Leftover Cake & Piping Tips

Have you ever been making a cake and had cake batter left over? Well instead of over filling your pans just make a little cake or a couple cupcakes! Over-filled cakes never have a happy ending.This will also help you with your leftover icing. This method will work a lot better than eating it by the spoon. Not that i do that though.... Well this Easter after i was making my cake (post soon to come just waiting on pictures to be delivered, i forgot to take pictures for you guys!) I had some left over frosting and cake batter so i made a little 6 inch cake and practiced my piping skills. Which by the way aren't that great, which is why i practice! The old saying Practice Makes Perfect really comes into play here because unless you have been born with awesome amazing piping skills, unfortunately  most of us aren't, practicing when ever you get the chance really helps. Here are some tips to help you if your having trouble:

1. Make sure your icing isn't too stiff, if it is it will really hurt your hand and make it hard to push out of the bag. Especially with smaller tips.
2. Every once and a while cool down you icing in the fridge because the heat from your hand will make it too thin and it won't hold it's shape.
3. Make sure your icing doesn't have any chunks in it, if there are make sure you have a toothpick near by to clean out the tip, whenever you feel it getting harder to get the icing out. If you don't clear the tip you run a high risk of exploding you bag. Ya it appended to me. Not good
4. If you find that  your icing is really airy with lots of air bubbles, take a spatula and calm down the icing by gently stirring and folding it till nice and smooth. This happens a lot with royal and butter cream icing I find.
5. Always make sure your tip is clean, this will keep your piping looking clean and sharp.

Fondant & Whipped Cream Recipe

Now normally covering cakes in fondant isn't that hard, you dirty ice your cake in butter cream then cover it in fondant. When iced it in whipped cream I didn't think there would be a problem since I was just covering it in fondant anyways. Although little did I know that whipped cream and fondant don't mix.

With butter cream in between the fondant and cake it acts as glue of sorts because it is thick and can hold its weight. But with whipped cream even though it holds it shape OK it's way to light to hold the fondant. With my cake all the whipped cream slid off the cake and started oozing out the sides. Ya not pretty :P I did my best to fix it but with the cake always moving and shifting it was quite difficult. I had to take things out of my design and add new concepts in just to hold the cake somewhat together!

But lesson learned now. Attention everyone: DO NOT USE WHIPPED CREAM IF YOU PLAN TO COVER YOUR CAKE IN FONDANT! But as you can see from my top tier fondant works really well if you use butter cream. Even cream cheese icing works better see here.

Whipped cream isn't all that bad though it is great on ice cream, pancakes, as a filling, and great on pie! So don't ever be intimidated by whipped cream. Here's my recipe for homemade whipped cream.

Whipped Cream

Yield about 4 cups

2 cups whipping cream
4 tbsp icing sugar


Place whipping cream and icing sugar in a bowl of a stand mixer and beat on high speed until light and airy like whipped cream.

Marshmallow Fondant

1 bag of mini marshmallows
500g icing sugar
1 cup vegtable shortning (Crisco)
 1 tbsp water

Clear a big work space for your fondant like a counter top or table

Throughly grease your workspace and a big microwavable safe bowl

Place marshmallows and water in the bowl

Mix the water and marshmallows together

Dump all the icing sugar onto the greased work space

Microwave the arshmallows and water on high for 30 secs and stir

Zap marshmallows and water in 15 sec intervals until all melted stirring in between

Grease your hands and beware this gets very messy

Pour melted marshmallows onto the icing sugar and knead until the icing sugar stops sticking to the fondant.

In the beggining it will seem like it's not working but keep at it and you'll make your fondant.

Store in a air tight container wrapped in plastic wrap.