Saturday, May 31, 2008

Sotas? Sotas Anyone?

Course 3, Wedding Cakes!


I had survived the first two grueling courses. Hey, it's hard work learning not to lick the frosting off your fingers! I think everyone was sick of frosting after the second week, and those who buy my cakes need not fear me licking. I don't actually eat my cakes very often, I have played in the frosting too much.


For my last assignment, I chose to do a chocolate cake. Tip: chocolate cake is one of the worst for crumbs. Plus, the crumbs also show up the worst. Well, not thinking about this, I ended up with the worst crumbs all over the frosting of the wedding cake. PANIC!


Then I remembered a decorating technique. Very sophisticated, daring, bold... The Sotas! This "hard to master" (wink wink) technique consists of getting a very small round tip, thinning out your frosting, preferably with a tiny bit of karo syrup or piping gell, and squeezing the bag like crazy. All over the place, like a frosting pile of angel hair pasta. Seriously! I tell you what, it not only works fabulous, the teacher was impressed (as was the class), and you couldn't see a single crumb!

Finished, in all it's glory!

A top view. You can really see the amazing texture the sotas gives the cake. The flowers are petunias. Beautiful flowers, and actually quite easy to do.

Just a detail shot of the top. The petunias have stamens in the middle, if you look closely, just like the real flower. These are plastic balls on top of hard strings that you set in the flower before it dries.

Incidentaly, my son's speech therapist came to work with him the next day and saw the cake sitting on the table. She was so impressed that she bought the top of the cake from me to take to work for a friend's birthday! Less cake I had to eat...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. That's all I can say. Wow. I love the beautiful flowers that you put on your cakes. I'm just hoping we live near you when my kids get married so I can pay you to do the cakes :)

Stephanie said...

Great job on the sotas! It's great to have tricks like that up your sleeve. Your cakes look great! I look forward to seeing more.

Stephanie said...

By the way, you should allow anonymous comments on here so lots of people can tell you how beautiful your cakes are.

Michelle said...

Thank you! What I love about cakes is the total creative lisence. Sometimes you get people that have everything planned that they want, but they pay you so you do it. I could do these forever and not get tired, because they all come out different! And actually, wedding cakes are my favorite... :-)

Willford Family said...

I hope you are doing Karen's cake!!! I never realized how amazingly talented you are at these cakes! They are so pro!!!

Willford Family said...

Those flowers are so right on! The detail is so beautiful!