Cornelli Lace and Scroll Work... both make beautiful cakes

If you are a follower of my blog, you know that I have been decorating a long time... actually about 38 years. A technique that was popular several years ago was a technique called cornelli lace. I still use it now and then, but it hasn't quite been as popular as in years past. To make cornelli lace, you need a very fine round tip (I usually use #1), and you basically squiggle randomly over the entire area of the cake without lifting the tip and without touching or overlapping any of the lines. The result is a pretty lace look on the cake. It becomes very easy with practice, but is still a little time concsuming. The way to make this technique look the best is to use a very small # tip and squiggle close together and very dainty so it resembles lace. I think it looks prettiest "white on white," but I've also used dark chocolate (never black) on a different color background. 

Pretty cornelli lace white on white buttercream

Delicate cornelli lace with mini pink roses and 

CTR emblem make a perfect baptism cake 

 Dark chocolate cornelli lace on white buttercream heart

 White on white cornelli lace wedding cake

Another beautiful technique that I have used lately is small scroll work over an entire area of the cake. Unlike cornelli lace, I used a bit larger of a tip (#2) and the surface of the cake is done in free hand scrolls of different kinds. Some of the scrolls touch, others do not. Again, the scrolls need to be quite close together in order for the design to look pretty. This scroll work technique takes much longer than the cornelli lace, but the end result is stunning. 

Simple and elegant

Cinderella Wedding Cake

Yesterday, I catered a wedding for 150 at the Air Force Academy Milazzo Center. As part of that, I designed a wedding cake for 230, complete with a brunette Cinderella and Prince Charming cake topper and a glass slipper that we positioned on the bottom tier. The cake was done in fondant with the square tiers "quilted" and scroll work on the round tiers done in my Hershey's special dark "black" buttercream. Not only does it taste great, but it does not bleed on the icing or fondant underneath. Before discovering the special dark cocoa, I would have never even considered using black frosting on a wedding cake. The cake flavors were banana split, chocolate mint with chocolate mint mousse filling, lemon with cream cheese and fresh strawberries, and German chocolate with coconut pecan filling. The catered items included cream cheese chicken over rice, buttered green beans with almonds, homemade dinner rolls, Caesar salad, and a strawberry topiary tree. My friend, Nancy did a terrific job of completing the tree with the 300 doubled-dipped strawberries. It was huge hit with the guests!

Gumpaste flowers

After all these years, I'm finally learning how to make gumpaste flowers. So here is my first attempt...the last wedding cake I did had royal blue and white roses, and other flowers and was accented with chocolate brown satin ribbon. I also tried out my new pearl airbrush color on all the flowers, and it gave them all a beautiful glisten-look. 

Using new silicone fondant mat

My new fondant mat arrived just in time for me to use to decorate my wedding cake for this weekend. It worked like a charm...just as I had hoped. I applied a very thin coat of Crisco before rolling out the fondant and it worked perfectly. No more sticking fondant or cornstarch all over my kitchen.

It was so fun to deliver this cake and see that the scroll work matched the design on the tablecloth overlays and the color of the roses matched almost perfectly to the color of the other silk roses they had used in the decorations. I was very pleased with the results. I also delivered 3 specialty cakes along with the wedding cake...Shirley Temple cake, but used white chocolate shavings instead of curls for easier cutting, Luscious Lemon, and Chocolate Mint Mousse. The flavors of the wedding cake were chocolate mint with chocolate mint mousse filling, and yellow with cream cheese and fresh strawberries. The flowers were done in royal icing, and the red was airbrushed on, leaving the bottom of the roses white, so as not to bleed on the white cake.