American Baker in Germany

I've been thinking about all the things that have been cancelled because of Covid19 and I think the saddest is the weddings. So much expense, planning, excitement... gone. Now, I know most of you who had to reschedule your wedding will eventually have them. But I don't know how much money you would have lost because of the cancellation of your first planned wedding. So, I thought some of you might need to save money on your future wedding. So, I thought I would share with you a way you could make your own wedding cake out of a regular, plain sheet cake. I started out with a frosted sheet cake. You can frost it yourself or buy it frosted.  Then I thought I would use all of these tips, but I only ended up using the small round tip and the medium star tip. The petal tip and leaf tip weren't needed for this design.  Using a skewer, I traced two interlocking hearts as well as the monograms of the couple. In this case, T and C.  Then I traced over the letters with ...

I've been asked before what the difference is between fondant and gum paste. Let me just explain a tiny bit. Well, both fondant and gum paste are made almost purely of sugar. They taste almost exactly the same. So why do we specify when we use fondant and when we use gum paste? Is it just chance? Here are the two side by side. Gum paste on the left, fondant on the right. Gum paste is harder, stiffer, than fondant. You can actually already see it. Fondant has signs of tearing. Gum paste tends to break apart in chunks.  Let's start with the gum paste. Gum paste is basically nothing but fondant with some stiffening agents in it that make it firmer and take less time to dry. In fact, you can add tylos powder to fondant (also known as CMC) and you will get a substance similar to gum paste.  You can roll out gum paste, but it is significantly harder to roll out than fondant, so it is harder to get as thin as fondant.  The circles I cut out first and then the letter...

I thought it was time to finally say thank you to all the medical personnel who work so hard to keep us healthy. This is a new recipe, coming soon, of lemon cake and lemon American buttercream. I stack and frost the cake.  Then frost it again.  Then I cover the cake in white fondant.  Next, I rolled out a thick strip of white fondant.  And cut them into an even strip.  I wrapped the strip around the cake in a c shape with one edge standing on edge to make it into a collar shape.  Then I rolled out a thinner strip of white and cut one edge to be about the same angle as the collar.  And laid it along the middle of the cake and cut it flush with the bottom edge.  I cut out some thick circles of white fondant and pressed a smaller circle into the middle of them as well as a couple tiny circles in the middle to make buttons.  Then I placed them along the white coat.  Then I cut out a simple, red cross. ...