The LIVE Sugar Debate: Competitive Cake Duo

Welcome to "Competitive Cake Duo, the Live Sugar Debate". I'm Jodi, your moderator for today's four hour live event. We are celebrating the launch of our new website, Creative Cake Design, and we are here with two amazing women who are gonna be battling today to outdo each other's cake designs. We're gonna watch as they show amazing skills and tons of twists and turns along the way and we will be giving away amazing prizes throughout these four hours. Let's learn just a little bit more about these amazing women. I'm gonna be stepping in and off camera throughout the day today, but we wanna learn more about both of you. So let's start with our managing editor, Rachael Teufel. Thank you, Jodi. I'm Rachael Teufel and I am just as excited as everyone here on set. We have so much to celebrate with getting this new brand up and running. So we hope that you enjoy Creative Cake Design as much as we do 'cause we've worked really hard to put it together for you. In addition to helping with Creative Cake Design, I am the owner of Intricate Icings Cake Design in Denver, Colorado. I have won many accolades along my way and have participated in many competitions previously like "Food Network Challenge", where I met my dear friend, Anne. So Anne, would you like to share a little about yourself? Sure, my name is Anne Heap and I am from Morristown, New Jersey, and I have, well, I had a shop called Pink Cake Box and I still do some cakes. I've been kicking for a long time, now since about 2005 when I quit my job in advertising and went to culinary school and like Rachael, I've done quite a few competitions, but this one seems like it'll be more fun. So I'm excited to be here, thank you. So there's a little bit of information that we need to share with you about how this competition is going to run, including how you're gonna help us decide how to create our cakes. So let's throw it back over to Jodi so she can share some of the technical information about today's debate. Awesome, thanks ladies. So we wanna take a moment to thank our amazing sponsors today, CakeSafe, Fat Daddio, Bake Deco, Simi Cakes and Confections and Good Cook. And the reason it's important to know who those folks are is because every 30 minutes, we're gonna be giving away some awesome cake decorating sway. Who doesn't love some swag, right ladies? From our sponsors. So there's a little bit of information here on how to enter. So stick around because you won't wanna miss this. We also have an amazing free holiday coupon bundle that you can download from our sponsors. You're gonna click on the link in the description to the download and the coupons are gonna save you some amazing, fantastic. They're gonna save you a lot of money on some fantastic supplies and products. But before we get into all of that, let's do a brief intro into Creative Cake Design. Creative Cake Design is your online resource for all things cake, where you can find everything you will need from basic instruction to advanced techniques. It's a community of enthusiasts and these folks want to learn more about how to create beautiful projects with edible mediums. At Creative Cake Design, we know that cake decorating goes way beyond just being a hobby, it is art, and we want to be your go-to online place to nourish your creativity by getting inspired with project ideas, learning new techniques and connecting with your fellow cake decorators. With the launch of this new site, we wanna celebrate by creating some amazing cakes. The theme for today's competition is celebration. Whoo. Perfect for the time of year for sure, right? So we're gonna get started here in just a minute, but we wanna give you a little more information on how this competition is going to work. These two amazing ladies are going to individually create a tiered celebration themed cake that we're going to present to you, the viewers, at 1:45 central for all of you to see. You guys are going to decide the winners of "The Sugar Debate". I wanna direct your attention to the chat box. If you're watching on Creative Cake Designs website, all you have to do to participate in the live polls is use the navy blue chat box under the video to type out your response. If you're watching on Facebook or YouTube, you can use the chats there too. We will be posting questions throughout the debate to guide the design of both of these cakes. And the first question is being posted right now. This question happens to be about style. So we want your input, please post your answers in the comment section as quickly as possible in one of our team members will tally the votes and share the decision. And guess what? Anne and Rachael are gonna be finding out as you guys decide what's going on. So these ladies are gonna have to think on their feet and adjust their cake design accordingly. Oh my gosh, it's already coming in. I believe they're gonna text me the responses here. We're all waiting with bated breath. Yeah, we'd really like to know what we're making. Yes, we would like to know, really would. So the style question is, do we want fun or glamorous? I don't know, what do you guys think? Do you have a preference, fun or glamorous? I dunno, there there's so many ways we could take this particular question. You know, I would certainly prefer fun just because it gives us a little bit more freedom to kind of do our own designs, but glamor's interesting. Yeah, I think I'm with you on the fun. Kinda hoping it's fun. You guys are, okay. I kind of was secretively hoping maybe we would have glamorous and I even picked out my glamorous earrings to wear for all of you today 'cause it kind of reminded me of cake decorating an icing. So we're gonna have to see what the polls say here as we wait for this. But I'm very excited to see this. Also, just so you guys know, if you're watching the start of the event, I mentioned that there's going to be live giveaways throughout the four hours from our incredible sponsors and for a chance to win any of those prizes, you're also going to leave a comment in the chat box and tell us what is your favorite part about the live decorating competition? The winner will be selected at random from all the different submissions in the various chats. So whether it's Creative Cake Design, Craftsy, Facebook, YouTube, definitely enter your responses in the chat and then one of our team members will randomly select one of the winners and will contact you via direct message for further details on how to claim your prize. Okay, so it looks like, ladies, are you ready? Oh no. We are going glamorous, woo-hoo. Exactly what we didn't want it, but okay, thanks guys. They were reading my mind, I love it. Awesome, so with that, we're gonna let them get started. I'm very excited to be stepping in and out of camera here so we can check in on what they're doing Okay, let's do this. and I will continue to keep an eye out on what all of you are saying online here so that we can interact with both Anne and Rachael throughout these four hours. And if you have specific questions or other things that you would like to ask them, definitely let us know and we'll do our best to incorporate those. So with that, they're getting started. This will be very interesting to see what all comes about. I'm super excited to see what's gonna happen. I will be completely honest and tell you I don't have a lot of Yeah, me too. experience in baking. So this is gonna be quite fun for me. Well, we'll teach you along the way, no worries. I'm glad to hear that. I will tell you, I do get quite mesmerized watching these cake decorating videos and things online. Nice. It's kind of amazing to me how fast I can kill 10, 15 minutes. Yeah, well when you're watching on shows like that, they're typically things that are being filmed over the course of multiple hours and you're just seeing little snippets. You're getting the real thing today, which is really us like trying to figure out what the heck we're gonna do with our cakes. This is very true. So there's gonna be a lot more fumbling in this particular event than there is on any of the other shows that you watch on TV. Yes, what she said. So bear with us. Okay, Anne, I don't know Yes? what the heck I'm going to do for glamorous. I don't think I was prepared for that to be the answer. No, I wasn't either, but that's okay. we're gonna make it work. Now Rachael, with all of your decorating of wedding cakes and things, I would think you have glamorous nailed. Yeah, so glamorous is actually one of my favorite styles just because it has a more elegant feel and you can really go modern or vintage, you can go a lot of different directions. But you know, when you're trying to design something that's cohesive, it's really helpful to have things like color scheme, maybe flower choices, other types of decor that you might be incorporating into the overall feel of the event that we're planning for. And so not having a specific set of inspiration here is really challenging. The color poll would be nice. I'm just saying. Yeah, a little bit more information would be super helpful at this point. I don't think I realized how challenging that might be. What about you, Anne? How about some of your experience with doing glamorous cakes? I mean I've definitely done my fair share of glamorous again with the wedding cakes and sweet 16 cakes and all that. But yes, again, I usually had some direction about whether it was, you know, kind of vintage glam or trendy glam. So I'll be interested to see what our viewers choose for us to do and what Rachael does. Yeah. I don't give away too much here, Anne. I'm totally gonna be watching what you're doing and maybe stealing some trick. What do you think