The Busy Girls Guide to Cake Decorating Read Online Free PDF Page A

paint, which can be applied with a brush. Liquid colours, available in supermarkets, are far less concentrated in colour and quickly change the consistency of sugarpaste or royal icing and so are best avoided.
    Beware when needing strength in royal icing for line and lace work – gel paste colours contain glycerine, which can weaken the icing, so consider using a powder in this instance. A little gum tragacanth (often known as ‘gum trag’) can be beaten into royal icing to strengthen it. Use the chart, right, to mix specific colours.
Colour mixing
Colour
Combination (in parts)
Red-orange
1 red + 3 orange
Baby pink
1 ⁄ 2 pink
Dusky pink
1 pink + 1 ⁄ 2 brown
Bright pink
3 pink
Pinky red
1 red + 1 pink
Fuchsia
1 purple + 2 pink
Soft yellow
1 yellow + 1 ⁄ 2 orange
Yellow orange
2 yellow + 2 orange
Flesh
1 ⁄ 2 pink + 1 ⁄ 2 yellow
Salmon
1 pink + 1 orange
Lime
2 green + 4 yellow
Sage
2 green + 1 brown
Leaf
4 green +1 brown + 1 ⁄ 2 blue
Teal
1 green + 1 blue
Baby blue
1 blue
Bright blue
3 blue
Dark blue
5 blue + 4 purple
Violet
1 blue + 1 purple
Mauve
1 ⁄ 2 purple + 1 ⁄ 2 pink
Lilac
1 purple
Deep purple
3 purple
The colour wheel
    Many varied shades of sugarpaste can be achieved using just the three primary colours at the centre of the wheel, red, yellow and blue. Mixing equal amounts of each gel paste colour will create the colours within the middle ring. To create the shades in the outer ring, add an additional amount of one of the primary colours e.g. mixing a little blue with a lot of yellow will create a lime green colour.

How to colour sugarpaste (rolled fondant)
    1 Knead white sugarpaste till soft and pliable on a work surface lightly dusted with icing (confectioners’) sugar.
    2 Form into a sausage shape and flatten. Using a cocktail stick (toothpick), add the gel paste colour to the centre of the flattened sugarpaste.

    3 Pinch together the edges of the sugarpaste to seal the gel inside. Roll the sausage between your hands to begin to spread the gel from the middle out through the sausage. Keep folding the sausage to bury the colour into the middle again. Repeat until the colour is spread evenly through the sugarpaste.

    4 Wrap in cling film (plastic wrap) and allow the colour to develop. Colour intensifies over a period of ten minutes or so. Unwrap and knead gently, checking that the colour is even. Your coloured sugarpaste is now ready to be used.
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TIP
    Alternatively you can wear latex gloves and knead the colour through the sugarpaste, but be careful not to stain your work surface.
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Stacking a tiered cake
    To support the top tier of a stacked cake and to stop it sinking into the lower layer and ruining all your decorating work, you will need to dowel the cake. To do this you will need four cake dowels. These come in a variety of forms but by far the best (and quickest) are plastic dowels.

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    â€œRemember to tell whoever the cake is for that the bottom tier contains plastic dowels so that they can be removed before serving!”
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    1 Take the bottom tier of your cake, ready covered and mounted on its board. Insert four dowels, equally spaced vertically down through the sugarpaste (rolled fondant) to the board. The position of the dowels needs to stay within the area of the smaller tier above so that they will not be seen.

    2 Mark the dowels with a pen level with the surface of the sugarpaste.

    3 Remove each dowel and lay side by side. With the ends of the dowels aligned, tape them together using a piece of masking tape. You will see that the marks are not all level, you need to work to the highest mark. This ensures that the tier will sit level and not wonky. Remark all the dowels to the same level.

    4 Un-tape the dowels. Take a sharp knife and score on the marked position.

    5 Holding each dowel in turn firmly between your two hands, ‘snap’ the dowels to the correct length. The snapping method is preferable to using a hacksaw or