Tip Tuesday

One of the easiest parts of cake decorating is putting on the border. The most common type of border is the shell border which is pictured below. This is the the type of border I use at work 99.9% of the time. I have to admit when I first learned how to do it I found it very difficult, I could not seem to get how to do it. I originally learned it by taking a basic cake decorating class at Michaels. After that I had a friend show me an easier way and now its one of my favorite borders to do. However without tip #22 I would never be able to create this border. Tip #22 is a large star tip, and is the most common one used for the shell border. There is also tip #32 that has more lines in the shell. I personally don't like the look of this border which is why I stick to using tip #22.

Tip Tuesday!!!

Although I use many tools to create my cakes, there is one thing I could not live without! A cake smoother. This tool is used to smooth the sides of the cake as well as the top. Without using this, cakes would have spatula marks where one tried to smooth the icing. This is something that I use every single day. Everyone should have one because it makes your cakes look professional even if you doing it at home!!!

Tip Tuesday

Tip Tuesday is a new thing that I'm starting on my blog! The purpose is to help fellow beginning cake decorators by using the skills that I have learned.

For the first Tip Tuesday I want to feature the most important tip to a cake decorator! Its the cake icer tip #789! This tip is so amazing...instead of using a knife and risking cake crumbs in the icing you can use this tip to get your frosting on smoothly! This tip retails at $3.29 and is made by Wilton. This tip does not work with a coupler and has to have its own bag because its such a large tip. I bought one the first time I saw someone use it and it was the best $3,29 that I have ever spent!

Cream of Tartar

I've decided to challenge myself to post on my blog everyday. As the day started I struggled to think of a topic. Today was my day off so I knew I wouldn't have any work stories and nothing really exciting happens outside of work so I was really drawing a blank on what I could write about. I was talking to a friend and telling her about my new blog and she was excited to know that I would be incorporating baking and decorating ideas, she then asked me what cream of tarter is used for in baking. Then the idea hit, I had absolutely no idea what cream of tartar is used for in baking. All I knew was it has a weird name, you only use a pinch at a time, its in a bottle that is too big and no one ever uses all of it and its kinda expensive to buy. So I began my research on uses for cream of tartar.

According to Wikipedia the actual name is Potassium bitartrate also know as potassium hydrogen tartrate, which is used for use in wine making but when cooking is know as cream of tartar. The use of this ingredient serves several purposes. First it is used to stabilize egg whites and increase the heat tolerance and volume. Second is to stabilize whipped cream by helping to maintain the texture and volume. Next it prevents sugar and syrup from crystallizing while being baked. Lastly it prevents discoloration when boiling vegetables. 

So hopefully everyone learned something and next time a recipe calls for cream of tartar you'll know exactly what it does!