Hi everyone....

First of all....I want to say that for the few weeks I have been here....my addiction has gotten progressively worse. But....I have learned so many things!!!
I have posted a few of my cakes and I have been asked by many of you how I did the lettering on some cakes....so I thought I would just cut and paste the reply I sent to someone this morning. I'm sure a lot of you know this stuff already...but here it is....

The letters on the LOVE and ELENI (my daughter) cakes were done with a fat round tip and royal icing that I piped onto parchment paper and then I let dry thouroughly.....On the LOVE, I then piped tiny dots all over....I used a little royal icing to make it all stand up. It looks nice but....It's hard to pipe neatly since it's all continuous....and I have a very steady hand.....also....it is very delicate....the letters were breaking in the middle and I repaired them with icing a couple of times. And, using the royal icing to stand them up looked a little bit sloppy....it's hard to see in the photos but there is basically a glob of icing under the words......they were also flat if you saw them from the back and I wasn't crazy about that either....

I have since learned that using gumpaste is much better. On my "KING" cake in my photos I made the lettering by rolling out long fat noodles from gumpaste and shaping them into letters. I let them dry at least overnight and then I painted them (Wilton spray in a can is great!). They broke in two places...but not in the middle of a letter...only at the "joints" and they were easily fixed with a dab of royal icing. So...I made a mistake and didn't think ahead...how to attach them....I wanted them to stand up like the others but I didn't want that glob of icing because this was for a paying client (my first!). So, I ended up just 'gluing' them with icing to the sides of the cake. The next time I do it, I will carefully insert a couple of wooden skewers into each word from the bottom before they dry so that I could easily stick them into any cake.


I hope this helps you guys....you have all been such sweethearts!

take care....

Thanks for the information. Appreciate you taking the time to let us all know the "secrets"

Leily

You are very creative!!! I am not sure I would have the patience! My lettering on cakes is not too good...I should really practice! Anyway...your cakes are beautiful. Thanks for sharing the tip.
traci

Also with the Gumpaste letters you could do them on wire...and that way you would be able to easily attach them to your cake. (I suppose it depends on application as well) Just a thought.

Great lettering, thanks for sharing!

Mixee

Thank you thank you thank you for the tips!!!! I'm going to try this!