I'm chef Susie with us Cathy a welcome to our live session this morning and today we're going to be doing something a little bit different we're going to be doing a small tiered cake and I'm going to show you guys how to assemble the chaired cake and what we're going to be doing is we're going to be putting a little bit of support and the cake because with the chaired cake when you stack tiered cakes one cake on top of the other usually it's cool and it looks just fine and if you don't put any support in it once it sits out for a little bit and starts to warm you could have some sinking and some kind of oozing if you have some mousse or some fruit filling you can kind of end up pressing those out and you really need to stabilize your cake and put some support in the cake to ensure that this doesn't happen okay so I've got some small layers here I covered them earlier with a little bit of fondant we showed that one of our session so we already know how to do that I've got a nine-inch and if I mentioned usually when I'm stacking cakes I allow about a three or four inch difference so I'm going from the nine to the five and this is going to give me a Ledge to work on on the cake a little bit and if you're looking for the cake to be more not so much of a ledge and kind of more straight up and just use layers that are closer in size okay so it really depends on your style and what you're looking for so typically and when I do wedding cakes I'll do like a 16 or 12 and an 8 and then I have those four inches a little bit of room to work on on the border okay it's like gives you about almost two inches on each side okay so we are going to start sticking the cake up okay so like I said I've got these layers that are finished and this layer our bottom layer I've got it just on a board and this is just for moving it around in and out of the refrigerator and there is a cake board underneath the cake okay guys so this is a little shaggy you can see the ends a little bit but we're going to be covering this with a border but you want a board and you it should be cut the size of the cake you don't want a lot sticking out okay so you can easily clean that up with a boarder okay so let's talk about what we're gonna put our cake on okay so for this cake it's a small cake not a super lot of weight I have these corrugated boards and they're laminated they're pretty strong I've got two of them together something like this is fine a tray works well too with larger tiered cakes you'll see stands sometimes very decorative stands for wedding cakes but make sure that you're putting your cake on something strong for a larger cake like a 16 12 and an eighth wedding cake that I mentioned you would not want to put that on like two corrugated boards together like this it's not strong enough once the cake sits in the fridge - these boards are going to start collecting moisture and they're gonna soften - so pretty strong now kick me seem okay when you put it on there but that's not a good idea so like I said decorative cake stands for tiered cakes and what you can also do is get a piece of wood from the hardware store they'll cut it for you and I'll usually put my round cakes ina square board I'll cover it with some foil with some you know gold or silver foil or even some fabric so fabric is a great way to complement your cake and if you find like a really cool fabric that matches some ribbon or the color on the cake it's only going to add some more texture and really give it a unique very stylish customized appearance okay so keep this in mind so what we're gonna be doing is I'm just gonna pick the cake up and put it on the board but this is smooth so I'm gonna make it a little tacky with a little bit of icing okay guys so what you can do is you can you know put a little bit of icing or you can also use a little bit of corn syrup or glucose but don't put it like a puddle of corn syrup or glucose um you just want enough where it's tacky so what I'll usually do is I'll sprinkle a little bit on sometimes they keep a squeeze bottle of corn syrup or glucose in the kitchen just first hearing cakes on board so I'll squeeze a little bit on and then I'll kind of Pat my hand around so it's tacky you don't want a puddle of corns here for glucose because that's gonna have the opposite effect it's going to cause the cake to slide so I want something a little tacky to put your cake I like I said a little icing a little bit of glucose or a little bit of corn syrup is just fine okay guys so like I said the cake itself is on a border of cake board and it's been trimmed and a little shaggy here but we're gonna put a border around here so I won't show up at all so you don't want you know quarter inch sticking out from your cake the board is gonna make it look a little sloppy okay so like I said just a little shaggy but we'll put a little border on it and we'll clean it up and it'll be real nice okay all right so take your time put it on the board in the center the best that you can you don't have to measure you don't have to get out your school compass but you know take a look you don't want it off to one side do you want it to be on there pretty straight I've got a little bit of icing here I always keep clean damp towel on the table for cleaning up little things like this okay so typically I'm gonna support my cakes with Dahle rods and you can use a lot of different things you can buy plastic supports at cake stores and I've seen them like kind of like dowel rods or I've seen them larger and Hollow so my Strauss worked to you could you input one straw but you could put three straws together so from the drinks and from your local fast-food place you could grab handfuls straws and you can use three together okay so what you want to do is you're gonna trim whatever you're using so it's the height of the cake okay so dowel rods to trim them I usually use something like this and this is you know it's a garden tool and it's a good for cutting little branches and stuff so you want should be strong enough you little utility nice work well to some people use the little saws but I like to use these little handheld things so this one isn't quite as strong as and when the usually used but if you're buying a utility hand a little tremor like this make sure that it's four branches okay so it's strong enough because this one is a little hard for me to push on okay so next Li we're going to measure the height so what you can do is you can kind of measure the side and market or you can actually put your dial into the cake which is what I'm gonna do and I've got a little pencil handy so what I'm going to do is for this cake I'm gonna put three supports in here so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna mark a little bit where I'm gonna put them and three is plenty for a small cake like this this one going on so when you do larger cakes you know you would probably do maybe one two three four and then one in the center five so the larger the cake the more this going on top the more support you're going to need okay guys so let's go ahead and measure one so I usually just measure one and then I kind of cut the others the same size okay so you can if you're doing a buttercream cake just by jiggling it you'll get a little line of buttercream and that's fine since we don't have that I'm going to do a little mark with my pencil okay all right okay so I've got my little pencil mark and I'm gonna go ahead and cut this and like I said this is not my favorite cutter so on sometimes these fly around a little bit so I may cover it with at all okay so what you can do is you know just cut on the line or as close to it as you can get don't use regular scissors for this guy it's okay so like I said this is uh these are not my favorite she are just too used but as you can see they worked out just fine so I've got one and then what I'll do is I'll make two more the exact same size marking it with my pencil okay and keep in mind you know if you're working as a pastry chef in a restaurant or a hotel usually you know the cakes are cut I'm premises so make sure that you're saving these dolls that you cut and I usually keep them in a little basket in the kitchen and then sometimes you get lucky they're the same size for your next cakes if you're that consistent okay so let's go ahead and give this guy a trim be careful guys watch your fingers you know safety always comes first okay so I put a little towel over the end so it wouldn't fly around because with my like BAM right into the cake right big done okay so I'm once I cut these I always sand them a little bit with some sanding paper okay and you know the little handheld tool this hand paper just from the hardware store so hardware stores are great places you find lots of things for baking at reasonable prices okay so what I'm doing is I'm just standing a little bit especially those Cheyenne's because I don't want to get any slivers in my cake okay so you can kind of see how much sanding you'll need so you kind of smooth these down a little bit and sometimes you'll have a little bit of splintering if your tool gets a little bit if it's not as sharp as it was when you first started and that's okay that's what sandpapers for okay guys alright so we have three identical dowel rods what I'm going to do since I sanded and splintered on my rinse these off and hang on for one second I'll be right back okay okay so I gave them a quick rinse in the sink and then we are ready to put them on the cake alright okay so ENGOs doll right into the cake perfect it's the level of the cake okay guys sometimes you know maybe your cake is not going to be the same height on each side so you start peeking up a little bit this one is a little bit more but I cut them all the same so the cake is going to have a very flat surface to go on okay this is fondant so I'm going to put the cake a right on top and I'll put a little a little bit of icing to help with the sticking so if you you know if you're doing a buttercream cake maybe you want to have a board and put that down first and then put a little bit of hissing and then the icing on the board and then put your cake on top just because when someone goes to disassemble the cake it might be a little bit easier if there's another board here but fine then cakes always Prime's just right on top okay so here we go so you want to make sure that we're getting it in the center I like to use a little offset spatulas for things like this and we have our assembled tiered cake what's nice about fondant is you can move it around a little bit because you've got that smooth surface so if you had buttercream couldn't kind of nudge it around like I just did that's when that little cake circle on there would come in handy okay guys so keep in mind you know as long as your cake is mostly straight it's not leaning a lot don't worry about it if it's a little bit we are the only ones that notice these things okay I can guarantee you okay so next ly I'm going to put the cake up on the cake we own we're gonna go ahead and do some decorations but you guys are let me know if you have any questions okay alright so that's kind of this little plastic cake wheel that works out just fine for my larger cakes I would not use this I would use my metal a little bit sturdier cake wheel so cake is assembled it's on the wheel and it is ready to be decorated okay so let's have a little fun let's go ahead and make a little bit of a border all right cleaning as we go right all right good good okay so I'm just doing a little bit of shelling here on the border just to kind of finish this off I'll get you my border before I do any of my side decorations because I don't I wouldn't want to do my border up here after I've got my side decorations because I could disturb them okay so I'm just doing a little bit of shelling can you guys see this okay let me know if you need me to move but you'll see the beading come around as I go you can do anything any kind of tip whatever you like you just want to kind of finish this bottom if