Cakes and cupcakes

I actually made these about two weeks ago but haven't been able to get good pictures. I still haven't but I'm kinda fed up now so I'm just sticking with these pictures.



A chocolate cake with strawberries and whipped cream and a black forest cake. I'm not happy with the strawberries, I think they don't look realistic enough. Another problem I'm having is with the piped cream bits on the black forest cake. I used acrylic texture paste as I felt that liquid polymer clay was too sticky and while the texture paste held the piped cream shape wonderfully the colour was wrong. I used liquid clay to ice the rest of the cake and the piped cream bits are more of an off white. I'm going to try a trick I learned from another blog with some air dry clay and pva glue next, so we'll see how it goes. I've tried piping with this air dry clay before but only used water and it wouldn't stick to anything! I'm hoping that glue trick will work.

Another thing that bothers me is the cherries. They don't look real at all to me, and I think that partly that has to do with how round they are :P I'll put some indentations next time where the stalks are supposed to go. I bet that'll also help with the whole tiny balls rolling off and everywhere when I tried to get them in the oven.

I also made cupcakes for the first time.



I need to find something that will make a cupcake mold with those indentations to emulate cupcake cases. I used the end of a sushi soy sauce bottle, those cute ones that are shaped like fish. It was the only thing I had that satisfied me size wise. I also need more piping practice, I can't tell you how many times I wiped off the icing from those things! Or how much texture paste I wasted.I also ended up smearing texture paste all over the cupcake in the process btw.

Also, I took this pic for this thread: http://bsfforum.runboard.com/t2411

New stuff!

I received my nice shiny new PME 42C icing tip in the mail a few days ago. I also bought a couple of others, the teeny round tip in Adelaide and the bigger star tip at a newsagent's. (Of all the things to sell at what is essentially a stationery/book/magazine shop...)




I experimented with the tips and acrylic texture paste a few nights ago and I'm pleased with the tips. They make such pretty patterns! I'm less impressed by my piping skills though. I definitely need more practice. What I wasn't prepared for when using the tips was the absolute mess the texture paste made. I had to use my finger to squeeze out the paste from the piping tips, and if I didn't put enough paste in, nothing would come out, but if I put more, the paste would come out of the top of the tips as well as the bottom when I applied pressure :/ I wish there was some way I could pipe the paste using the tips and a syringe, I find it easier to control the amount of pressure using a syringe, and it'd probably be less messy too...




I also got some new crafting supplies. I'd been looking for a cheap source of microbeads in online, but haven't really found any that satisfied me. On the way back from Adelaide, I found a $3 bag of mixed beads in Go-lo, which is a kind of dollar shop franchise. The smallest beads are about 1mm, yay! No idea if they're glass or plastic though...

I found the stars in another dollar store franchise,and the teeny little stars are about 2mm across. They're like glitter, they stick to everything!

The stuff on the right is fake sugar and fake ice from etsy seller, MiniatureSweet. I figure the sugar would look just about right if I tried to make those yummy danish butter cookies *drools*




Also from MiniatureSweet, I got a bunch of plates, glasses, cutlery and paper doilies. The fruit canes were free gifts. They are all too big for 1:12 scale, and the glasses and bowls are too big even for 1:6. Well, that'll teach me for looking at the sale description and going "That's about right!" without checking the sizes on a ruler.




I got some Oyumaru molding material. I bought it because it looked like it could be a cheaper alternative to silicone. It's a Japanese reusable mold making material, and I'll do a write up about it once I have a chance to try it out. Hopefully within these few days. I also got a cute cupcake eraser as a free gift from the seller :D




And I finally ordered an oven thermometer online after searching all over town for one without success. And wouldn't you know it, the day the thermometer arrives, I find another, smaller one in the local kitchen shop. I'm sure it wasn't there the last few times I checked!