Royal Icing Gerbera Daisy

When I first started writing this blog six months ago on December 31st, 2011 as a New Year's Resolution, I really had no idea how many people might read it, if any. I never thought I'd reach a page view number in the 5 digits (or if I did it would take years to do). Well, today The Iced Queen had its 30,000th page view, and in honor of this big number, I piped a big flower: a gerbera daisy. To pipe a big flower, you need big parchment paper squares, and a big flower nail; I used an Ateco 914, which is 3" across:

You also need a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 blend of powdered sugar and cornstarch, stiff consistency royal icing in two bright colors, a glue stick, petal tip #104, and round tip #5.

 Start by sticking a 3" parchment square to the nail with a dab from the glue stick.

 Make a dot in the middle of the square to help keep your petals centered.

 Pipe about 16 petals with the #104 tip that start in the center and radiate outwards, almost to the edge of the nail. Hold the wide end of the tip at the center with the narrow end aimed toward the outer edge. Hold the tip almost flat on the surface, with the narrow end slightly higher.

 As you pipe outward, increase pressure only at the outer edge to build up the curved edge. Decrease pressure as you move the tip back in to the center.

 Rotate the nail and pipe more petals. I like piping them at 12 and 6, then 9 and 3 to keep the flower balanced.

 Pipe 4 more petals in between them…

 …and another petal in between each of these for a total of 16 (or thereabouts).

 Here is a side view; you can see the jaunty upward angle of the petals' edges from here.

 Tap a fingertip to the the center to flatten out the beginnings and ends of the petals. Set the flower aside to firm up before piping the center (it will smooth out a little on its own, too).

Pipe a cluster of #5 pull-up dots in the center. Hold the tip just above the surface of the flower's center, squeeze, pull the tip up about 2 millimeters, stop pressure, and pull the tip away. If any of the dots are significantly taller than the others, you can touch a fingertip to the dusting pouch and flatten them slightly. Give the parchment a gentle tug to remove the flower from the nail. Allow the gerbera daisy ample time to dry before you peel away the parchment paper; you can speed up the drying time by placing it under a desk lamp. 

Thanks to all of you who have contributed to this blog's 30,000 views thus far; keep piping! 

P.S. That's my shower curtain in the background. 

Royal Icing Mouse

It seems like the smaller the subject matter, the larger the number of page views. So, continuing the effort to give the people what they want, here's a teeny-tiny-little mouse. You won't even feel the weight of this creature when you hold it in your hand (which is sort of true for a real mouse, come to think of it). Here's all you'll need to pipe mice (in this case, albino mice)…

…Royal icing in pale pink, white, and red, a glue stick, a flower nail, parchment paper squares, a Styrofoam block (handy to stick the flower nail in when you're switching tips), a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch, and petal tip #101, round tip #1, round tip #2, and round tip #12. Start by loading the bag of white icing with the #12 tip. You probably won't need the flower nail for this step. Pipe the mouse's body, which is basically a teardrop, on a parchment paper square. Start by piping a ball, and when it forms, start moving the tip in one direction or another. When the shape and size is to your liking, stop pressure and pull the tip away. You may need to touch your thumb and forefinger to the dusting pouch, then use them to gently refine the tapered shape. 

 Here's a whole bunch of mouse bodies. I think that one on the lower right is the mousiest.

 After the mouse bodies have firmed up (leave them for a half hour or so; speed the process up by turning on a desk lamp over them), attach one of them (with the parchment square still intact) to the flower nail with a dab from the glue stick.

 Using the small petal tip #101, pipe two ears. I practiced on my finger a few times, first. Keep the wide end of the tip angled out, and move the tip in a tight, upside down "U" motion. Touch your finger to the dusting pouch, and tap the base of the ear down so it smoothly meets the head.

 Switch to the #2 tip, and pipe a tiny ball for a nose. As you pull the tip away, it may leave a peak, which you can either leave if you like the look of it, or tap down gently with a fingertip.

 Pipe the tail, next. I rotated the nail while I piped to get that nice, smooth curve along the body. To form the tapered tail tip, stop pressure and pull the tip away.

 Finally, pipe the red eyes with a #1 tip. Obviously, you could change all these colors to pipe any breed of mouse you like.

Now, to pipe some royal icing cheese…

Cutting Parchment Paper Squares

Every so often, I have to set aside the piping bag or whatever I'm working on in favor of some form of cake-related maintenance, and today's project is the cutting of parchment paper squares. So, apologies for the dearth of pretty pictures; today I'm going to show you how to save money by cutting your own squares, which are a staple of pretty much any project involving royal icing and a flower nail. I'm not sure you can even buy pre-cut parchment squares on the Wilton site anymore; they appear to have vanished. If so, good riddance. One pack of 100 cost about as much as an entire roll of parchment paper if memory serves, and if you were to cut the entire roll into squares you'd have 1008 squares; that'll see you through piping a boatload of roses! All you need to cut your own squares is a pair of scissors and something good on TV, but if you want to set up your own factory of sorts, you'll need a self-healing mat, an X-Acto knife, a cutting rail, and a roll of parchment paper. Everything can be found at art supply stores (as opposed to craft stores; I don't think I've spotted cutting rails at Michael's, but I've never gone looking for them). I think you can find self-healing mats in the scrapbooking section. This one is made by X-Acto, and has a workable area of 11x17. It's probably about 20 years old; the lines are so faint in the middle I wasn't able to take an in-focus photo of it. 

