Scrolling, Scrolling, Scrolling…

Scrolling – a new technique, for me. When a friend of a friend called and had a picture of the wedding cake she was thinking about, I thought, “Oh my, I’ve never tried scrollwork before.” The cake was ALL scrollwork. For the cake tasting, Deah and I thought we’d experiment with a few different decorating methods on the cake. We would try scrolling with a #5 tip, scrolling with a #3 tip and scrolling with a paint brush. “Wait a minute”, I thought, “…a paintbrush?”  Little did I know that Deah was going to ask me to be the one to try out that method. I was nervous, but agreed. We covered the small test cake in fondant and I took it home.

Not wanting to try painting on the cake before I practiced somewhere else, I rolled out some fondant and put it on my round cake-taker. There, for 2 hours, I practiced different techniques. I tried impressing the Wilton scroll imprints on it and tracing them…that didn’t work for me. I tried painting the Wilton scrolling tools and lightly touching the fondant to give me something to trace and, although that was a little better, it still wasn’t presentable enough, for me. Then, I thought I’d trying changing the consistency of the food color. I made it the consistency of oil paints and tried again, this time free-handing the scroll work. This worked better for me. I soon got the “feel” of the brush and paint on the fondant and these were the results….the bride-to-be and her mother were both impressed.  We all thought the black trim added a “touch of elegance”.  I think this is a technique I will try again, maybe for more than just scrolling :-).