your Hungarian grandmother would say to you right now, Rachael? Oh boy. Well, she didn't speak a whole lot of English. So she would probably be throwing flour and sugar my direction and just. So you probably stuffing a cookie in my mouth, honesty. You look weak. Yes, eat more. There's never a shortage You'll need your stamina of food with her. for the four hours. That's what grandmothers are for, come on. That's right. So when do we find out the colors? Oh, I would love to know colors. When is that on our schedule, Jodi? Colors? Oh my gosh, that's coming up in a little bit here. Okay, great. Oh boy. Okay, well. Don't you just need a little food coloring though to change that up, right? Well yeah, but it's helpful to know what that is before designing a cake because you know, are we gonna start with a white cake or are we gonna start with a colored cake or are we gonna add color? Exactly. Yeah, there's a lot of, okay, this is gonna be pretty, sorry. Yeah, there's just a lot of ways you can incorporate color, whether it be the whole cake or just pieces, parts of the cake. So I think that's the challenge for us right now is trying to figure out how we will make that happen I guess. Well why don't we just do that then? Should we just move this up? Yeah. Could you do that? That would be amazing. Please. You guys are starting to sweat over there, I can see that. Okay, so-- Just a little bit. Let's put off our second polling question then, which is around color scheme. Yay. Bright or pastel? Definitely enter your preferences in the chat box. And again, one of our team members will compile all of those answers and then give us that response and we will let Rachael and Anne know what colors they're using Yay for their cake decorating. Do you again, preferences? Have you guys already started on a theme over there? I've picked a pattern. I'm gonna go with a floral pattern. So any color could work here. I'm good with bold or pastel. I don't know about you. What do you think? Yeah, I can go with both. I probably would use a little bit of bold in the pastel and a little bit of the pastel in the bold. Oh yeah, yeah, that's true. So yeah. As I'm watching you guys in your coats there, it's like, we've got the bold purple and we have the pastel pink. That's true. There you go, ready to go. Might be a little indication as to where your heads might be. Yeah, I am definitely a dual tone fan. Yes, I like those too, but there will be blush somewhere on my cake because I just love blush. Oh my gosh, well, I'm gonna be so excited to see what comes out of all of this. There's a lot of work that goes into a cake. Now I know we're making a huge tiered celebration cake, but on average, ladies, how much time does it take you to bake a cake? To bake it or to fill it in? Well all of it. Bake it, decorate it, all of that stuff. I mean, I'm assuming this is like a day-long activity. Oh, at least. It depends on if there's sugar, flowers or something, it could take weeks, yeah, Weeks. to prepare for, and some of the cakes take, you know, 40, 50 hours to decorate depending on how much detail's on them. Oh my gosh. I would say an average like three tier cake would take most people about 20ish hours. Again, depends on how elaborate it is. Those types of factors like hand painting or making gum paste flowers, those are all gonna add just lots of man hours because they're all done petal by petal usually and we're coloring each item one by one. So definitely a process for sure. Absolutely. well, you'll be happy to know we got the results in. Already? Yeah, the color. So we asked a brighter pastels and the answer ladies is bright. Bright, all right. Let's see what they're going to do with this. I was secretly hoping. Well, we got something to go our way. Yeah, yes. Just to let you guys know when we're looking for various input from all of you, we're gonna ask you to use your chat features. So again, put your comments in the chat when we're asking for the polling, you can give us your answers. And again, as we get into some of our giveaways, we wanna know what you're liking best about this live event today. So if you put that in the chat as well once we give you some ideas of what the prizes are that are up for winning, then we will reach out to those winners directly and let you know how you can claim your prize. And let me just say, there are some really amazing prizes. So you should definitely stick around and be sure that you are commenting on our chat because they are really, really good prizes. Thanks to all of our sponsors. Seriously, could not have done as much as we're able to do for you today if it hadn't been for them. Anne, what are you thinking? Like I see some cool stuff happening. What are you doing? I feel like I'm gonna go a little, like, like have a hint of her Art Deco kind of limb. Ohh. But with a little twist. Little vintage? Yeah, how 'bout you? Okay. I think I'm going a little bit more modern. Okay. You do very well with your geometrics. I love geometrics, but I also love floral. So it's always a tough call for me when I get to design my own cakes. Yes, I understand. It's almost worse when you have to come up with it yourself. Agree, yeah. It's always nice to have lots of inspiration. So we have a question here from Natalie. She's asking if you all would share some tips on using fondant. Sure. Okay. So fondant is one of those items. So I'm actually working with modeling chocolate here. It looks like it's probably fondant because it's very similar. There's two differences between fondant and modeling chocolate that are really important and one is texture, just in how thick it is and how pliable it is. And one is elasticity and that's how stretchy it is obviously. Now when working with fondant, it's very stretchy because you want fondant to kind of mold and take shape over either a cake or whether it's a sculpted cake or just a regular tiered cake. With modeling chocolate, it sort of holds it shape up a little bit better. So there's two differences between those two products. My best recommendation though is to work with a couple of different styles of fondant to see which one is gonna work better for you and a lot of that just depends on your climate. So Anne is in New Jersey, which is a very humid climate. I'm in Denver, which is a very dry climate. So what I prefer to work with is a little different from her preferences simply because of the humidity levels. Now I prefer using ChocoPan, which is a brand of Satin Ice and one of our sponsors, FYI. I prefer ChocoPan mostly because it's very moist, it's made from chocolate, so it has a lot of oils in it and it just holds up much better. It doesn't dry out nearly as fast. And do you wanna share which one you use? I use the regular Satin Ice fondant. Mostly I do like the ChocoPan also and some of their modeling chocolate for certain things. Sure. It does hold up quicker and you can use gum paste, but it takes longer to dry, obviously. So if you need something to set ups quick, I do like the modeling chocolate. And I say one of the biggest tips that I always tell any of my students is that your cake underneath needs to be really clean because fondant does not cover up imperfections. So you wanna master getting your buttercream really smooth and cold before you cover with fondant. Yeah, I think a lot of people, especially when they're starting out, they don't realize that the fondant is not the only covering on the cake itself. It really is iced in, fully iced in buttercream. So whenever you're getting a fondant cake, you're actually getting a buttercream cake that's covered in fondant. So don't skimp on the buttercream when you're using fondant. Make sure that you have a nice coating, just like you would for any regular cake. So you don't want to do just a crumb coat for instance. You wanna make sure that your cake is fully iced in buttercream before putting your fondant over top of it. 'Cause Anne said, and you'll see as we cover our cakes in fondant, if they're not iced well, they're not gonna fondant well either. Awesome, there were a couple of other questions that I want to address here. The first one was from Amy and she wanted to know where this can be viewed today. So your streaming channels are our Creative Cake Design YouTube channel, the Craftsy YouTube channel, the Creative Cake Design Facebook and the Craftsy Facebook pages. Those are all the different areas where you can join us today. And then we also had a question from, it looks like Salty Sweet Bake, and she says, "I have one fondant paddle. I don't wanna buy another one since I rarely decorate cakes with fondant. What can I use instead of another paddle to make sharp edges?" Interesting, so my first recommendation to you is splurge for the $5 and get yourself a second paddle because it will make your life a whole lot easier. And I know that if you're not gonna use it a lot, you don't want to spend more money, I get that, but that really is the best thing that you can do for yourself is just invest in some really good quality tools. Smoothers are not that expensive, especially if you can grab a coupon from, you know, one of their local stores as well. The other thing to keep in mind is you can use a piece of acetate. So that's a thicker piece of plastic. I think I had, do you have acetate with you? Yeah. Ah, perfect. So if you just cut a little piece of acetate, I would use this more as something to hold your cake in place and then use your smoother for edges and you can butt your smoother up against acetate, that works really well. Even a slightly thicker acetate, something like what a cutting board, a really thin flexible cutting board, something of that sort would work really well for you as well. Awesome and I wanna take just a moment again to mention our fabulous sponsors. We're going to be giving our first giveaway here at about 10:30, but we wanna give all of you a chance to enter to win. It is a cake pan set from Fat Daddio's and Rachael's gonna tell us a little bit more about that here in just a minute but to enter, all you need to do is leave a comment in the chat box and tell us what is your favorite part of the live cake decorating competition? The winner will be selected at random from all the submissions in the chats on the Creative Cake Design, Craftsy, Facebook and YouTube channels and the winner will be contacted via direct message for further details on how to claim your prize. All right, so Fat Daddio's. That is the only brand of cake pan that I ever use. I started out gosh, 16? 