Posts Tagged ‘tutorial’

Cupcake Decor Galore

Posted on: January 2nd, 2010 by lizzo 1 Comment

I’m that type of person who really really enjoys baking and all things baking related. Even though I specialize in fondant figures and fondant cakes, I secretly love a cute lil cupcake. I especially love cupcake stuff! Cupcake jewelry, cupcake jars, cupcake toppers! Who doesn’t like a personalized cake? So when I saw this great tutorial on 100 layer cake I just had to reblog it. Its such a great take on the classic party garland and really adds a sense of whimsy. I think I’m going to try this out for my little sister baby shower in a few weeks (so excited).

Basically you take cupcake liners (they dyed these with tea to give them that natural look), some fabric circles, lace and threaded them all together like so. Every so often, glue one of your liners to the twine so they don’t all bunch together in the middle when hung.

I will post a few pics from her blog

You can see the complete tutorial in all its glory here

Just for the fun of it, I looked on flick to see if I could find some other cupcake banners and here are some cute versions I came across.

From Veronica TM

Love those pretty pastels.

This one is from Tigglegiggles She used martha stewart cupcake liners. I always love how martha’s creations just go together so well visually. So so pretty

This final one is from Utah Loves Cupcakes She has some really great cupcake related things on her blog, I spent much too much time perusing all her pretty pictures :-D

I think this is a pretty and simple way to decorate for the holidays (like valentines day or saint patty’s)

How to make edible trees

Posted on: October 27th, 2009 by lizzo 2 Comments
Edible Trees

Edible Trees

I was recently contacted to make a cake for a runners 35th birthday. This runner is going to be competing in the upcoming columbia gorge marathon and so we decided to do a cake theme around that event. It took me a while to find a way to make some trees for the cake that would look pretty realistic but were also pretty edible (I do realize that grape stems are not technically edible but its better than wire) I found a couple different techniques that I think worked pretty well and thought I would share them with you. Enjoy!

Liz

STEP ONE (gather your supplies)
Two bowls
Rice Krispies Cereal
Chocolate for melting
Floral wire
Grape stems
Sugar ice cream cones
Green food coloring
Spray bottle or food coloring airbrush
Wooden dowel

Step 2 (dying the rice krispies)
Rice Krispies Cereal dyed green. Make sure you use a fairly large bowl so you can shake off excess cereal when dipping without making too much of a mess.
I dyed mine with an airbrush but you can use a spray bottle with water and green dye. Just spray, mix, spray, mix until green. Don’t do too much or you’ll get soggy treats. :)
green_krispies

Step 3 (melting chocolate)
Next we need some melted chocolate. I use tree bark that I get from the food supply store but you can also use any chocolate for candy making. Put chocolate in microwave safe container and melt in 15 sec intervals starting off with 30 seconds. Make sure you stir between heating. if you try to melt too fast and too hot, you will scorch your chocolate, it will seize up and get lumpy and you pretty much have to start over.

melted_chocolate

melt chocolate at 15 second intervals

Step 4 (Making trees from grape stems)
Gather your grape stems and attach some floral wire to the ends. This will make it easy to hang our trees to dry. Wrap the floral wire around the base and dip stem into chocolate. Shake excess chocolate off the stem so the ‘branches” are easily seen.

grape_stemswrap_wire

dip_chocolate

shake off excess chocolate

shake off excess chocolate

Dip your stems into the rice krispies to add “leaves” then hang on your dowel to dry
dip_trees_krispiestree_krispieshang_trees

Step 5 (making the cone trees)
For these trees, the process is similar but instead we are going to use sugar cones to make more evergreen looking trees to give our cake a little variety. You could use something other than green rice krispies if you wanted to like green sprinkles or other candies but I just used the same rice krispies.

use sugar cones

use sugar cones

rotate cone in chocolate

rotate cone in chocolate

add "leaves" to cone

add "leaves" to cone

I just set these cones on the table over some parchment to dry.

After everything is dry, poke holes into your cake and then push your trees into the holes. I attached the cone trees with some royal icing.
For this cake I also added a path, a sugar runner I made, a river made of melted chocolate and sparkle gel and some chocolate “rocks”

runner_frontrunner

I hope this tutorial was helpful to you.

HAPPY BAKING!

Liz