Sunday Sweets: Ribbons and Lace
September 13, 2009 This week I figured we'd take a break from the geek themes and instead feature some Sweets that showcase amazing piping skills. This kind of cake art is becoming pretty rare in these days of all-fondant cakes, so it's nice to be reminded of the painstaking talent that a lot of the more traditional bakers possess. The designs can be deceptively simple, but it takes a practiced hand and a lot of patience to get results like these.
First, let's start off with some lovely scroll work and piped pearls:
Here's a fondant-free example:
(Submitted by Amanda T. and made by Das Meyer Fine Pastry Chalet.)That's all hand-piped! Here, check out the detail:
This next one contains some mind-boggling string work. (String work uses royal icing, which hardens after it dries.) Just look at this:
I love the color on this next one:
Orange and white - awesome! Love the ball and the butterflies, and the way this baker used the molded lace edging is really unique and modern:
Doesn't it look like crochet? Hard to believe it's actually icing.And last is the most technically difficult of today's bunch:
(Also by Rosey Sugar. Thanks to Donatella for the link!)
For the scroll border, royal icing is layered on a flat surface, dried, and then carefully adhered to the base with more icing. Have I mentioned that this stuff is incredibly fragile? 'Cuz it is. I've been told that for a cake like this, you have to do the string work onsite; the slightest bump or jarring would cause them all the break right off.
Well, hopefully you have a better appreciation for piping art now! Thanks to today's bakers!
Reader Comments (144)
AMAZING! I've never wanted to get married but now I do just to order a cake like these. Such skill and talent.
It's already Sunday night on my side of the world (I live in China) and I've been waiting for Sunday Sweets all evening long! I'm always so amazed at the artistry involved. That last cake . . . oooh la la (kissing fingers and waving them in the air)!
BTW, I really had no clue there were fund raising teams on breast cancer, thus my confusion on a "team" cake with a breast cancer ribbon on it. (This was a few days ago.) At least I understand the concept now . . . just not the writing on the cake!
These are all awesometasticness! I imagine that stringwork must be SOO frustrating to perfect!
I think my favorite would be that fondant-free one. The orange and white one is lovely as well, but I would much prefer A&M maroon (whoop!)
a mid-air loop WITHIN a loop? oh my god, amazing.
Those are truly beautiful. I am not dismissing fondant art, but too often the result is a pretty cake without tasty icing. A feast for the eyes is lovely, but cakes and their decorations should always be delicious as well.
I'm in awe. These people are artists.
Yowza!
these are fantastic! just...WOW!
WOW. Jen, thank you for showcasing these beautiful, intricate works of art. Not only have I never seen these types of piping before, but you also educated me about them in the process!
Now, THAT is sweet! :)
These are some of my favorite cakes! They're absolutely gorgeous!
I hope this means that the fondant-royal icing pendulum is swinging away from the ubiquitous fondant decorating. Fondant is beautiful, but it just doesn't taste very good.
I am in awe, as my air loop skill level stops at the I-can-tie-my shoe level.
Just gorgeous. (going back for another look)
WV cheds- Variety of cracker: you've got your salts, cheds, wheats, and the ultimate, chiken in a biskt.
Oh my gosh! My eyes are popping out of my head! I always thought of traditional wedding cakes as stuffy, stodgy, and unattractive, but looking at the creativity and talent (and all the friggin' WORK!) that went into these cakes, I think my opinion is turning around!
I've so decided that when it comes time for my own wedding, I'm going all buttercream. Life is too short to eat fondant!
Beautiful! I love the nostalgia of this seemingly lost art! Thank you for sharing. :)
Thanks for crushing my dreams of becoming a professional Cake artist. I love to do on the side and arent the best right now but getting better. But that I will never achieve. I had bad eyesight, shaky hands and I'm left handed LMAO.
Thank God I'm in School still because Sun Sweets has crushed my dreams..
What incredible workmanship! Absolutely lovely!
I read your blog every day (and I love it!) but I rarely comment. I just had to say that these cakes are amazing! Wow.
I've always appreciated piped cakes. That's decorating a cake. Using fondant is just carving and molding, and you really don't have to be a baker for that.
I hope to someday open a bakery/cafe something where I focus on non-fondant cakes. I wanna do that someday!
Wow, my hand is cramping up just looking at a couple of those. I can only imagine how perfect of consistency the royal would need to be to get some of those effects to actually work. I like seeing that there are still people working in icing. I got tired of fondant a long time ago.
i'm lucky to get the entire cake smeared with canned icing without it falling apart. so i'm easily impressed.
but after these beauties, i have a totally new appreciation for the talent of cake artistry.
amazing.
I'm completely geeking out that our submission is featured today! It was so much fun to email our bride and groom and let them know that it's not just their photographers who think their cake is gorgeous!
I feel a bit like I've eaten all that royal icing.
STUNNING all of them. My fav is the orange one...so amazing!
wow, nice!
Wow.