16 years ago, professionally. I started baking as a child but when I was buying my own equipment, I was just buying whatever I could find at the local store. And then I was introduced to Fat Daddio's and I will never go back to anything else. They have the best pans. They're insulated really well, so you get a nice even bake and you don't have to think twice about your pans in the oven, whether they're gonna burn on the outside or not be baked in the middle. They're just great pans. So the first prize up is a set of in a little bit. Very nice. Is a set of pans. There are 10 of them. It ranges from four all the way down to 12, I believe. And these ones are the three inch tall pans and there are four sets of these to go around. We've got the three inch tall pans and we also have two inch tall pans. This particular giveaway is for the three inch tall pans and you have to write in the comment section what you like most about this live event. So hopefully it's me fast that you like the best. I don't know. They really are liking the interaction and you guys sharing your tips as you're going. It's very fun. I feel like I'm not getting a whole lot done though, not gonna lie. She's starting to stress over there. I know, I feel like I need to start fondanting her. Okay. I have an idea of what I'm gonna do, sort of. Which is always good. Yeah. Well ideas are good. Implementing them is something-- Yeah, we'll see if it actually translates into what I want. Yeah. So if you are not familiar with what I'm doing here, I'm using an impression mat just to implant my modeling chocolate so that I could have a pattern that I don't have to go in and hand create. So that's what's really nice about impression mats. This particular mat is not necessarily created for cake and so it's not clear. And so lining these up is a little bit trickier than the normal impression mat, but doable. And I have a beautiful floral pattern going on, little Paisley action. And that is something that the modeling chocolate is much better for than fondant because by the time she were to get to the end of that if she was using fondant, this part would be really dry and would crack. Core wax. Yeah, and you also can't really do this with fondant. You can do it with modeling chocolate. If I were to pick up a piece of fondant like that, it would just stretch and start to pull and tear and I would lose a lot of the texture that I'm applying at this point. Line this one up again. All right, are you getting ready to cover? Am I in your way? No. I'm not that ready. Then I'd better throw my stuff at you. I'm not that ready. Okay. In fact, I have to clear up my own spot here. I got all excited. This is the boring part. Sorry, guys. Yeah. The start is never that exciting because there's not a whole lot of action going on. Well I've got a couple more questions here around fondant from our viewers. Let's see here. Catherine would like to know how long does the fondant last if you don't use it all at once? So you wanna make sure that it's a very tightly sealed in it's plastic bag and in a Tupperware or the bucket it comes in and it will last for a pretty long time open, like months. There's an expiration date, but usually it just gets hard if anything. The chocolate one can sometimes get moldy if there's any water introduced to it, so you wanna be careful with that. But the biggest thing is once you're done covering your cake, you take the scraps and you put them in a Ziploc or something like that, so that they don't dry out. Speaking of, I need one. Yeah, it's really great to throw your extra excess fondant into just a Ziploc bag, anything you have laying around in order to keep it from drying as you're working with it. Well, you guys have a lot of fans here. Many of them have said that they have taken other virtual courses from you guys, and so this is super fun for them to watch you together. Danielle had a question around the cake pans actually, Okay. and she wanted to know if the pans need cloth bands to cook more evenly? They do not. That's what I love so much about Fat Daddio's is you don't need anything extra, you just use the pan because they just have such great insulation and just the way that it all bakes so evenly. I don't use anything extra with my Fat Daddio pans. Unlike some other brands, you often do need to wrap them with either wet cloth, or they actually have cake baking bands where you actually will moisten those too and wrap them around. And that's just the way of adding installation to a thin pan. So again, Fat Daddio's is just for me, the go-to pan every time. I use it both personally and professionally. There's no way around, I will never use a different pan. I agree, I use them also. If you have a cake that's a little temperamental, that you know, like I'm very light, fluffy cake, you can always use the bands to make sure you don't get the dome sometimes, but it does rise pretty well in these pans. Here's a question from Jill. Can the modeling chocolate be colored the same way that fondant can be colored? It sure can, yup. You can just use gel colors just like any other fondant or gum paste, it's the same process. And Tracy wanted to know, do you expect people that eat the fondant or modeling chocolate or do you remove it first? So I personally love modeling chocolate. It's actually made to taste like white chocolate and white chocolate is my favorite, even over a milk or a dark chocolate. I know, nobody shoot me, I know it's not real chocolate. It's not real chocolate, Rachael. It's not real chocolate, it does have cocoa butter in it though. Yes, yes it does. It just doesn't have the actual chocolate portion of that mixture. But for me, I love modeling chocolate because it is white chocolate and white chocolate in flavor. Fondant, it's gonna depend a little bit on the brand as to whether or not I enjoy actually eating fondant, but it's a personal preference. You will find that a lot of people will just munch right through it and they love it because it's just sugary and sweet. You'll find other people eat around it. I don't ever recommend pulling fondant off before cutting your cake though, which I've heard a lot of people do that, don't know. They do it a lot of times like in catering halls. Right. They just rip it apart and massacre the poor cake. Right. But a lot will pull it off before they eat it. My children love it, kids tend to like it 'cause it's very sweet. Yeah. I roll mine very thin, like an of eighth of an inch. So it's not, you're getting all that buttercream underneath. So I don't notice that it's like terrible. Yeah. I think if it's applied to a cake properly, Yes. everybody would eat it and enjoy it It's good, yes, exactly. because it is, you're right, it's rolled so thin and you should have a full layer of buttercream underneath it and I think a lot of people skimp on the buttercream and go way too thick with the rolling of fondant and then you get a really like poor ratio of fondant to buttercream to cake. Yes. And it doesn't melt in your mouth kind of the same way, so. Great tips, well I have our first winner for our first giveaway of the Daddio cake pans. Okay. Oh. And the winner that was selected randomly is Michelle Willis. Congratulations, Michelle, Congratulations, Michelle. and our team is gonna reach out to you with direct private message here to make arrangements for getting you those pans. So thank you, congratulations. You're starting with your bottom tier. I think I'm starting Yes. with a middle tier. Okay, all right, it's all good. You know, I think that we may have inadvertently missed one of our sponsors earlier when we were mentioning them as well. So we wanna make sure we bring up Satin Ice because they are also participating Oh yes. and giving away some amazing prizes today. I know they're called giveaways, but I always use the word prize. That's probably not the right word. Satin Ice is the one who has provided us with all of our modeling chocolate, fondant, gum paste, buttercream. They kind of do it all when it comes to covering cakes. So yes, Satin Ice has been a huge sponsor for us. I don't think they specifically have a giveaway item that's because they're allowing us all of their items. which is great. Yes. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But they, one of the great things is they've paired up with Bake Deco and Bake Deco actually has a 15% off coupon in our coupon book for all Satin Ice products and all Fat Daddio products on their website. So that is a way to get your hands on the amazing Satin Ice products. I love all of the chats that are going on here. Everybody's congratulating Michelle. So that's fantastic. I love seeing the community out here. We did have one more question from Irene. What about using homemade marshmallow fondant? Is that a good idea? Do you ever make your own fondant? I mean, God bless you if you wanna do it like that. Right? So I will say this, marshmallow fondant is fabulous. You can absolutely make your own fondant. There's nothing wrong with that if you have the time. I will say that in my peak season of making wedding cakes in my studio with a couple of employees, were making 175 wedding cakes, plus numerous birthday cakes, celebration cakes, you name it, cupcakes, all that good stuff. I frankly did not have time to make my own fondant at that point. No. So I have never made marshmallow fondant, I'll be honest with you. And it's not because I don't want too, it's just because there are so many great products out there, I didn't see any reason to make my own and reinvent the wheel when I already had a great product to work with. But you know, if you have time or you really enjoy the flavor of a marshmallow fondant, I say, go for it, have fun, enjoy it. I can't give you any personal experience on using it 'cause I've never used it or made it myself. Yeah, I agree with everything she said. Also if you're just making a tiny little four, six inch cake, I mean, by all means make it, but when you're going through hundreds of pounds of fondant, first of all, your hands will break off and your mixer will die. So I leave it to Satin Ice to do with their giant mixer. Well, I bet you guys would like to learn a little bit more about what you're doing today as well. So should we throw the third poling question up? Yes please. That would be nice. Can we just throw them all out? So our third polling question today is around decor. We wanna know if our viewers would like to see them take more of a geometric or an organic twist to their decorating. Organic. Throw your recommendations in the chat and we will compile those and then announce. I have to ask you guys again, it sounded like Anne was all for organic. Clearly. I'm all for geometric. Okay, we have a little difference of opinion. See, we make a good team. Go purple, sorry. And what does that mean? Speak to me a little bit more around organic or geometric. Yeah, so geometric is typically going to be something with shapes, it's gonna have lo`ts of style and structure to it. I think any geometric shape you can think of and then replicate that pattern multiple times. So whether it's round or square or hexagons, diamonds, it's just a way for you to be able to really put a pattern to your design. Organic really just means more free flowing, something that doesn't have structure and you know, maybe it's asymmetric, maybe it's just hodgepodge. I'm all about asymmetric. I'm a little bit, well. We know. I think we're both a little type A, but anybody in this field Yes. is really a little bit more type A. However, I really love when I have a plan and a structure and just something to build from. It helps me, the geometric shapes really help me anchor my designs whereas something that's a little bit more free flowing and organic, I don't know. Doesn't feel quite as smooth and rhythmic to me. And I think we already know the answer to this watching you guys, but people were asking if you're working with real cakes or styrofoam molds. Oh yeah, these are real. Oh they're real. And we will cut into them absolutely. I know you saw me just flip this cake over. This is the board. I promise there's cake inside there. When I panel my cakes with modeling chocolate, so I'm doing a different technique than what Anne is. I'm a paneling, which means that I put a piece of modeling chocolate on the top and now I'm going to wrap this other piece of modeling chocolate around it. And the reason for that is because when I have such a deep texture like this, if I were to wrap it in a very traditional fondant covering method, I would lose a lot of the texture that I've put all that work into. So I don't wanna do that. So that's why I'm paneling versus just a straight up cake of fondant covering. I was gonna say I didn't sign up for this, that there's not real cake involved. Oh there's real cake. Oh it's real. There's plenty of cake. I'm hoping to sample some later. I spent lots of time filling and icing these last night and I, yeah. She did, I was sleeping, I don't know. I sent her to bed so at least one of us could have some sleep and rest. I did offer to help she did all my defense. She did offer. Well, I didn't even have an offset spatula with me. So it wasn't going to be super helpful to have two of us fumbling. Impressive, she did that with a butter knife. So that's talent. Butter knife? Yeah, you know sometimes you just gotta make do with whatever you have. Well as we're making do, I do have the answer. Woo-hoo! And I think Anne's gonna be very happy. Woo! Sorry, sorry, Rachael. So organic got it. Damn it, okay, whoops. You know it's live when things like that happen. Yes, beep, beep, beep. Well, let me take a minute just to talk about our second giveaway too because now is the time for you to enter for that. So this is the Simi Cakes Isomalt Basics Kit. So when Rachael has a minute, she can talk to you a little bit about that as well. But I just want to reiterate that to enter for your chance to win one of the prizes, you need to leave a comment in the chat box around what you're enjoying most about this live cake decorating competition and then our winner will be selected at random from all the submissions in the chats. So I'll announce them Fabulous. at 11:30, that winter. That's exciting. You guys will definitely love the kit that Sydney over at Simi Cakes donated for our giveaway. If you're not familiar with isomalt, isomalt is a processed sugar basically that holds up a little bit better than just a standard granulated sugar. And so it's what we use oftentimes in the cake industry and just the sugar world in general to create anything that is going to be clear. So it's literally made from sugar. It's the itty bitty little discs and they melt down right into a container just in a microwave. And these are already like ready to use tiles. So you don't have to do any of the traditional prep that you normally would if you're just getting the granulated isomalt, which you actually have to cook down with water for several minutes. But in this case, these are already ready to go. So you literally just put them in the microwave for 30 seconds, you give it a little swirl, maybe another 15 to 30 seconds, depending upon how much is in your bowl. I'm actually gonna use these later. Are you using isolamt? I might use a few. That makes a much easier. I used to sit over It does. that giant pot. Right? Yeah, thankfully somebody else gets to sit over the big pot Yes, thank you. instead of us, which makes our lives again faster and easier. You know oftentimes, so many of us are doing this as a business rather than just a hobby. And so time is of the essence. So anything that we can do to save time and of course save a little money as well is certainly what we're gonna try to do. But Simi isomalt is fabulous. I love it, it's one of my favorite products out there for any type of sugar decor. Awesome and Anne, I'm getting questions around what you're dipping your fingers in and why you're doing that. This is shortening like Frisco and it helps prevent the Fondant from sticking. If you put too much, though, it can break it apart. So you don't wanna put too much, but I usually kind of rub it on my hands or on the surface of the table. In the winter, I tend to use a little more of it and in the summer, I tend to use a little more of the powdered sugar or corn starch because it's so humid out. I'm just mixing colors right now to see what color I'm gonna make 'cause I'm not really %100 sure. So the nice thing about these fondants are that they're all very concentrated colored and that's one thing if you're doing marshmallow coloring, marshmallow fondant at home and you want like a really saturated color, you are gonna use a lot of gel color like black, red, it's a lot. I always get questions, how do I make it red? Well, it's red gel color and lots of it. So the nice thing is you can kind of mix and make new colors with the already pre-made colors. I think I'm using all the bags, sorry. Go for it, there's plenty more. And how did you guys apply the molding chocolate without smoothing out the texture? Oh, so if you missed it, all I did was ever so gently wrap it and I just used the side of my hand just to smooth it out. You don't have to push. I think that's one of the bigger mistakes that people make when either applying modeling chocolate or fondant to their cakes, they feel like they have to really push. And you're just trying to glide over the surface ever so slightly. Think of trying to just, you know, gently massage your palms together, ever so slightly. You don't want to indent anything, you just wanna ever so slightly be pushing a little pressure to adhere it, not to smash it in there. So that's how that lovely texture stays put. It's also how you prevent any indentations and dents like disfiguration within your fondant, especially on corners of your cakes. Yeah, light touch. Almost everything we do in cake decorating is very light touch. All right, how many cakes do you have covered, one? Uh-huh. Okay, shoot. I'm not too far behind. Don't worry, I don't even know what I'm doing here. I'm just playing mixologist over here. So we'll see what happens. Okay. Not 100% sure what direction I'm going in. I still don't know yet either. But at least we know bright colors. Bright colors. I don't know. When I think of glamorous, And organic. I think either like all black or all white. I know, it's a problem. It's a tricky one for me. And how hind the seam? Well, I have it out here. So it's a little, you can definitely see that there is a line here, but all I'm doing is using my finger and just sort of doing a circular motion to rub it together. The other thing that I did is I cut both. So I overlapped both pieces of modeling chocolate first and then I cut seam vertically so that I could get rid of, if you think about that seam being right where my finger is attached to the rest of my hand, I cut evenly through both of those. So I basically sliced the fingers apart and then I just moved them back together. And so it's a nice, easy way to just get that seam to blend. But this is also gonna be the back of my cake. So you're, you know, you're not going to notice that. The other thing that you could do is make this, if you have like a plaque or you know, you're gonna have a cascade of flowers, you can cover those seams with other decor, so. Yes, there's always a back of a cake. There's always a back to your cake. Yes. I love Connie's comments on here. I'm with Connie. She says, "I'm so impressed with how well you can talk and create at the same time." Connie says, "I would be a total spazz if I tried to talk." We're spazzes on the inside right now. I think it's coming out of us too. Oh for sure, for sure. It's just like anything else you do over and over, right? Right. You get used to it, that's for sure. They definitely are enjoying all the tips though and they're say they're learning a ton watching you guys work in the moment here. Oh good. Oh, decisions, decisions. I know. So sometimes it's hard to achieve a color you want because food coloring is not the same as regular pigment that you would use like to paint. So for instance, like the black fondant has a lot of purple and green undertones to it. So you sometimes have to kind of counteract those with like, yeah. I'm stealing it. Like if you wanna make a gray, you need to add some yellow to the black in order for it to not look like lavender. So that takes a little bit of practice. On the Satin Ice website, I know they do have a color guide that you can pick like the different colors to get whatever color you want and kind of shows you how to do it. How much black you planning on using? All of black, no. Not a lot. Okay, so I can use most of this and you won't be mad at me? No. Okay. I just need a little. We have a little packet. If you need that, you can have the little one. Thanks. I'm teasing, I'm not gonna use it all. All right, did you pick colors, Anne? Well, I'm kind of going with, I think we kind of like a peacocky tealish kinda color. Okay. And then I'm gonna do some gold, white, and I'm thinking of splashing in there some like burgundy, like bright burgundy, like a bright, not like dark. Think of like a bright. A bright burgundy. And then of course a little blush. Well they did ask for bright colors. So you're on the right track. And then maybe a little bit of like aqua. We'll see, we'll see. Okay. How about you? Right now, I'm sticking with black and white. Okay. Yeah. I haven't decided my accent colors quite yet. Okay. If all goes well, it will be purple. Okay, you do love purple. So one of the things that you need to do with fondant, when it first comes out of the bucket, it's a little firmer. You really just need to, they say it's called conditioning. So conditioning your fondant, which really just means kneading it a few times to make it a softer texture. So you can see now that this one is really soft and smooth. I can imprint it better where this one is just, it's much firmer. Takes a lot more pressure to get through. So if you're struggling with your fondant when you're rolling it out, just be sure that you're conditioning it properly. You certainly can overwork it as well. So you wanna just bring it right to that point where it's nice and soft and pliable, but not getting so soft that it becomes gooey and stretches and rips and tears. And what are you rolling all that with? Powdered sugar, corn starch? So it's gonna depend a little bit on the location that you're in. If you're in a super humid environment, you wanna be able to use a little bit of cornstarch 'cause that's going to absorb the moisture a little bit better. If you are in, we're in Minnesota right now and it's winter time. So it's on the dryer side here. We could use powdered sugar very easily and not have any issues with humidity. When I'm in Colorado, I only use powdered sugar. It's very rare that I will actually use any type of corn starch unless I'm working with gum paste and gum paste is a product that just dries really hard. It's what we make our flowers out of usually. And so it adds to the drying process. It helps just move that process along a little bit better. And it looks like you guys are really kneading that. How hard is that to knead? And like you guys both have a second career as masseuses. You gets some big guns, I gotta tell ya. It's not so much that it's hard, it's that I'm mixing colors. You have to really mix it well to get uniform or you'll getting like a little striation, which is fine if that's what you're looking for, but it's really just putting your body weight into it for me, that does help. But if you don't knead it enough, when you knead it, it sort of activates the elastin that's in there. So it makes it stretchy. So if you take the fondant right out of the bucket, it's hard, you know, it's brittle and fall off in little pieces sometimes. So you have to warm it up in order to get it to do what you want. And I rarely use cornstarch either unless it's extremely humid. Sometimes I'll make like a cornstarch mixture. I'll add a little more cornstarch to the powdered sugar. But I find that it's a little too drying. Also if you're working with like black and you do put powdered sugar down and you get it all over, I get that question a lot. Yeah, working with deeper colors, even blues, reds, deep purples, anything that's a real dark or bright color, you can see just a little bit of powdered sugar just from my rolling pin is kind of getting stuck into the fondant itself. And there are some tricks to get that back out. But if you overdo it, it gets really hard to get rid of all of those marks. So I'm not using any powdered sugar. You'll notice I'm just working on this silicone mat. This is actually a great mat. I love using it because the fondant doesn't stick to it. You can see, comes right up, but it still rolls really nicely. So what are you pulling out over there, Anne? Do I need to come eat that stuff? 'Cause it looks like it's gonna be wasted. What are you picking out? Oh these little pieces? Yes, can I come over? So, you don't wanna eat this. You don't wanna eat it? Somebody was saying this was so good. No, it is, but not this part. Eat some of this. Okay. Eat some of this. I just want it 'cause everyone says, what does it taste like? Would you recommend I eat it? It tastes like marshmallow. Yeah. I like sweet. Sweet marshmallow. There you go, take a little bite. Sometimes they're a little bit of hard powder sugar in the fondant and that's what I was pulling out at the top sometimes. It's actually pretty chewy. It is chewy, yes. It is, it's kind of like chewing gum. So when it dries, you'll see like later on, some of the pieces we make ahead of time, it gets, it gets hard. Almost like a wafer. So people who like icing or frosting, would love this. They would love this, yeah. 'Cause I could see, I'm a sugar person myself. So I'm not one to pick the sugar off the top of the cake. I like to eat it all. Have you had, I might be dating myself, circus peanuts, the candy? Like it's like a marshmallow and it's orange and it looks like a circus peanut. That's what I try to describe fondant as because it has that like marshmallowy texture just like a circus peanut, but it's super sweet and you know, it's tasty. It sort of melts in your mouth. Yeah, very good. So we find it's like an art project over here. Yes. I just had a change of heart. I didn't like that color. So I'm just tossing it. Right. That blue was so pretty. Yeah, I'm gonna use it as an accent, but I don't want the whole tier of that color. So a lot of people were asking like, if you make a mistake, how do you save it? So I put it back there and you can always use that on another cake. I'm gonna use it for some decorations on the cake. And how long will it stay good in a plastic bag like that? A long time, yeah. As long as you keep it sealed really well, you'll be good. All right, I'm going back to my little hole. You can come visit us Can I take this any time. with me? Yes you can. I'm having a moment of. Uh- oh, are you reconsidering your choices? A little bit. It just isn't, it's not appearing in my head the way it is in front of me. Uh-oh. It's all right, it'll be all right. I'll make it work. Can the fondant be saved if it's over conditioned? Yes, just set it aside. Let the fondant just come back to room temperature. Sorry. Sorry, I'm gonna set that back here for you. And rest it, yeah. Yeah. and just let it rest. It probably, you know, depending upon how overworked it is, usually what's happening is you're overworking it just by the heat of your hands. And so it's melting some of those sugars and the other products that are within the fondant. And so you just need to let them come back to room temperature again and you can use it. No, don't throw it away. No. And you can always save it. And you can always use it for like little decorations. Maybe it's not suitable to cover a cake with. Yeah. But you can always panel. You can panel using fondant. I usually will roll out a long piece and put it on like a pizza board or something and throw it in the fridge for a few seconds or the freezer and let it get really hard and it doesn't stretch as much. Anne, we can't really see what you're doing right now for the cake is position. So maybe you could, there you go. People were saying they couldn't see you