Cake! magazine by Australian Cake Decorating Network May 2015 | Page 18

Steps to create your Chalkboard cake
Making a chalkboard cake requires some pre planning and a bit of forward thinking. A lot of thought goes into, the
choice of your design, which can be anything from laurel wreaths and flowers to romantic quotes, the time taken in
drawing your design and finally applying your design to your cake. Factors which influence your design include the
number of tiers, size of tier and height of your cake. Your covered cake must also be level, otherwise the design will
look lopsided. Painting on a cake is quite nerve wracking and it takes a steady hand to paint on a vertical surface,
no matter how many cakes I paint my hand always shakes before I make the first stroke! If you have never painted
on a cake before, I suggest making the two hearts first and use the heart’s laurel and letter design as practice on a
flat surface (Step 15).

Step 3:

This step needs to be done
2-3 days before you start your
cake to allow the hearts to
dry completely. Add a small
amount of tylose or cmc
powder to your extra black
fondant and kneed well.

Step 2:
Roll out the fondant on a non stick mat to 4-5mm thick and
cut out 2-3 hearts. The beauty of the chalkboard cake is, if
you don’t have a non stick mat and need to use cornflour,
any white marks left by the cornflour on the black fondant
will add to the chalkboard effect!

Dip your bamboo skewer into
the sugar glue, dab/wipe off
excess. Insert into the point
of the heart lightly guiding the
skewer 3/4 of the way into the
middle of the heart with your
index finger and thumb, like
you would when inserting a
florist wire into a gum paste
flower petal. Set aside to dry.

Step 4:

Step 5:

Step 6:

Step 7:

While the hearts are drying,
bake, ganache and cover your
cake in black fondant and
allow to dry for 24hrs. In this
design I have made a 6” by 6”
tall (double barrel) cake, and
have covered it using the wrap
method.

Trace your chosen design
onto baking paper, making
sure the design is a little bit
smaller than the height of the
covered cake. For this cake,
the design I have created
is based on a quote from
Shakespeare.

Measure and cut the baking
paper to the size of the cake.

Flip the baking paper design
over and trace over the
underside with either a non
toxic pencil, non toxic chalk
or titanium dioxide. It’s best to
play around with these, to see
which you prefer. I have found
the one which has the best
result is the non toxic pencil
although it is quite hard to see
the grey on the black fondant,
so in this tutorial I have used
non toxic chalk so the design
image can be easily seen.

Step 1: