Oh Yay! Oh Drat!

Bought some toys yesterday! (Hand clapping):

Mostly to replace supplies that are getting old but I did get a few new things like a ribbon cutter and embosser and I'm going to try Wilton's pre-made sugarpaste since I'm only going to practicing flowers. Also, on a whim, bought Wilton's last 2 yearbooks I don't have. Replace my foam disk, fondant smoother, and, rolling pin. I think the silicone will work better than the wooden one.  Stopped buying petal dust at the metalics because I didn't like the harshness of the other colors. I think I'll get better colors online at www.sugarcraft.com.

I used to make up sugarpaste/gumpaste flowers in advance and dole them out when I felt like it, for free mostly and a few at a time, but I only have about a dozen cakes where they were actually ordered. Springfield wasn't that big of a market for them then and people weren't willing to pay for gumpaste yet. That was 15 years ago.  Either that or I simply wasn't tapped into the proper market niche.  Maybe a little of both. Nah, it was about being cheap.  Every time I read Diary of The Food Whore I see life flash before my eyes.  People WANT the best, they just don't want to pay you for your labor.  I can't tell you how many times brides have salivated over my flowers, sitting in my kitchen but then balked at pay a $1/stem (a freaking buck a stem) when I have hours, hours as in plural, worth of work in them but then they act like they're being ripped off to have to pay more than the base rate of $1.50 per person slice for the wedding cake.  Fifteen years ago, $1.50/person wasn't even expensive for wedding cake and you would have thought I was asking for live organs. 

But hey, that was then and this is now and now I get to do it for my own personal fun.  The flowers have nothing in them that will go bad so I'll store my projects and use them as I begin to bake for family and friends again (now that I'm out of school and have the time) when I have time. It's a win-win situation.

But I feel the need to stretch my decorator muscles again.  I'm happy with the skill I had but I don't want to lose it.  I definitely want to expand it. What I did was fine, it was okay as far as I went with it, but okay has never been good enough for me.  I want to learn to do it very well, really stretch to see what all I can accomplish if I really set my mind to it, and see where it takes me.  I'll probably start out with a couple of basics like roses and some fillers and expand. Dogwood is my favorite. That will definitely be on the list.

So that's the "Oh yay!" part. The "Oh drat!" part is I'm starting a work stretch so it's going to be a couple of weeks before I can start playing with my new toys.  Sigh.

Here's a couple of cakes from back then:

Comments

[Jeff]

Beautiful cakes!!

[Glenna]

Thanks, Jeff. Someday soon I'm going to post the one I made for my Nannie's 90th birthday but I wanted to show it off all by itself. I did gumpaste flowers of all the flowers in her garden. It was so fun.

[sher]

I'm so happy that you're going to (possibly) show us more about the whole gumpaste process. I've never done anything like that, so I would love to see what you can do. The cakes are beautiful!!!

[Pamela]

I adore buying new kitchen toys!!!

[Kate]

I loved the decorating classes we took in culinary school, they were so fun. In our last one I did a whole cake covered in gum paste flowers. LOTS of work, but did it ever elicit ooooh's and aaaah's. Your cakes are terrific, and it is definitely an art.

[gattina]

I have no idea all these gumpaste or sugarpaste things, I just see your cakes ... a work of art! Bravo!

[Rosie]

yeah - what is gum paste and why is it so fantastic? I am pretty ignorant when it comes to high end cake decorating...for me a little powdered sugar goes a long way...

[Glenna]

Okay, first sugarpaste is a powdered sugar based edible--basically--caked decorating clay like fondant I'm not going for a technical definition, more of a usable definition. It has a couple of extra ingredients that make the texture a little finer. A lot of people substitute fondant. You can mold extremely lifelike flowers out of it so it's really fun to create with. Most of the flowers you see on competition shows on the Food Network, or in magazines from Sylvia Weinstock or Collette Peters are sugarpaste. It's just a completely different technique. The flowers are molded and dried, rather than being piped with frosting, and since there are no degradable produts in them they last for months if stored properly.

And thanks for the compliments, everyone. I'll post some more cake pics over the next couple of weeks. I did okay, but I'd really like to step up my skills. And of course I'll post lots of step by step pics as I get back into actually doing working with it.