rolling. Sorry, I'm just changing my color choice because I'm having a little, a moment. So usually, we don't just do this on fly. Usually, Yeah, usually we know what colors we're using. we draw a picture or, I come for the color palette, so I'm a little... So one of you is using our wooden rolling pin and the other one is, what is that? Is that PVC pipe? This is PVC pipe that you can get at Home Depot. And it's cheap and it's durable and it never chips. There you go. And it makes covering the cakes easier for me because... Can you travel with it? Yes, I put it in my suitcase. I didn't even get pulled over by TSA or anything. Although fondant is a different one and I will tell you a funny story. You know the story, right? I think I do. Sorry, Jesse, my husband, Jesse. One of the "Food Network Challenge's" we did, it was out in Denver and my fondant did not arrive at the hotel like it was supposed to. So I asked my husband to go to my shop and get some fondant and bring it 'cause he was coming out like the next day. So he went and I'm not sure what the thought process was, but he thought it was a good idea to take the blue bags, big 20 pound buckets out of the bucket and tie it with the black X of a duct tape and then put it in a black duffle bag, okay, and then try to check it. So within fondant is glycerin, you know what else that's in? Plastic explosives. So the plastic explosives detector went off and they were paging and paging and paging him and he had his earphones on and he like literally was like removed from the airport and brought into a room Oh my gosh. and they confiscated it and I'm screaming at him, just eat it! So they confiscated like $300 worth of fondant. Oh my gosh. It does actually, it is an issue, I know fondant getting across border sometimes because of these reason. Right. Customs that sometimes gets held up. So we I actually had a question about whether they contain glycerin and then somebody asked about vegetarian options. I believe this is all vegetarian, isn't it? Yeah 'cause it's. I think it is. I'm pretty sure it is. I'll look real quick for you just to be sure. It's not a gelatin. It doesn't say. It's kosher. So I don't think there's animal product in it. Yeah. Oh, there it is. Gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free and vegan. There you go. Perfect. So covers all the major allergies. Okay. I don't have enough. I'm not doing stuff right here. You're very ahead of me. Uh-oh. I'm talking too much. No more stories. Things change very quickly. No more stories. Especially in cake competitions. Things change very quickly. Fair enough. That is true. I did make Jesse a Mr. Potato Head cake that year for his birthday with a detonator on a fondant bucket. That's awesome. And if you know my husband, he's like the most unassuming, you would never think he was someone that would carry explosives. Which makes it even more funny. So for the person who asked about one smoother versus two smoothers, you've probably noticed I haven't actually picked up my second smoother at all. There are most certainly moments when I don't use two smoothers at a time. I'm also not going for that perfect square look at the very top because we're going for a more organic over geometric shape, I am gonna round my corners just a little bit with the fondant. And so one of the main differences that you typically see with a fondant cake versus a buttercream cake is fondant cakes have that nice rounded edge. Buttercream cakes tend to have a really squared off edge just from how you remove the icing with your spatula. You can certainly achieve a squared off edge on a fondant cake or especially on a paneled cake like I did earlier. But yeah, either way works. It's really a personal preference, but I haven't grabbed a second smoother. So you can do it. You will have to have two. Yes, you can do it. So we have another question and I'm wondering, Anne, especially with you and marvelous molds here, Yes. maybe you might have an answer for this, but somebody looks like they're trying to do elephant skin with fondant. They're trying to do it or trying to get rid of it? I have no idea. You might be talking about the elephant skin that has happened on part of my cake. Oh, sorry, this is where Is that what the question is? This is where the non-pro over here. Yeah. Yes. She said, need a tip for elephant skin for fondant. Yes. Yeah, it's okay. I thought maybe somebody was somebody was decorating-- We got you, we got you. I thought somebody was decorating and wanted to make it look like it was an elephant. That would be cool too. Yeah, I mean, if you want it to look like elephant skin, it's very easy to do with fondant. So the reason that that that came up is because so on this side, I actually-- Here's some black for you. Thank you. Thanks. On this side, I didn't have to stretch my fondant quite as much to make it over the edge and then down my board as well. Over here though, what you'll see is what they call elephant skin. And that just simply means that the product was overstretched and overworked. And that's because you can see right here, I don't have a whole lot of, oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, no, it's okay. Here. Let me move this so people can see. I don't have a whole lot of excess fondant down here. And so I was really stretching and pulling and trying to get more fondant to come and that creates a little bit of a cracking and what people reference that as is elephant skin. But there's a quick, easy fix for it, so... I'm learning so much. Yes, see? You just take a little bit of shortening, doesn't take a whole lot. I like to put a little excess in my palm and then just make sure that it's on your fingertips and all you have to do is rub it into any of the cracks that have formed. And you may say, oh my gosh, it's looking like really shiny. And you're right, with a little bit of shortening, it is gonna look a little bit shiny, but give it a little bit of time and it will dull away. On a lighter cake, like a white cake, if it's too shiny, you can just go in with a little bit of corn starch and a pouch and it takes the shine away really quickly. Powder sugar or cornstarch works there. And would you use a similar technique to fix holes and things as well? Yeah, absolutely. So my main go-to whenever I have elephant skin or any type of hole is to use shortening just because it's a product that we have in our pantry and readily available. If it's a really big hole, you may end up having to make a product called gunge. And that is simply taking a little excess fondant and a little bit of shortening together, kneading it either with your fingers or on a mat and this, at this point, you want it to be gooey like toothpaste consistency. Let me see what I have going here. We'll find a spot to be able to fix. And it looks like maybe a few folks lost their video feed. So will you guys just give us a quick update kind of on where you're at? Because some said that they just realized you put black over your texture layer there. Uh-oh. And somebody else said that they didn't understand if it's black fondant or chocolate modeling. So this is black fondant and this is over just a buttercream cake. I put my textured cake away and then we are, so this is my bottom tier with black. And the process that I'm doing right now is called mending. And I'm just using what we call gunge and gunge is simply a little bit of shortening and a little bit of the color of fondant that you're using, mix together until it forms a paste, similar to a toothpaste, not super runny, but also not fully pliable. And you just mix that together and then you just take a flat, either a spatula will work or whatever fondant tool you might have and you literally just rub it in wherever you need it. Always work in one direction. So I know it's probably a little hard for you to see in that bottom edge, but that's where I had a big hole. So I've got a little bit up in here too. And so when you put the gunge on and you smooth it over, all those cracks just disappear. I hope you can see that on camera. Sometimes those tiny little details don't show up on camera, but I hope that you can see it. I can see it and it works. Thank you, Anne. You're so welcome. I'm here for you. So we have one question from Jackie and I like this one 'cause this will be good for me too. What is one tip you would give to someone who is brand new to baking and hasn't had a lot of good experiences making cakes in the past? That is a good question. I say, first of all, get a good recipe. Get a classic cake recipe that is not too soft, not too, you don't want them to poundcake necessarily, but you don't want anything that's too spongy because it's a lot easier to ice I think when it's a little firmer, wouldn't you agree? Oh yes. And practice first getting that down and getting your buttercream made and you know, take steps because I think people think that they can just do it all at once and then they fail and then I give up. So you know, make a goal of just baking a really good cake and squaring off really well. And then once you get that set, then move on to trying the fondant and fondant is not easy at first. Everyone is terrible at it. Like literally I taught so many people how to do it and they tear it and they stick to it. It's not, you know, it just not easy to work with at first, but it actually is. It's just, you need to get used to it. Yeah and one of the other things I will say is and this is from experience as someone who started on the east coast with baking, I grew up in Ohio and then moved to Connecticut and Connecticut is where I really started baking cakes. And then after six years of baking cakes and mastering all my recipes, I