you're going for a non border look then you've got to clean the bottom up a little bit more I have so mine's a little shaggy so I wasn't worried you could put a fabric ribbon around the bottom and that's going to cover that as well and those are nice too because you know a variety of colors from the fabric store and you could even find some fabric to put on your board make it very customized okay so a little bit of shell beading and then we'll go ahead and put some side decorations and then we will be almost done with our little tiered cake so you guys can do it okay make sure that you're supporting your cakes in some way like I said this was just a little guy on top but you still need something to to hold the weight because once the cake gets warm its gonna sag and you don't want that to happen like you go and drop off a beautiful wedding cake and then they call you like ate the cake is like looking like it's gonna fall over like it had one too many glass of champagne okay alright guys okay so we've got a border you can do you know any tip any size you mind it more delicate you don't want a border in some way okay so next Lee we are going to take a little bit of icing I got a little bit of royal icing so we're gonna do a little bit of stringing on the cake okay so what we're gonna do is we're gonna section it off okay Nana do your sections before you start doing your decoration so you know where you're starting and where you're finishing okay okay so this little guy on top I'm dividing him into six so these little you know little kind of icing marks or just kind of kind of be covered when we start decorating and it went a little crooked you could also mark with you know a cheese pick something west less obvious all right so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna follow the pattern in the bottom of the cake all right well maybe I'm not okay I'm gonna go I had a change of heart which I have a tendency did you okay so the bottom I'm going to divide this one into eight okay so um the six was just a little too wide for me for my little bit of decoration that I'm doing okay so I divided it in half and then I'm dividing each half in four okay so it doesn't have to be perfect but you want some sort of guide some sort of foundation okay so I would like to do serene work and this is um royal icing and this is just a combination of powdered sugar and egg whites you'll see a lot of different formulas out there something acidic some cream it's harder some lemon juice is really gonna help the drying factor and it's really going to help kinda firm it up - okay so you mix the powdered sugar and egg whites until they resemble cheese paste and then you whip it up until it's light so this is a basic royal icing so I like to do the string work which is you know oops what's nice about your fondant cake too is you can cut off and start again okay so realizing dry is very hard and have a little bit of hardness on the bottom of the bag there okay so let's go ahead and have a little bit of fun here with some decoration so a little bit of stringing is kind of fun if you can see what I'm doing and I like doing this a little bit of a style where it's kind of almost random okay so you can kind of see that's a little bit of stringing but it's not very neat and tidy it's a little randomized so I kind of like this look okay so I'm doing just you know four of each and they're overlapping a little bit and it's not as defined as some string work that you will okay all right so it's kind of like a string a little bit guys sitting kind of like pulling it out and then I'm just kind of letting it land on the cake but make sure that you're secure and where you're starting so this is a great way to get started with string work because it's a it's not everything doesn't exactly have a place where it needs to go because you're doing some overlapping and that's kind of a fun look so this is a good place to start to practising string work because you're not committed to a different design okay guys so just having a lot of little fun here what you want to try to do and maybe I'm not doing this so well because I am talking just try to make sure that you're going down the same amount on all these so they look like there is a pattern but you could even be kind of randomized with that too okay so let's go ahead and do the bottom so um when you're doing something like this okay guys make sure that you're not filling your bag too much you're gonna have a lot more control I'm using a little ton inch bag and I've just got it filled enough where it's in my hand so I've used a lot already but the bag was never really really full I'm gonna have a lot more control this is a smaller tip if you're just starting to decorate start out with some larger tips if you're having some shaking start out with some larger tips doing some different kind of decoration before you do this one and be sure that you're not over filling your bag really icing is a little on the stiff side okay so which realizing keep it small in the bag the amount that you're doing okay so um like I said have a little fun with this string work and do a little overlapping just kind of let your strings drag and kind of land where they go okay I think you guys are gonna like this look it's kind of a fun little cake and we did it pretty fast you know I've only got like four more to go and then we're done and then we'll fit a little bit of a finishing touch on the cake okay but be sure to let me know if you have any questions everyone's being so quiet hey I kind of go around here a little bit more so you can kind of see it stringing okay see I'm starting I'm securing on the end then I'm just kind of you know where it's landing it's overlapped I'm doing four strands on each that's my consistency but something like this it can kind of be you know whatever you want it to be all right so this is you know cake that I've made a lot as like a larger wedding cake and it's something that I really like and I've had pretty good luck with