Piping Gel might not taste great but...

... it's a life saver when you want to add some detailed graphics to a cake.

Since there aren't any new cakes planned for at least the next couple of weeks, I thought I'd add some old ones that are favourites using the same technique that allowed me to get a reasonbly accurate map of British Columbia highways onto a cake a few weeks ago.

When I took the Level 1 Wilton class, I thought the idea of using piping gel to transfer a pattern was a little bit silly.  The pattern they suggested using it for was a very simple rainbow on a round cake, not exactly rocket science or even much of a challenge.  Of course, it's normally considered a good idea to try learning a new technique on something simple but I've never been good at that as far as crafty things are considered.  When your first project cross-stitching on linen is a large Paula Vaughan design stitched for a friend's wedding, or learning hardanger while making a christening gown for another friend, or making my first real sweater knitted in the round with a pattern around the yoke, I guess you could say I get bored easily, or that I like a challenge. 

Given all the dragon books, she'd been reading,
the book cake pan was the obvious choice. 

While I didn't actually try doing the rainbow transfer, Wilton does have a straightforward explanation of the technique that might be helpful if you haven't seen this before.  The first time I decided to use the technique was for my niece's birthday cake.  She was turning 11 and had fallen in love with dragons through a variety of dragon-related books.  After hunting far and wide for an image that could form the basis of her cake, I actually ended up using Herald, a dragon from a Teresa Wentzler cross-stitch pattern. 



Piping gel and some edible glitter
worked pretty well for his crystal ball.

The combination of the pattern being designed to allow the stitcher to pick their own colours and a dragon searching out the future seemed the perfect combination.  One of these days, I should actually send in a picture of my dragon to add to the stitcher submitted versions on the website.  I suppose I could have "cross-stitched" the dragon onto the cake, but that's a story for another day.  This blog entry is about fun with piping gel transfers.

One my other favourites experiences using this technique was a cake for the team I worked with at a call center.  For eight hours a day, our team, known as the Devil Ducks, answered calls from business customers for an American cell phone company.  Definitely not the best job in the world, but thanks to a great team lead and a good bunch people to work with, we managed to have a lot of fun.  

 

Devil Ducks still rock!



One of our team members loved to draw and he created a super hero version of our team mascot (a little red rubber duck with black horns that sometimes rode around on top of our team lead's head).  When it was time for a celebration for our team, I volunteered to make a cake and we decided our Devil Duck had to be front and center.  I don't know what I would have done without the piping gel transfer!