Cake! magazine by Australian Cake Decorating Network May 2015 | Página 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: