Thank you everyone. Being in quarantine since March I had to find something to do to occupy my mind. I loved doing the sugar sheet cake but a couple of things I learned. Getting the glucose and color to blend in completely with the sugar took forever and by the darker dots I see in the pictures I didn’t do as well as I could have. Next, I would never do this on a real cake. I tried a bit of the leftover sugar sheet when it was dry, it was rather like getting sand in your mouth at the beach. Because it was so hot and dry that day the sugar sheet was dry in 3 hours and pliable enough that it didn’t crack when I wrapped it around the cake. I attached it by painting the dummy with piping gel.The rice paper sails were good fun and a technique I would suggest. Making chocolate spheres on a 100 F. day was not the wisest thing to do but they turned out alright, they were candy melts rather than tempered chocolate.
The concrete bee cake was fun, I liked the industrial look of the fondant concrete, and of course the bees were fun but very fragile, they lost a couple of legs or antenna in the construction. :) One thing I found that worked really well was the indent for what would be done on a Geode cake. Because this was a cake dummy it was much faster than carving out styrofoam. I used m y pastry torch and just melted it to the size and depth I needed. Genius! I did this out on the patio so there were no fumes.
I will send a link to Ekatarina’s classes but have to look it up. Her name is Ekatarina Metcalf of Ekat couture cakes in Brisbane Australia. The sugar sheet was a bonus she added to a modern cake class that included the rice paper sails. But honestly there are so many great sugar sheet tutorials on YouTube, especially if you speak Spanish. I liked one by Natalia Salazar. I don’t speak Spanish but you can easily follow along with the video. Also several tutorials on rice paper sails, so easy! Nice to hear from each of you, stay safe and wear a mask!
Shirley