it I kind of start your string out on the end make sure it's secure just kind of let it fall where it goes and then secure it on the end okay so let's go ahead and finish off these ends okay and then put a little bit extra icing on them okay cuz I've got some loops that I made earlier so I want something to stick the loops in okay so I took the same royal icing the same small tip this is just a small round tip okay guys so depending on where you buy your tips you know the numbers are going to kind of be different like a little round tip there okay alright guys so let's go ahead and get some loops on here that I made earlier okay so what I did is I just pipe some loops with the royal icing using the same tip and then I just let them dry overnight and now I'm just unsticking them on the trace so we're gonna put these on the cake and they're gonna look really cute and they're gonna give it some texture and some negative space and a little bit of a finishing touch so this shoe is kind of you know randomized the whole cake is a little bit on the random side which is what I like about it so much so be sure to you know message us and let us know if you like the cake and if you have any questions so I'm just loosening these a little bit a little stock because they kind of dried to the cake a little bit I mean to the parchment a little bit so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna kind of stick some of these loops in the cake okay and you can make you know smaller loops or larger loops or however you like them and I think I'm gonna maybe we'll put put about four in each little section okay you know more or less whatever you like what do you think pretty okay let me go around keep going let me know if you guys have any questions so I'm just you know I have a little of icing a little bit of icing a little pile there and I'm just kind of sticking them into the cake and no real pattern I'm just kind of you know join it as I go along they're delicate make extras because they've been known to break along the way and what I do is I stay away from you know too many big ones and I put some little ones in there so maybe take this size I might make them a little bit smaller next time what do you think all right guys okay so cake is looking pretty huh that's kind of a neat look very finished so loops are giving it the finishing touch okay so what do you guys think about the top it looks a little plain up there we can leave it plain or you know maybe if it's for us a friend or customer they may have you know one of those cute wedding cake toppers with the bride in the groom sometimes they have him doing such funny things Laura we can put a little bit of fresh flour so I've got some flowers what we're gonna do is we're gonna put a little bit of fresh flower soon as we finished loops okay so guys be sure that you're stabilizing your cake before you're stacking any cakes on top whether you're using dowel rods as I showed you today or if you're using you know plastic supports or even like I said straws work well too okay so it's the top is a little bit delicate so I've switched over to three loops okay and then I'll go ahead and put some flowers on the top and then we'll be done with our little cakes so I just want to show you guys how to put flowers on top of the cake what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a little bit of icing in the center I've got some roses and I've got some little purple flowers I'm not sure what they are and some little white moms so a little flower in the center so oftentimes Brides will ask for flowers for their Center their chopper for their cake which is ok it usually matches what's in the bouquets keep in mind two guys if you were using something like roses and the roses that I had today weren't quite open too much and you know how you put flowers in the refrigerator and this really helps you know slow down there it's so down there you know their life cycle makes them last longer well what you can do if your roses aren't quite open enough you can put them in some warm water which is that exact opposite that'll have them nice and open for your cake okay so let's go ahead and put a few flowers on here and we will finish our cake off and then we're gonna say our goodbyes so if you have any questions be sure to let me know okay alright guys so I just put a little bit of icing here as a foundation and I've got some really pretty like little tea roses here so I'm just kind of snipping them I always say have a scissors in your kitchen guys you need these as pastry chefs and these are pretty beautiful some kind of snip in these and you could put some around the bottom too if you want so you know pretty much whatever you want to do I've got a couple of these little white moms we'll put a couple of these in here too for a little bit of texture a little bit of filler and like I said we're getting ready to say our goodbyes so please please let me know if you have any questions before we take off okay so I've got a nice little variety here is looking very summery so I think that um fresh flowers on cakes are trending right now so you may be getting some orders so what we're gonna do is you know put a couple of these little mom guys in here alright okay this gives us nice little foundation itself a little bit of purple so what do you do this you know I cut them kind of small this is a little cake topper so we might you know we don't want big stems sir Oh where's my up there I am okay so I'm you know colors and type with ours is pretty limitless okay so just kind of you know watch what you're doing and you know do what you like okay then you have some pretty color a nice finishing touch on the cake too and you know it's super beautiful to guys if you you know put rose petals on the table around the flower so it looks beautiful too alright okay what do you think that's our finished cake looks Peter pretty beautiful for a Tuesday morning huh all right thanks so much for coming and we'll see you guys next time okay good bye