of red icing for a couple of inches along one of the bag's seams and all the way into the coupler, if you're using one.

 Fill the bag as much as you'd like with white icing…

 …and make sure the narrow side of the tip is lined up with the stripe.

 Pipe a row of 5 overlapping petals, angling them slightly more outwards than the row of 3 petals…

 …and finish with a row of 7 or more overlapping petals, angling outwards even further (but not lying flat on the parchment; there should still be plenty of clearance between the flower and the paper). How pretty would these be on red velvet cake? But not very British, I'm afraid.

Royal Icing Ladybugs

Yesterday's ant even bugged me a little; it was just SO realistic and icky. So, today I piped a ladybug (which a few folks have been asking for, so here you go). All you need are stiff consistency royal icing in black, white, and red (as you can tell I used hot pink, so scratch that last requirement), parchment paper squares, a flower nail, a glue stick, round tips #12, #2, #8, and #1, and a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 blend of powdered sugar and cornstarch. Start by piping an egg with the #12 tip, held just above and at a 45 degree angle to a parchment square.

 Round the tip into a true egg shape with a fingertip after touching it to the dusting pouch.

 Make an egg for each ladybug's body.

 After they've firmed up for a while, pipe a #2 line down the center with the black icing. I used Super Black by AmeriColor. I stuck the squares to the flower nail with a dab from the glue stick for this step; I find piping details to be a lot easier when I can hold everything up close to my eyes and not have to lean over the counter. Allow the line to fall out of the tip, sort of like you're piping a drop string, to keep it smooth. When you pull the tip away at the end, tap it flat with your fingertip.

 Switch to the #8 tip and pipe the head. It's basically a ball. Hold the tip almost against the body, squeeze out a ball, and as you pull the tip away, stop pressure. Tap the head into a round shape with your dusted fingertip if a peak remains.

 This part is so fun: the dots. Try to make them relatively symmetrical, if you're being a stickler for accuracy. Use the #2 tip, hold it just above the surface, squeeze out a dot, and pull away.

 Tap the dots flat with a fingertip (unless you want your ladybug to look dangerous, punk, or otherwise evolved).

 Pipe #2 dots for eyes with the white icing in the center of the head, flattening them as well.

 Lastly, pipe the antennae. Use black icing and the #1 tip. Hold the tip against the front of the head, squeeze, and pull away. Stop pressure after a very short distance. Adjust the direction of the antennae with a fingertip if they're heading off in two completely unrealistic directions.

 These could be piped in any color to match any theme. I think they'd be sweet on any sort of dessert for a garden party, or even for Halloween (I think they already look sort of sinister; imagine if they were piped in orange and black!).

A Baseball-shaped Cake

I'm working on a baseball-themed cake and wanted to incorporate an actual baseball (it's only a half-ball because in the end it'll look like it's stuck in the grass). When I was making the main part of the cake, I set aside some batter to make this ball. Here is the pan (or rather, pans) I used:

On the left is a 4" pan and on the right is a 4" hemisphere pan, both by Fat Daddio's. These are some tremendously sturdy pans; they weigh a ton! And, of course, each of these pans comes in a variety of sizes. I greased and floured the hemisphere pan and filled it about halfway (roughly half a cup), then dropped it into the 4" pan and let it bake about 15 minutes (whenever the toothpick came out clean-ish). 

 The cake came out easily with a firm "whack":

 I cut off the crown…

 and then gave it a buttercream undercoating.

 I rolled out a piece of fondant, somewhere around 1/8" thick:

 I laid the fondant over the hemisphere and smoothed it down. The cake was too small to use a fondant smoother; my hands worked just as well.

 It was also too small to cut away the slack with a pizza cutter; I used a paring knife…

 …and smoothed the edges under the cake a little more tightly by hand.

 To pipe the stitching, I needed a red food-safe marker (I like AmeriColor Gourmet Writers), thinned royal icing colored with AmeriColor's Super Red in a bag fitted with a round #3 tip, and a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch.

 I used the marker to make dots for guidelines. Without these, I guarantee the final result would be uneven.

 Starting in the middle of the ball, I piped a series of upside-down V's. Any time a peak occurred, I touched a fingertip to the dusting pouch and gently tapped it down.

 And here's the finished baseball cake. Obviously, you could use a hemisphere pan to create anything ball-shaped; I'm sure I'll press it into service again soon.

You can see it peeking out from behind a fondant pennant on the final cake in this shot:

Coloring Fondant Red

I finally figured out the secret ingredient for true red fondant: Super Red Soft Gel Paste by AmeriColor. Add it to the fondant recipe when you've reached the liquid stage (detailed below), and you should wind up with true red fondant like you see on the cake above (as well as unstained hands). Amazingly, Super Red has no chemical "red" taste; it just couldn't be more flawless! My knee-jerk reaction was to take down the following post, because it's mostly a play-by-play of the wrong turns I took on the road to the right red, but I thought you might find it amusing. And mostly, I want to spare you the same tedious journey! So, here you go, for nostalgia's sake:

The name of today's post really ought to be "The Trials and (mostly) Errors of Coloring Fondant Red"; I can't honestly say I've come up with the definitive process of making fondant from scratch in this rather challenging color. I have a project coming up that requires true red fondant, and I'm thinking I might need to pick up a tub of Satin Ice Red Fondant (after all, this is the stuff that Buddy uses and it reportedly tastes good).

I do have one tip for coloring fondant in any color that I want to share with you. If you're following my fondant from scratch recipe, when you get to the "liquid stage" (where you're combining melted gelatine, glycerine, flavorings, and corn syrup), try adding the coloring to the mix. This was the first time ever in my fondant-coloring experience that I didn't have hands the color of my most recent project for days after.

The only drawback to coloring fondant using this method that I can see is you need to color the entire batch at once (as opposed to the method of adding color to only the amount of fondant you need). This, by the way, was the color I used, Red Red by AmeriColor; I used about five generous squirts of it:

 And this is the end result. On my monitor it looks very orange (as does the color spot on the container above). I assure you, in person the color was redder than this; you might want to see for yourself at the AmeriColor site (look up Red Red).

In a fit of nostalgia for my color theory days of art classes in high school, I gave the above fondant a shot of AmeriColor's Violet (figuring the blue in purple might cool it down a notch and the red in purple would just be redundant), and then this happened:

The difference is subtle, but definitely more delectable. In person, it has almost a fabric- or leather-like appearance. My quest for the perfect red is definitely not over…SO glad that I'm within a stone's throw of a store that stocks Satin Ice Red Fondant!

P.S. Last year I experimented with the Wilton reds; I've tried their Red-Red, Christmas Red, and No-Taste Red. All yielded shades of pink reminiscent of that thing you keep hearing about in the news.