Some cake decorations are easy to make, while others are so challenging that even Charm City Cakes owner Duff Goldman would be hard pressed to create them. Edible decorations can be made from marzipan, fruit and manufactured candies. Marzipan can be worked like clay, giving the cake decorator an infinite range of possible items to create. Add this to my Recipe Box.
Instructions
Marzipan Clay
1. Spray hands with nonstick cooking spray to keep marzipan from sticking. Mix one pound powdered sugar with one pound ground almonds. Add one teaspoon lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 2 tablespoons brandy. Stir until the mixture forms a thick paste.
2. Sprinkle powdered sugar on your cutting board. Roll marzipan into one-inch balls until they pick up enough powdered sugar that they no longer stick. Squeeze them all together.
3. Divide your marzipan into eight pieces and color all but one piece using food-coloring paste, as desired. The uncolored piece can be used as white, peach, yellow or gold.
4. Decide what color your uncolored marzipan replaces, and be consistent. Use marzipan as clay to sculpt and mold people, animals and/or flowers.
5. Spray chocolate molds with nonstick cooking spray. Allow to air-dry. Force marzipan into molds. Place molded marzipan pieces on your cake as desired.
6. Pinch marzipan into the basic desired shape. Add details, such as texture to hair, using a fork to make squiggles or lines and a spoon to make swirls.
Fruit Flowers
7. Make 1/2-inch-thick pineapple slices using a sharp carving knife. Use flower or star cookie cutters to make a variety of floral shapes. Use holly, maple and oak cutters to make leaves. You can also use green mint gumdrop leaves.
8. Use the melon baller with cantaloupe, honeydew or seedless pink watermelon; or use grapes or cherries, to make the flower centers. Attach centers to flowers using a toothpick for each one.
9. Skewer grapes, cherries, balls of melon and spearmint gumdrop leaves. Top each skewer with a fruit flower.
10. Stick fruit-covered skewers into the cake, beginning with the tallest skewers at the center of the top. Continue to add skewers to achieve your desired look.
11. Spread buttercream icing around the marzipan and the fruit flower skewers to fill in any bare or empty areas.
Tags: marzipan into, powdered sugar, cooking spray, cutters make, fruit flower, grapes cherries