Thursday, February 26, 2015

February Meeting 2015-Basic Tool Kit

BASIC TOOL KIT
 Cake Pans: Several different sizes, even helpful to have two of the same as they cook more evenly.  Most widely used is the 8’’ or 20cm round pan.
 Cake Boards: come pre-cut, pre-wrapped, and ready to go!  Available in oodles of shapes,sizes and colors.  Get one several inches larger than your cake.  An 8″ cake deserves a 10″ board.
 Rolling pin: Large French pin and smaller one for small items. Good if it has the removable rubber rings which set the width of fondant you can roll out for consistency.
Mat: Non stick/silicon, some have markings on them to help measure size of cake or cutting out shapes
Smaller mat or board: Useful for working with small pieces of fondants. Can be made from plastic or soft foam.
Powder for dusting: Either Cornstarch or Potato Starch. Icing sugar stains darker fondants. Can also use Crisco or Kremalta to stop fondant sticking and to also soften it up.
Spatulas: also known as a Palette Knife. Useful for spreading ganache or buttercream on cakes and lifting fondant off the boards. Best to have different sizes and one flat one and one offset one.

Fondant smoother: polish over the fondant to get smooth finish.

Piping Bags: Disposable or reusable. Available in different sizes. Can also buy bags with two pouches for two-tone icing.

Couplers: Standard or large. Consists of a base and a ring. Worth having several in the kit.


Basic set of tips: Depending on what brand you use to what numbers are used. More in later workshop.

Cake Leveller or Serrated Knife: Cake leveller is useful as you get smoother cutting and can set the chosen height of each cake so that it is consistent.

Turntable: Very useful from ganaching the cake to piping decorating evenly. Helps get straight sides and smooth finish.

Cutters: Basic must haves are 5 piece rose cutter set, 3 size daisy cutters, 3 size rose calyces, blossom cutters and rose leave cutters.  You will find that your collection of cutters will grow as you purchase specific ones for new projects

Tools: Gum paste tools are recommended for creating realistic flowers and you should have at least have a ball tool, dog bone tool and veining tool. (good starting place is the Wilton Flower Cutter set)

Small scissors and Tweezers:  useful for snipping fondant to get feather texture. Tweezers useful for placing cachous balls.

Cutter: The wilton stitching fondant tool is helpful which has 3 different wheels.

Brushes: Different sizes for brushing on glue, luster or glitter.

Gel food colours: (Americolor) Better than using the water based ones at the grocery store, which affect the consistency of the fondant. Can use toothpicks to add colour and mix either using hands (recommend using gloves) or using standing mixer. Better yet buy the already coloured fondants like satin ice or bakels. Having the primary colours is good starting place

Fondant: Satin Ice or Bakels. Can also make your own.

Lustre/Dusting Powders: Useful for adding colour or sparkle to fondant or buttercream. Useful lustre is Hologram white glitter as it reflects and enhances the surrounding colours. Basic colours is having silver, gold, red, blue and green and yellow for flowers.

Edible writing pens: Useful for small details on fondant such as eyes. Best not to refrigerate as can cause them to dry out. Black is an essential.

Gum Tragacanth or CMC: Useful for adding into fondant to harden quicker and stronger. Can buy gum paste fondant but useful also to add to other colours.

Edible Glue: Can buy already made or make using vodka and Gum Tragacanth. Useful for sticking small bits of fondant together.

Spirits or vodka: To make glue or use to stick bits of fondant together. Can use to mix dusting powders in and make coloured paste. 

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