Easy Bow Tutorial

Finally, as promised, my bow tutorial.
Just in time for all those holiday package cakes.

Since my last post I finally went out and bought a pasta roller.
Why didn't I do that sooner ?
Now all of my fondant is a perfect thickness and oh so easy to roll out.
This only works for rolling fondant for accents , not to cover cakes but it's amazing how much time and fondant it saves me.
Buy one...seriously.

So, to make the bow I start with a mix of fondant and gumpaste. You will want almost an even mix so this bow will dry fast and firm.

Roll out the fondant.

I use my ribbon cutter to cut the strips but for years I didn't have one of those either and I just used a knife.
Cut the fondant into a long strip.
The wider the strip the taller the bow and the longer the strip the wider the bow.

To form the bow you can use rolled up paper towels or the tubes from inside the paper towel roll.

Bring each end of the fondant strip to meet in the middle.

Pinch in the center.

Roll out a small piece of fondant and cut into a strip. ( This does not have to be perfect, mine is pretty pathetic and it still worked. )

Pleat it .

Wrap around the middle of the bow. You can push around the pleats and position them where you would like.

Let this dry at least 24 hours and remove your loop formers.

Let dry a few hours more and place on your cake.
I attach with a dab of melted white chocolate.

If you would like to add ribbon tails you will need 2 more strips.
Angle the bottom and pinch to pleat the top.

 I set mine to dry a few minutes with some waves in them.

You can either attach them to the back of the bow or to the cake and then set the bow in place over top of them. ( that is how I  prefer to do it )

They are my favorite accent. I use large bows as cake toppers, medium bows on the sides of cakes, and small ones as trim accents.

You can alter the size, shape, add zebra stripes or polka dots, these are very versatile and easy.

Fast and Easy Football Cake

It's that time of year again!
Not only is it football season, but October is birthday season in my family.( we have 5 )
Today is my father's, and he is a diehard New York Giants fan.
We live 5 hours from Giant's stadium and he still has season tickets and drives to every single home game , no matter what the weather is.
I don't love any sport or hobby THAT much.
So, for his birthday I figured I should do something football/ Giants.
In an earlier post I made a NY Giants helmet for a co-worker so I had to come up with something different.
A football, basic and fun.
For cake flavor I decided on pumpkin cake with cream cheese buttercream frosting seeing as he loves those pumpkin rolls. I figured this would be the same flavor in a different form.

I used the recipe from Epicurious for a Spiced Pumpkin Layer Cake.
I left out some of the ginger just because we aren't huge fans of it but made it as the recipe is written.

I baked 2 cakes in my Wilton football pan.

If you want to make a tall / whole football I recommend filling the pans 3/4 full with this recipe. It doesn't rise like other cakes.
I  also only had to bake for 40 minutes in this pan at 350F

Once cooled I leveled my football and filled it with icing.
I had to carve my cake a bit due to the short layers. If they had baked hight enough I would not have had to do this. ( better luck next time ;)

Once filled and carved I iced the cake with more cream cheese icing and let it crust up a bit.

I rolled out some brown fondant and using a small impression mat , imprinted the football texture. You can use anything bumpy for this, before I had a texture mat I used a meat tenderizer mallet to make similar impressions.

Once the cake was covered I added my detail lines.
Draw 1 down the center of the top

Then one on each side of the football.

Last step of the football is the lacing.
I poked holes in approximately one inch increments down the top on each side of the line.

and piped the laces with white buttercream in the order shown in the photo's below.

In hindsight , I would have used a larger round tip for this step to make a thicker lacing.

For the cake board I lined it like a football field with white fondant.
Then I piped in grass with a wilton tip.

I saw this technique on Youtube and thought it would be nice.
Time consuming, but I do like the finished product on the cake board.
You can skip the middle where the football will sit. ( and you will probably want to after piping all that grass)

Set the football on the cake board, in the grass.

( see how lame my lacing is ?)

To bring in the Giants element ( or any team ) I decided to make a disc.
Basic , blue fondant/gumpaste mix, cut with a 3 inch round cutter with the logo.

Once that was dry I leaned it against the cake and that was it.

This cake only took 1 hour to decorate which in cake decorating time is quite fast.
If you are looking for a quick impressive cake for the football fan in your life, this is it!