 The X-Acto knife you're no doubt familiar with. I like this one, because it has a rubbery grip to it. As soon as I took it out of the package I immediately painted the cap's tip with red nail polish; the clear cap would have been just too easy to lose, and an X-Acto knife without a cap is just trouble waiting to happen.

 Be sure to use a cutting rail; that lip on the far side will protect your fingertips in ways regular rulers can't.

 Start by cutting the edge of your parchment clean with the X-Acto knife; that serrated cutter on the box won't give you a perfect edge.

 Roll the paper out across the mat, and line the cut edge up with the furthermost line. Use your cutting rail to anchor the paper down (because it will want to curl back under itself)…

 …two inches in from the edge.

 Hold the rail firmly (and with no fingers overhanging the lip), and draw the blade along it from the far end towards yourself.

 After you've cut four of them (or more or less; any more than 4 and they start slipping around on me), stack them up…

 …and line them up against one of the lines on the mat. Anchor them with the cutting rail two inches away, and assertively cut through the stack. Repeat, repeat, repeat. At some point, you might notice it's time to change the blade; always have a seemingly infinite supply of spare blades on hand.

 Now get piping! You can buy new tips with the money you save cutting your own parchment squares.

Piping Dogwood Flowers in Royal Icing

I love dogwood flowers, perhaps because they aren't easy to come by. There's a dogwood tree in my yard that's almost half a century old that started to produce blooms only a few years ago! Dogwood flowers are easy to make using gum paste; all sorts of cutters and impression mats are available. However, I really wanted to try to figure out how to pipe them with royal icing; I definitely plan to incorporate them next time I make a stump cake. I think I came up with a pretty accurate representation of them. Here's the setup; a Styrofoam block (to act as a third hand for holding the flower nail), a non-toxic glue stick, dark pink Color Dust, a small brush, parchment paper squares, a flower nail, a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch, 3" flower forming cups, a pastry bag filled with royal icing and fitted with a Wilton #101 rose tip, and a pastry bag filled with yellow royal icing and fitted with the Wilton #233 tip:

Dab some glue on the flower nail and stick down a parchment paper square. 

 Holding the rose tip almost flat against the surface with the narrow end of the tip pointing outward and the wide end in the center, pipe a long heart shape all the way to the edge of the nail. Keep the pressure pretty steady and firm the whole time. If you somehow wind up with a hole in the middle of this petal, touch one of your fingers to the dusting pouch and tap the icing down around the hole.

 Make the second petal opposite to the first. Attempt to make them somewhat symmetrical; all the petals will be the same size. If a large accumulation occurs in the center, it can be tapped down with your dusted finger.

 Here's the third petal…

 …and the fourth.

 Slide the parchment paper off the nail (breaking the seal with the glue), and place it on the flower forming cup to dry with a subtle concave shape:

 After the flower has had a chance to firm up for a bit, pipe the yellow center with Tip #233. Hold the tip just above the center and squeeze out a center consisting of very short strands; squeeze, stop the pressure, lift the tip away. Move the tip over the width of one of the strands, and squeeze out a second set.

 This way the center won't be a perfectly spaced, unnatural looking cluster of dots.

 When the petals have dried completely, dust the edges with the pink dust. As you dust each petal, you can shake off the excess away from the rest of the flower.

 Here are all four petals, dusted. Incidentally, this step is optional; the flowers in my yard don't have pink edges. I like how the dogwood flower turned out; it even has the lines running the length of the petals. I plan to figure out how to make more flowers that aren't based on something I learned in a Wilton class soon!

Another Use for a Flower Nail

I love learning new uses for various and sundry items. As I've been baking larger cakes, I've been encountering the issue of cutting off increasingly larger crowns (the dome that forms on a cake). That part never goes to waste in my house; I've turned crowns into everything from mini-cakes to "trifle for one." There are, however, times when you need the cake to bake evenly and develop as small a crown as possible; namely when you're baking a large or long cake. You can either spend money on heating cores, or reach for a couple of trusty flower nails (and save that money to buy another pan or some other thing that can't possibly be considered gadgetry). The way to use flower nails as heating cores is simple; start by greasing your pan with butter and flouring it lightly (this is a 13 by 9 pan; part of a 4-piece egg-shaped pan set): 

Cut out a piece of parchment paper to fit and anchor it down with a couple of flower nails; I think they ought to be at least an inch across (unlikely to tip over under any circumstances):

In the case of this long pan, I used two:

Pour the batter in:

Even it out with a spatula, if need be, and pop it in the oven. 

This cake was ready in about 25 minutes. Set the cake on a rack to cool. 

 When the cake is completely cool, put a second rack on top of it, feet up.

 Invert the cake, and remove the rack the cake had been sitting on.

 Remove the pan; you can see the nails through the parchment paper.

 Peel back just enough of the parchment to retrieve the nails, and press the parchment back into place.

 Put the rack back on the cake, feet up:

 Invert the cake a final time. When you remove the rack, these lines will remain, but they'll be gone when you level off just the brown part of the cake. Proceed as usual with torting, filling, stacking, etc.

 You'll be seeing more of this cake in the days to come; I have big plans for it!