Things I Have Learnt

I'm pretty much upto date now, but with lots more cakes planned.  So here is the stuff I have learnt so far (some of it may seem obvious, but I am a beginner)

If you want to bake a cake with a flat top, wrap a wet towel around the tin as it cooks.  This prevents the cake from cooking faster at the sides than in the middle, but you need to cook a little longer than usual.

When the cake is cooked, leave it in the tin until the tin has cooked enough to handle.  The cake will contract and be easier to remove from the tin.  Also grease and flour the tin, or add a lining so that the cake does not stick to the tin on remval.

When removing cupcakes papers from the stack (i.e. the box you buy them in) remove the papers from the bottom of the stack.  This stops them getting stretched or pulled out of shape.

There are several reasons that a cake doesn't rise, the most common being that the cake tin is too big.

Let each stage of the cake decorating cool before carrying on to the next part.  If you don't you'll make a mess.

To transfer a simple picture to fondant icing, simple draw it on baking paper and using a pin, make the outline through the paper on to the cake.

To use food colouring to paint fondant, the fondant needs to dry and the colouring needs to be mixed with water. 

When colouring anything, use a cocktail stick and add a tiny bit of colour at a time.

A little lemon flavouring in a sponge is rather yummy

Check the size of cake tins being sold from China on ebay and measure this.  I bought a 3" cake tin without even stopping to convert this to cm.

Don't try and make too many cupcakes from one mix

Don't add too much fondant to a cake

Experiment with recipies for cake and butter icing until you find one that suits you.  There are lots of different varieties that call for different ingredients, such as vinegar, salt, baking powder, corn flour and custard powder.  You just have to find what suits you the best.

It's much easier to paint fondant after it has been shaped, rather than colour it first.

To test if a cake is ready, puch gently on the top.  If it springs back into place it is ready.  This is better than using a cocktail stick as they leave holes in your cake.

Don't add food colouring to shortbread.  It does something funny to the fix and makes it hard to knead and cut.

To make the large swirls on top of cupcakes like they get in a shop you need a large piping nozzle.  This is larger than any of the ones that come in the sets that you can buy in Tesco, Asda etc.

Don't try writing on fondant with the edible pens until the fondant has been in the fridge a while.