Things of Beauty Part Nine: Cakecessories

I’ve been very lax with my Things of Beauty (or ToB) posts, but I’m here to rectify that today. I have recently bought myself, or been bought, some very cool things to use in cake making and decorating, and I thought this would be a good time to share them all.

I’ll start with the gifts, both of which were for no reason and all the cooler for that. The pack of three cupcake cases you see in the middle there was a gift from a work colleague, who’d been given them and thought I might find them useful, since he’s not a baker. Occasionally he makes one of these though so I think that’s enough contribution to the fatness of the world for one man. The biggest cases at the bottom there are covered in little slogans, one of which is ‘cake is your friend’ which made me smile the most. The middle ones say ‘I heart cake’  but with a heart instead of the word ‘heart’, you know. The tiny cases at the top of the pack are decorated like hundreds and thousands, so I feel like they would be good for a truffle or other confectionary item. As you can tell, I’m really not sure what I’m going to make in these cases; is it just me that sometimes doesn’t want to use paper cases because then they’ll be gone? I’m sure it can’t just be me. Right? Right?? There’s a bit of birthday baking coming up for work next week, so I’ll use them then and I can repay the kindness of this gift with some delicious cake.

The other gift was from Mr and Mrs C, who are ever such a nice couple. We were meeting at Miss M’s house for dinner last night and they surprised us both with unnecessary but greatly appreciated presents. Mine were the other two cupcake cases you can see at the top of the picture. There are retro red and white polka-dot ones, which will be perfect for one of the birthdays that is coming up, and the others are Spaceboy ones which are so adorable I could just burst. I couldn’t get a good photo of the detail on those before the battery in my camera gave up, wheezing and begging for mercy, but here’s a link to various Spaceboy things you can buy on Amazon – he’s a bit of a phenomenon, is Spaceboy.

Let’s turn now to the items that I bought for myself, with future EXTREMELY SECRET projects in mind. First up are the three tubs of edible glitter, all the better to cover my entire house and all my belongings with. I really just wanted to buy one of every colour they had in the shop, and believe me, that was a lot of colours. However, I confined myself to these three; sparkly white (much like the one I already had), bronze and graphite hologram. That’s blue-black to you and me, and kind of matches my hair, for those of you who don’t know me personally. That’s right, under that pirate hat is a giant blue-black ‘fro. Not really. But maybe. I like to keep people guessing.

Across the front of those you’ll see my jet black icing pen, which has both a 2.5mm and a 0.5mm tip and is for fondant modelling details. It was also the perpetrator of the all-wrong writing on my mothers day cake this year, but that was the fault of the icing rather than the pen.

The tall can to the back of the collection of Things of Beauty is a silver icing spray, which I am excited about trying out. I’ve resisted spraying random food silver so far just for the fun of it, as the can isn’t huge and I want there to be room for error when I do come to use it on a whole cake. It’s like when my dad used to tell me off for playing with this torch we kept in the hall cupboard – if I’d run the batteries out playing with it and then it didn’t work in a power cut, that would be heavily ironic. He probably didn’t use those words. I also don’t know what games I was playing with a torch but I do remember being fascinated by it. It had a rubber casing, and you had to push the button in really hard to switch it on and off, and you could feel it really going CLUNK when you did. And also I was fascinated by how when you shine a torch against your fingers they light up red. I do not know why, and I don’t know why it never got old, either. Kept me out of trouble, anyway, and we never did have a power cut.

The plastic implement in the packet on the right is a sculpting tool, again for fondant modelling. I haven’t done much by way of modelling so far but I feel like I’m getting prepared to start, and as ever have a few ideas up my sleeve. The tool is a knife and scribing tool, because once you’ve sliced something up, sometimes you just have to write on it… I think the scribing point will come in handy for various fiddly tasks, though I imagine there will be some trial and error involved in finding the best way to work with fondant models.

The final ToB is my set of star shaped presses, which came in so handy when I was making those jam tarts for mothers day. They have plungers attached so that once you’ve cut the shape with a simple stamping action, you can press it back out again rather than trying to pry at the fondant, pastry or whatever else you’re stamping until the edges are all flattened and you have to start over again. I think they might also be good for embossing iced cakes, though I’m not sure if I’d be able to stamp in just a star outline or if it would lift the tar shapes right off the cake. Either way could be nicely effective, and I’m looking forward to trying it out.

Now that you’ve all seen all the bits and pieces I’ve bought to make amazing or at least interesting cakes, we just need to get some birthday parties organised. Even unbirthday parties would do. Any excuse to get out the glitter.