I've done royal icing tiaras before and fragile is exactly right! Even with 3 layers of icing I still broke my first two just removing them from the parchment paper...
Beautiful cakes!
Hey, for the last picture, you ask "anyone know who made this cake?" But in the commentary you say "...to really show off HER mad skillz..."
Are you saying that a male is not capable of decorating like this?
These cakes are indeed amazing and these designers have crazy skills...I hope they charge accordingly!!
As for the people who have commented on here that think fondant takes no skill and that it doesn't taste good...that is ignorance in its most blatent form. Fondant can taste absolutely horrible, but it can also taste like white chocolate and other yummy flavors. Trust me, as someone who does both buttercream AND fondant over-the-top cake designs that my elite clients can't get enough of, I don't feel like I'm a "fraud" or a "non-baker" when proclaiming that I'm a cake designer...and a darn good one that cares about what I attach my name to!
GORGEOUS!!! I can't believe people have that steady of hands - or that much patience!!!
Simply amazing. These make the wrecks look even more awful.
I am awestruck! Just gorgeous work!! Really, really great!!
That is AMAZING!! You've got quite the touch. Thanks for sharing with us. :)
That is amazing! Now I'm totally intimidated about making my sis's wedding cake in January, lol! Although now I know how I can make snowflakes for it! Thanks for the Royal Icing "lesson"!
Wow. Just wow - in an extremely awed and reverential voice. Stunningly beautiful.
I'm in the process of deciding what to order for our wedding cake. We already knew we wanted fondant-free and it's good to know there are still those who appreciate the art of piping and the luscious taste of buttercream. I just don't know if I could cut into one of these works of art!
WV -- apharad - apharadly someone was paying attention in piping class
Absolutely AMAZING!!!
Anon @ 10:56,
Yeah. That's exactly what she's saying.
Actually, for years, the pronoun to use when dealing with unknown persons was "his." Jen thought it was time for a change. I think we should start using her/his. It sounds awkward but I think it's more chivalrous, don't you?
john
Wow, I didn't know it was even possible do do this with sugar!
Those mid-air thingies are just mad!
My mother had a cake business from home when I was a small child. We used to watch her make these massive wedding cakes with iced flowers and all the types of piping as seen on today's Sunday Sweets. Just last week I was talking with my mom about fondant (I had never seen fondant until the reality cake decorating shows and this blog) and we were discussing how piped iciing is a lost art now. I am *thrilled* to see today's cakes - it really brings back happy memories from my childhood and focuses on how much talent it takes to decorate a cake "old school style."
Fantastic cakes! Love all the intricate work that was shown!!
That is so beautiful! My hands would have fell off doing work like that. Absolutely stunning!
AMAZING!!!!! i am proud of myself if after i ice a cake i is some-what-smooth!
Das Meyer is making our wedding cake, and I am more excited than ever after seeing them on Sunday Sweets! We picked them because they are one of two bakeries in the area that do fondant-free unless you make a special request, as opposed to using fondant unless you tell them not to :-) After a couple tasting and interviews, it became clear that they are also extraordinarily talented decorators!
Their cakes are delicious, too! We're offering four flavors: Orange Blossom, Chocolate Raspberry Truffle, Texas Pecan, and white cake for the more boring relatives.
Just have to share, since they're literally the first vendor we booked- a year in advance! If you are in the metro Denver area, be sure to check them out!
The one with the hanging icing is so impressive, I can't fathom the patience that takes!
The his/her thing is an annoying shortcoming of our language family (and many others). Though it's interesting that there apparently was a gender-neutral pronoun or two in Middle English that didn't survive.
As for these cakes, what I'm in awe of is what I imagine the size of the bill to be. That kind of work cannot be cheap.
Wow. I wish my wedding cake had looked like that!
Our cake was the submission from Das Meyer and we loved it. Amanda did a beautiful job of capturing the beauty of the cake on film (thank you!), and we're delighted that she passed the photo along. Someone mentioned cost and their hope that the bakers were charging in accord with the skills required. To Das Meyer's credit, we chose them because we loved what they had to offer, but their prices were better than those of many bakeries we considered. Das Meyer was a success all the way around!
Sweet ZOMBIES, those are freakin' AMAZING!
incredible and soo pretty!!
WV = flojoy!
Those are so beautiful I wouldn't want to eat them. I'd feel awful about ruining such exquisite works of cakey art.
Holy COW! My hands are cramping just looking at all that piping work!
WOW!
Oh wow! Breathtaking!
As someone who doesn't like Fondant I love to be awed at those who can pull off amazing feats of cake artistry without it!
I want to get married and have a beautiful cake with detail like that!
Jenn, I'm so glad that you posted cake like these. I know I am a more modern baker doing fondant work and sculpted cakes and these cakes are the ones that get 1st prize at the cake shows. I really do hope you find out who the other cakes belong to because they deserve the credit. String work is not a lost art, yet, but decorators need to try their hand at it. (I know I do)