Fantasy Gumpaste Flower

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Edna De la Cruz Design Me a Cake

I was surfing the net awhile ago and saw a beautiful cupcake made by
The Pastry Studio. I contacted them to use their cupcake as inspiration for
a tutorial and they said yes!

This is the photo that I found. I love how they mix the
pearls and nonpareils. Makes it look really delicate
and elegant.

I don’t know the steps they used in making these
cupcakes, so I will show you how I would make
them. I didn’t have different sizes of pearls so
I used nonpareils, sugar pearls and sugar
crystals. But I do love the bigger pearls they
used in their cupcakes.

For this particular flower you will need 2 five petal cutters. I used the 2 biggest ones on this PME 5 Petal CutterSet.

The flower is not difficult to make. If you are not used to making gumpaste flowers, this is a great way to learn.

When I make cakes, I know I need to move
fast. Spending too much time in a single detail is not a great idea when you are trying to earn some money. This is something I keep in mind when I teach. We want pretty and we want fast.
This is the reason why I mention the tools
I use that help me to move fast when I do tutorials.

I used a Celformer to shape this flower. This is one of those tools that I love and make my flower making a bit easier. I cover them in foil so I can reuse the former as I dry the flowers I already made.

The tutorial is very detailed. You can also
add more detail to the flower with petal dust
if you want to take it to another level. I didn’t
do the petal dust in the tutorial because I wanted to show the simplified version of the flower.

Some people will say this is a lot of work for a cupcake and yes it can be. So make sure to charge well for the work you do. The other option will be to mix this cupcake with others that have a more simple design. The flower can also be used in cakes.

No matter how you end up using it, this is a great flower to learn. I hope you
enjoy the Tutorial. Click on the photo to go watch full Tutorial.

Until next blog, ta ta!

Edna 😉

My Favorite Chocolate Buttercream

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Edna De la Cruz Design Me a Cake

Presione aqui para Español

Chocolate is my addiction! I just love it! I have a great recipe in my website for a Crusting Chocolate buttercream. That recipe is great for cakes that are going to be stacked and for those who need a strong buttercream due to hot weather or humidity. The high ratio in this recipe helps stabilize the buttercream.

The recipe I am posting here (click here for recipe) is a recipe that I use all the time for my personal cakes. It’s made with butter and no high ratio. It’s delicious and very easy to make. Usually I like recipes that crust so I can smooth it almost to look like fondant. This recipe doesn’t crust the same as the recipe listed above, but it crusts enough to be lightly smooth out with Viva Paper.
If you haven’t used this technique you can click here to watch Dark Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream tutorial about it.

I made a step by step Tutorial on this
recipe that is in a video on my website.
One benefit from this recipe is that you
can pipe beautiful borders with this recipe.
The cake itself can stay outside the
fridge for a few hours as long as you
leave it in a room with air conditioner.
If you live in a state that is colder than
Florida, you can probably use it on your stacked cakes. But make sure you do
a test before you use it on a cake for
a client. Just make sure to use
butter and not margarine when doing
the recipe.

I love to use this buttercream with my dark chocolate cake recipe. If you love chocolate, this is death by chocolate. I will work on the tutorial for the cake and post it soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the recipe just as much as I do. Look below for the link to the recipe and tutorial.

Click here or on the photo to go to the tutorial and the recipe.

Until next blog, ta ta!

Edna 🙂

Celebration Cupcakes- Tutorial

Posted on July 18, 2015 by Edna De la Cruz Design Me a Cake

Presione aqui para Español

I did this cupcake for the 4th of July and decided to film it while I was working
on it, (click here to watch the video). I love the design on this cupcake. I know many people will say, “that’s too much work for a cupcake”. Yeah, it has some work, and it would be a lot of work if you want to do all your cupcakes with the same design. The beauty about making cupcakes is that you can make them all in different designs. By doing some simple ones, your most complicated ones will shine and make a statement.
Here is the cupcake! I used the Strip Cutter to makes the stripes. An easy way to make perfect stripes fast.

I love JEM Cutters. They have a series of cutters that can be place in a foam they created so you can cut your pieces upside down. I love using the cutters this way because you can make sure that the cut is clean.

Here to the right is the cutter I used. You can click on the photo for more info on that tool.

To the left is the Roller Foam. As you can see it works with a lot of the delicate cutters from this company. Click on the photo for more info. I added to the cupcake some stars. As many of you might already know, I love plunger cutters. I move fast when I used them and that’s important when making cakes.

I painted the stars using my favorite gold highlighter.I did a few months ago a video that teaches how to use the Gold highlighter. You can click here to check the tutorial.

I took this photo while I was doing the roses. Miniature roses are fun to make. But it’s important to be able to move fast when doing them. You really don’t want to spend hours making a little tiny flower. I have 2 ways of doing these roses and in the video I just used no cutters. I will do and advanced tutorial on these flowers for those who want to learn to make them.