The Thermometer

For the longest time, we have been eyeing candy thermometers. I don't know what took us so long before deciding to do so~ they're great for a multitude of things but best of all, you don't have to second guess the temperature of whatever it is you're doing.

Two recent cakes were made out of boiled icing and to make that icing, you'd need to boil sugar and water up to a certain degree 260degrees to be exact-- and since we didn't have this nifty gadget yet, we were eyeballing the temperature of the mixture.

Based on a chef (from cravings), you can test sugar temperature by using your fingers and some cold cold water.

Here is something I found on the internet:

Tests for Sugar Temperature

To water test, fill a small bowl with cold water, remove ½ teaspoon of sugar mixture from the saucepan and drop into water.
Leave for one minute, then test using thumb and forefinger.

Thread 110 - 114°C (230 - 238°F)
The sugar mixture will form a fine thread if pressed together then pulled apart.

Soft Ball 114 - 118°C (238 - 245°F)
The sugar mixture will form a soft ball which can be squashed flat.

Hard Ball 118 - 138°C (245 - 280°F)
The sugar mixture will form a ball which will hold its shape when pressed.

Small Crack 138 - 152°C (280 - 305°F)
The sugar mixture will separate into threads that will snap cleanly.

Hard Crack 152 - 163°C (305 - 325°F)
The sugar mixture will separate into threads which are brittle and hard.

Caramel 174°C (345°F)
The sugar mixture becomes golden in colour.

The problem with this is that it's not accurate. By the time you figured out which stage it is, it might already be too late. Hence, our two not quite perfect attempts on boiled icing. We dont have pictures to show though but trust me, it wasn't pretty!

Our third attempt though was perfect! It was the right consistency, it was easy to spread and was easy to decorate with. Now we just have to figure out how to make it smooth! Any tips?

Decorating Tools

Quintbelles has been baking and cake decorating for about 15 years. If Malcolm Gladwell is correct, we are about to hit the big time soon. Calculating the total amount of time we've clocked in cake decorating, we have about 8,000 hours each! That's a lot of time in the kitchen, right? But we have to continue to learn new things!

Here are some things we'd like to share regarding Equipment and Tools we use:

Xacto blades are awesome.

For the longest time, we've been using disposable large cutter blades-- but xacto blades can make more intricate cuts and shape! Perfect for making chinese characters too!

Dry pastry brushes makes you feel like paleontologists excavating fossils but they're really perfect to brush away excess powdered sugar in the cake.

Wet pastry brushes are great for everything else-- painting on the cake and gluing pieces of sugar decos.

Not all cake deco tools are needed. Craft tools are great too! But make sure that to use them solely for cake decorating.

What tools can't you do without? Leave a comment! :)

New Offering for the New Year!

We have exciting news from Quintbelles! We understand that every occasion simply cannot go without the perfect cake and we're very happy to bake and decorate cakes with the same love and attention our clients give their loved ones. They are the ones who continue to inspire us! We promise to strive harder to improve ourselves this coming year.

One of our biggest news is that we can now decorate cakes and cookies with photos! We've always been asked to make those nifty cookies with famous characters photos but unfortunately we did not have the equipment to do so (besides having to deal with character licenses.) But we recently invested in edible ink printer!

Now we can make cakes and cookies with photos of parents, siblings, friends (or enemies!). We can even make cakes with company logos! Unlimited possibilities!

For sample cakes, please visit this site.

Cake Leveler

You could just imagine the difficulty of torting cakes without levelers. Maybe professional bakers CAN torte and level without this tool but I can't do without it. However, I'm sure they still use this as evidenced by "professional" series of cake levelers available in the market.

This is one of the more useful tools I have in the kitchen. The one i use is from Wilton (picture from their site) and it is really easy to use! Cakes are sometimes not perfectly flat. Leveling is necessary specially when decorating stacked cakes making this a must have gadget as it is simple to use. Slices of any thickness can be made--just adjust the wire at both sides to the level required. Then hold the slicing device in vertical position and cut the cake with a sawing motion.

Since you can adjust both sides of the device, you can also use this for whimsical cakes but then again, if you're like me, its not so difficult to come up with the unleveled effect! I eyeball all sides, cut with a serrated knife and then bam--a not-so-level cake slice.

After the cake has cooled (room temperature), remove the crown of the cake by using the cake leveler. Flip the cake bottom side up to provide a flat surface to decorate. The leveled portion of the cake will be the bottom or middle part and not used as the top since we don't want cake crumbs on the icing. Place the cake on a cakeboard then place on a turntable. Place the cake leveler on the side of the cake to check where the wires of the device should be placed. Move the ends of the cutting wire into the notches to reach the position desired. Keep the legs of the leveler level on the surface and cut using a sawing motion. This is better than using a knife and slowly rotating the turntable to remove the crown since you have to keep the knife level as you cut. Brush off loose crumbs.

To torte, follow the same instructions except place a line of icing first before separating the layers so you can easily replace the layers in the same position after putting in the filling.