The flurry of cake decorating competitions on television sparked a new rage and interest in cake decorating. In a tough economy, few can afford the expensive of having a custom cake made. As a result, many people began taking cake decorating classes in order to create their own wedding cakes or cakes for their daughter’s weddings and other family members. It takes many years to achieve the degree of professionalism and skill seen on television, despite the short amount of time it seems to take in the condensed footage. But, there are great tools on the market which will allow you to create a professional looking wedding cake with very little skill. One of them is the Silhouette cake cutter which is used to cut out edible designs.
How It Works
The electronic cake cutting machine was originally used by scrapbookers to cut different shapes out of paper. The machine was modified by wedding cake designer, Linda McClure, to work on cake decorating mediums. The machine resembles a printer, but includes a mat which allows the medium to be fed through the machine. When the medium passes through the machine, a needle cuts out the chosen shape, design, letter or words selected from either cartridge loaded into the machine or from software operated on the desktop computer.
The easiest medium, to work with, is edible paper which comes in a wide variety of colors. It requires no preparation before being loaded into the cutter. Let’s say you are decorating a 3 tier wedding cake and repeating the same design all around the sides of each tier. You would select the design you want, the size, and the number to cut. The edible paper would be cut with precision and need only be moistened on the back in order to stick to the cake.
Gum paste and fondant would require rolling out to a thin even sheet on the mat provided. Gum paste tends to work best when briefly placed in the freezer to allow for a cleaner cut. When the design is cut, a pointy tool, such as a scriber is used to separate the design from the excess and then attached to the cake with a dab of water.
Monograms
If you wanted to create a monogram of the wedding couple’s initials, you would simple use the touch screen on the electronic cake cutting machine to choose the letters and font you wanted to cut out. The monogram could be cut in any of the cake decorating mediums and either attached to the side of the cake or if gum paste, allowed to dry and placed standing up on the cake.
Designer Print Cut-Outs
If the wedding couple wanted a design created with a print that matched their wedding invitation, you could scan the invitation, print it out in edible ink on icing sheets and insert the icing sheets into the cutter to cut out any number of the designs with the print. This gives you an easy way to take a plain white cake and add color and an artistic design without having to have any artistic skills.
You can even cut out decorative borders which will be long strips that will wrap around the edges of the cake. With the Silhouette, you don’t have to design anything by hand. Once you get used to using the machine, the machine does everything for you and you only need place the decorations on the cake.
