Modern Cake Decorating

Modern Cake Decorating

Choosing Cake Frosting Recipes

When you are perusing a cookbook or a baking website in order to find some cake frosting recipes, you should always keep a few things in mind. For instance, while it might sound wonderful to pair up a delicate almond cake with a delicious chocolate frosting of some kind, it might not actually "work". This is because the frosting recipe selected may be too heavy for the cake in question.

What do we mean by too heavy? Well, it could actually mean two different things. Firstly, the physical weight of the frosting may not be appropriate for the delicate texture and crumb of the cake, and this might cause the cake to split or collapse beneath the heavier frosting. Also, the heaviness of the frosting might be in the strong flavor, and this could easily overwhelm the delicate flavor of the cake and ruin the balance between the two components.

This is actually the major issue in selecting the most appropriate recipes for cakes and cake frostings - finding a good balance between the two. Fortunately, this is not often that significant of an issue because there are so many recipes available. There is another issue that often creeps up when someone does pick a frosting that is a good weight for the cake in question, and that is if the pairing of the two really works as well.

We already mentioned that the flavors should balance one another and that one should never overwhelm the other. These two flavors must also be a good combination in order for the partnership to really work out well. A common problem among many modern cake makers and decorators is that the cake is often selected as a sort of blank canvas for the frosting and decorative work, and the qualities of the various recipes are never sharply scrutinized. This result in a cake that is beautiful in design, but which has become quite dry, flavorless, or generally unappealing when paired with the particular frosting recipe selected.

So, how can this be avoided? One of the first things to do is to take some time mastering the different frostings, glazes, coatings, and icings. Once you are very familiar with the different textures and the different ways in which each of the recipes works and functions with cake, you can then make a very appropriate selection based on your decorative needs as well as on the cake selected.

Need an example? Let's say that you are making the cake for a bridal shower. The bride in question wanted a light and airy cake that did not use bold colors or any sort of heavy frosting. Your experimentation with various recipes showed you that a nice buttercream or meringue frosting on a very delicate white cake was precisely the right choice to make. Had you never explored a range of recipes, or had you failed to do some experiments with combinations, you may have chosen something like an Angel Food cake and a glazing of white fondant, but these would have been disastrous together and cause the cake to collapse!

About the Author

John Knollwood is the author of "Cake Decorating Made Easy" mini course, please visit
http://www.CakeDecoratingAnswers.com
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