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Frustrated beyond belief!!!! - Page 2

post #16 of 23
2/16/12 at 4:05pm
These are excellent items to have:
The cake icer tip and an18 inch bag-no need to crumb coat.
Turntable and an offset spatula.
Straight edge-decorating comb or drywall spreader to smooth the top in one motion.
I use the washable decorating bags(10 and 12-inch) to decorate cakes, parchment bags for chocolate work and royal icing (18 inch parchment triangles)
An air brush.
Happy Baking and Decorating,
Chef Angie
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post #17 of 23
2/16/12 at 4:29pm
If you are anywhere near classes take as many as you can. Having someone guide you through the early stages will be invaluable. If you have a good teacher you'll learn to do things correctly, which will be invaluable later.
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post #18 of 23
2/16/12 at 4:49pm
As for filling a bag for piping: only fill it 1/2 full and use 10" bag. Anything bigger will hurt your hand! After you really master piping then you can go to larger bags.
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post #19 of 23
2/16/12 at 5:23pm
My first cakes were pathetic. My co-workers got to eat alot of my mistakes so they were really happy. Hang in there!!! thumbs_up.gif
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post #20 of 23
2/16/12 at 6:35pm
Ursula40 mentioned keeping notes. When I first started cakes as a hobby, I was only doing birthday cakes for my family. Because I would have long stretches when I wouldn't do any cakes, and because I would forget what had worked and what hadn't, I started keeping a cake journal in Word, with pictures, recipe names, cake sizes, methods, etc. It was a tremendous help while I was trying to weed through so many variables to come up with what worked for me. Hope that helps! Good luck!
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post #21 of 23
2/16/12 at 7:01pm
I feel your frustration. I am so inspired by the beautiful cakes here on CC, and my attempts at them are rather pitiful. BUT everyone started as a beginner, and everyone had failures before successes. In the end it is cake and icing and it tastes good no matter how it looks. I agree with the suggestion to write everything down. I keep a binder of my recipes with lots of annotations after I have tried them, I also take pictures of every thing I bake, the good and the bad, with notes as to flavors and future improvements.
Shaq said he practiced thousands of times to get his signature slam dunk perfected. It all takes practice, (and lots of good neighbors to eat the failures!). icon_smile.gif
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post #22 of 23
2/18/12 at 1:15pm
I am glad I am not the only one who feels like that. I have been decorating cakes for 12 months now so am fairly new and initially mine were a disaster but one thing I have learnt is that you need to do things over and over again to get them right, especially icing mine kept breaking and had makes all over it far from the nice polished finish of professional cakes.

I went on a basics course and they taught me that it broke and started to crack for one of three reasons: 1) fondant was too thick 2) fondant was too thin and 3) too much icing sugar on the surface and rolling pin.

The older cake makers will probably correct me if I am wrong but the reason your cakes fall apart could be to do with the mixture you use, the batter may not be very stiff (more like a cupcake batter rather than Madeira sponge).

Hope this helps and remember when you are struggling and frustrated there are a million other cake decorators new and experienced doing the same thing.
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post #23 of 23
2/19/12 at 2:49am
LOL, I have been decorating since I was a kid and I still have bad days. It happens to the best of us and the worst of us LOL. Every now and then you will see posts on here where people (even pros!) just have bad cake days. It happens. Then there are times when the heavens open up and all is right with the cake world, and sometimes you are even surprised at how easy something went.

To fill a decorating bag, use a glass or just fold the cuff over your hand while you fill. And make sure you don't overfill. That's the easiest way to keep it from getting messy. I actually like using the bigger decorating bags because I can get a lot of icing in and minimize my re-fills.

For your crumb issue, if your recipe forgiving you can try adding an extra egg white to bind up the crumb a bit more. I say egg white only because egg whites are binders and the yolks provide additional fat and moisture which it sounds like you don't need.

Good luck and don't give up!

The Dude abides.

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The Dude abides.

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