moved to Denver, which is at elevation, which means I had to rework all of my recipes. And what I can say to you is don't be afraid to bake and bake and rebake and rebake and try it again and change a little something. Oftentimes it takes a few tries to get it right. And sometimes, it's an ingredient issue, sometimes it's a mixing issue, sometimes it's just adjusting for altitude or humidity, those types of things. But don't give up. Just because you bake a cake once or twice doesn't mean you've mastered making cakes. It really does take several tries at doing something like anything in our life, it takes several tries to be able to get it right. I'd also say sort of what you were saying before about the pans, you need good tools. Yeah. I mean, listen, she iced it with butter knife, it can be done, but make it easy on yourself. You know, get some good tools. If using baking pans that burn the cake, get rid of them, it's just not going to work. So I don't know that I shared that story fully. I mean, I know I sort of mentioned it. I feel like you should. But you guys, so we are never working under the most ideal situations when we're doing things like this. Competitions especially that are filmed live, we're not fully prepped. We fly in, maybe our cakes are baked. We still have to ice them, fill them, whatever the case may be. And that was the case last night. I was filling cakes and I had come to the studio to get spatulas and mixers and everything that I thought I needed and I got back to the hotel and I realized at nine o'clock at night 'cause I'm a procrastinator, I work best under pressure. I realized I did not have my beloved offset spatula. I think this is going to become something that just stays in my pocket at all times now, but I did not have a spatula. So I was literally icing all six of these cakes for us to use today and laughing-- The guilt is setting in. The Catholic guilt has got me. This isn't to make you feel guilty, Anne. I literally had no idea what I was going to do. I had a straight edge, which is what I would normally use to ice my cake, but I always put it on with my offset spatula. My icing goes on the cake, I get it all in the right places and then I come back and I smooth it out. I am in an extended stay with a kitchenette with forks, knives, spoons, and butter knives. So I went with it. I used a butter knife, I got all my icing on there, I used my straight edge for the sides and then the butter knife just kinda wasn't doing anymore so I switched to this big, long chef's knife to clear my top. So you know, you can work with equipment that isn't intentionally made for what we do, but it really is so much easier just to have the right tools made for the process that you're doing. Good point, which is why we're giving away some of those amazing things today. Yes. Yes. Have you ever had the experience of like going to a party and like the mom, it's like friend of yours and she's like, oh my God, I screwed it up, come help me. And then you see this cake and she gives you like, like a butter knife and you're like, uh, do you have any sprinkles? Right? I have a quick question from Evon. She wants to know how thin or thick you put the buttercream on before the fondant? So you can see, I'll turn this just a little, hopefully I won't ruin your icing. You want a fairly good coat. So on the top, I easily can go with a quarter inch of buttercream just on the top edge. And then that outer side really depends on how much room you have between your board and the cake itself. So there's always a cake board at the bottom. And then I would say there's anywhere from maybe an eighth of an inch to a quarter of inch of buttercream on the outer edge as well. I use my baseboard as my guide with my straight edge like this in order to be able to smooth it. And so it really depends on how much room is in between the cake and the board. And oftentimes, you can cut that off and continue to make space for a buttercream. It just depends on if your cake shrink or you know, oftentimes many of my flavors kind of do different things, so they don't always shrink. But it's gonna vary a little bit. I can say this, we actually have a couple of classes on Creative Cake Design where you can learn exactly how much buttercream to put on and how to put it on and how to smooth it and how to get these nice crisp corners on the top of your buttercream cake. So we actually have several free videos for you over at Creative Cake Design to be able to learn lots of information about cake and of course, some of our more advanced lessons, there is a fee for some of the classes. There's a monthly membership that you can subscribe to and when I say it's like crazy cheap, I'm talking literally like we have a discount running right now, I'm pretty sure it's $5 for the whole year. Wow. So that's like a steal 'cause most of the time for cake websites, you're spending at least anywhere from 10 to $20 a month usually to be a part of a website like this. So I do encourage you to pop over and check out our website and get that deal because it's not going to last long. All right. Anne. Yes. Where you at? I'm doing my last one here. Okay, whoo. I think I need to do one more cake as well. So what color did you pick? You have pink and you have, what was the other one, teal? It's like a teal. Pretty, okay, back in the fridge this one goes. Well while you're doing that, I'm going to make an announcement once more here that we're gonna be sharing the winner of the second giveaway, the Simi Cakes Beginner Isomalt Set in about 10 minutes. So if you haven't already entered by leaving a comment in the chat letting us know what your favorite part of the live competition is, please do so now. We wanna make sure you're all included before we randomly pick our winner. Also make sure that you check out the Creative Cake Design and our free videos. What time is it? Got me. Can we get a time check? Yeah, it's about 11:12. Oh 11:12, oh boy. You've done a lot in a little over an hour. Have we? If I wasn't talking so much, I have a whole lot more done, I think. I know, me too. Or if I knew what the heck we were supposed to be making, I could be a whole lot further too. I know, part of me is also going slow 'cause I don't wanna get to the point where I actually had to do something. Right. One thing I will say also is you'll kind of see me washing things. If you are gonna color a cake in white and black, you wanna do your white first obviously because the colored fondant will stain. Sometimes even on your fingers, it will come off on the white. So just keep that in mind. Yeah, that's a great point. And you'll notice we both did our white tiers first and then I moved to black. She moved to her darker colors. So-- I should have done the pink first, but-- Probably but I think you changed your mind in the middle of the things too. I did, that was the problem. And if you're making specific colors for an event, maybe you're matching an invitation or something, whatever you have leftover, you keep it, and then you can use it on another cake. Just make sure you wrap it really well. So fondant really needs to be covered. It dries out very fast as you guys saw sort of just the process of me rolling this out and covering the cake. My elephant skin was really more because I was stretching it just way too far, rather than it drying out. But that process can happen. The elephant definitely happens if you let it sit out too long too. So be careful with that. See how much less I'm working with my PVC pipe and she's going in right there. 'Cause I'm not using powdered sugar 'cause I don't want to get it all over my black. I'm just lazy I guess. Oh now, now. All right, I'm just a little, so it will actually move under there. The bottom is fine, just not on the top. And one thing that was mentioned earlier, we definitely get a workout rolling fondant. It does take a lot of pressure, a lot of stamina in order to keep rolling and get this where you need it to be. If you struggle with any of that, you can always cover one tier, go make some decorations, do something else, then come back and cover another tier. And there's always ways to kind of space that out so that you're not overdoing it and overworking yourself. Yes. You kind of like premade all your colors so ahead of time and then take a break. Oh yeah, that too. Well it's always nice if you're gonna color your fondant, especially deeper colors. It's always really nice to color that the night before if you can just so it has a chance Yes. to stet back and kind of come back to room temp and a be conditioned properly. And the color kind of changes sometimes doesn't it? You know when it sits. It does yeah. Certain colors can start to fade with time. Oh yeah, you definitely want to keep the fondant out of direct light. We've had times in the summer where we were decorating like a pink cake and the sunshine was coming in so strong and through the window that by the end of the day, half the cake had faded and we actually had to refondant the whole thing. So you definitely wanna be careful of that and there's certain colors that are more prone to that, like blues and purples. Yeah, blues, purples. That's when I go to a fix rather than redoing it. I just do a light color of airbrush over it if there isn't a whole lot of decor that's going to get covered. Okay, last cake, Anne. Okay. Will the fondant covering, will it be hard by the time one serves the cake? So I generally keep my cakes in the fridge so it does not get hard. If you were to let them dry out in the air, they will get harder. Not hard, it's so easy to cut through, but not as chilly as you just had it. I mean, I know in Europe they cover the cakes with marzipan and then we'll cover it with fondant and they leave it out. Fondant is a preservative. So you can actually keep a fondant cake out at room temperature for quite a while without going bad. Well, you guys both seem to be getting pretty far along in your process. So maybe we should make this a little more interesting. Oh God. I'm think we should ask the viewers to poll on whether you guys should keep your cakes or swap. No, God. Please no, really? So let's put our answers in the chat. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're working with very different color palettes. Be kind guys, please. Really? So what do you guys wanna see? Should they swap cakes or keep decorating their own? Awe damn it. Go ahead and put your answers in the chat. We will tally all those responses and they'll let us know what you guys would like to see. Clearly we did not know this 'cause we did not coordinate our color palettes, so. No, not at all. Oh boy. Like all the tiers or just a single tier? Yeah, I feel like all the tiers is a little aggressive, guys. Oh no. See, you guys made me so nervous, I just screwed up. Oh my gosh. Maybe that needs to be a second poll then. Me too, I ruined my cake now. See, it's okay. If you, if you screw up, you just need to take your fondant back off, reknead it, and you can roll it out again. And put it on again. You guys got me so nervous, I pushed way too hard. So do we want to ask them about whether it's all the tiers or just one? God. Or do we wanna leave that up to you guys? Yes, that's a good idea. No, we should not leave that up to us. 'Cause they say yes, we can just give each other one tier. That's true, good point. Oh mean, I don't wanna switch any of them. Yeah, but it could be fixed. Like you can easily paint this with black for instance. That's true. You'll be happy to know some people really wanted to see your like visions come to life. Yes, thank you. Okay, so then maybe We'll see what the we don't swap, maybe we final answer is here, don't swap. but some are really feeling for you guys. They're like they're working so hard this. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that would be just so mean guys, come on. How do you get the coloring off your hands? Natalie wants to know when I'm watching you two, like are your fingers stained for weeks after this? Sometimes, but I'll show you a trick in just a second. Hang on. It's okay. Well, these guys are really nice to you. Are they being nice? Are we not gonna have Yeah, we'll see what it comes. to switch? There's there's some good. Okay. There's some good back and forth banter happening online. It's a good thing you guys can't see the chat. Okay, so I'm just using a little bit of Windex. That's like my big sparkly friend. Windex. Oh really? To clean fingers? Now you have to be careful that you don't use this all the time because it really will dry out your hands, but you can get most of the color off. We have a second bucket of just water. So I'm making sure I'm rinsing as well. And I didn't spray my palm, but most of the color, like the surface color has come off. It does take a little while, especially deep colors, like black to fully come off. I used to put grain sometimes on my hands. Oh. Or lemon juice and sugar. Actually what really works is that whitening shampoo. Oh, interesting. Yes. I don't think I have explored that. Yes. Usually when I'm working with deep colors, especially if I'm coloring the fondant, not necessarily when I'm using a black fondant that's pre-made but when I'm coloring fondant, I almost always wear my gloves. Sorry guys, I'm spinning in circles. You guys have me reeling over here about possibly switching. I know, me too. The whole back of my cake is screwed up. So if you get this one, this is the back. Maybe we only switch one tier in the end and it's not the top tier. Yeah, usually wear gloves. That's my best recommendation to you and of course we have gloves but who's got time right now? I don't have time. Too much going on. No, I don't, I have a hard time with gloves. I don't feel like I can feel I'm doing very well. Yeah and remember if you're not gonna use gloves, please make sure you were cleaning your hands with soap and water constantly. Yes, obviously. Don't touch your face and pull your hair back and then go back to cake. Make sure you're staying very clean. and using cleanly kitchen processes in order to keep everyone safe. Yes. It looks like Lynette also has used OxiClean in warm water and that takes the color right off for her too. Oh wonderful. Very nice. It's a good tip. And I have other people who are still lusting over the Fat Daddio cake pans behind you. So we should mention that there are still three more sets that you can win. There are three more sets. In fact, I think that might be our next item up, would be another set yes. of the cake pans. But you're not getting any if you make us switch cakes. Yeah, I'm keeping them. Anne and I are gonna split them. She gets the even, I get the odds. Just kidding. You make us swap, we're not sharing. So are these ones the three inch deep pans again or are they different? There are two sets of three inch and two sets of two inch cake pans. So let's flip it up. I think the first time we did the three inch. So let's do the two inch cake pans this time. Okay, perfect. So in order to enter to win, all you have to do is leave a comment in the chat box to tell us what your favorite part is about this live sugar debate and the winner will be selected at random from all the submissions in the various chats and we will announce the winner by 12:00. Who won the Simi Isomalt Beginner Kit? Oh gosh, did we not even mentioned that? I don't know. I think I only remember Michelle, but that was pans, right? Was it Michelle? We didn't. I didn't get the winner. I'm getting ahead of myself here. Oh gosh, here we go, I'm sorry. The winner for the Simi Cake, what was it? I gotta go back. It's a beginner Isomalt kit from Simi Cakes and Confections. Isomalt kit, okay. The winner for that one is Dina Stoner. Congratulations, Dina. Congratulations. Congratulations, Dina. I'm getting so wrapped up in the process here, I'm forgetting to do my job. Yeah, us too. Please forgive us Dina. If you are still with us, you are the lucky winner, congratulations. Simi Cakes Isomalt Basics Kit. Is anybody else sweating like we are? Yeah, it's warm. Oh my goodness. I was thinking it was chilly over here. I'm not rolling fondant. We're getting our workout in. Meanwhile, Jodi's just snacking and relaxing. Yeah, you guys are gonna tap out too. Do we need to do like a tag team sorta deal? I can roll. As long as you tag team in for Anne. Oh thanks like, she's like, I don't want her, Anne. Sorry, Jodi. You can come over here Jodi, it's okay. Clearly with my elephant question, I got demoted. We do love you. You don't make switch cakes, you can come over here. But how cute of a cake would that have been if somebody were to design one with actual elephant? Yes, yeah. I've done 3D elephants. Maybe that's how you save a cake that has those issues. You turn it into an elephant. Yes, there you go. See? See, brilliant. She's here for a reason. Not just a pretty face. That's right. There you go, okay. Okay, so I took my time with this one we still haven't been told 'Cause you're waiting to hear? if we're swapping. I'm still nervous, don't get me wrong, but this one went on so much better. Very nice. Oh my gosh, okay. Well, I'm waiting for the results to come in here on whether you're keeping our swapping. Oh no. We'll have our team poll that together quickly here and send it to me. Let's see here. Is the buttercream on the cake soft or hard when you put fondant on top? That's from Natalie. It is hard and it is not frozen by any means. You want your cake to be cold. So typically what I do is I bake all my cakes in one day, wrap them really tightly, let them sit in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning, I will fill and ice them and let them sit in the refrigerator for the rest of the day. I tend to go back and do a final coat of buttercream that evening just because I like to be able to do all my buttercream in one day, so that I'm not making buttercream twice. And then on the third day is when I go in and cover with fondant. And so these cakes are cold. They have been sitting overnight in order to set up and chill. If we were to do this with a really soft cake, you would not get crisp corners, you would not get straight sides typically. You can, it's just much harder because every time you put any pressure on your cake, you're moving the buttercream underneath the fondant. So for me, I don't know about you, Anne, but when I'm doing a sculpted cake, that is like a dog for instance, while generally everything is pretty firm and set up for shape, I actually really love putting a fresh batch of buttercream, like on his face, for instance, nice soft buttercream, put fondant over it, and then I move the buttercream underneath the fondant to kind of shape his you know eye sockets and those types of things. Yes. So there are instances where soft buttercream is key but if you really wanna get a nice crisp, clean, sharp, straight edge, cold buttercream is the way to go. Well the results are in, ladies. They're nice, but they're not that nice. God damn it. Is this good for us to have you switch right now? Does that mean you don't have to finish cutting there, Rachael? Oh I'm cutting this. I'm gonna make it pretty for Anne. Well that's very nice. So I think we're swapping you guys. We're swapping. All of them? We didn't ask about how many tiers, so. Okay, this one. I'm trying to decide if you guys, will you sweat less if we only do one tier? Yes. Just look at Rachael, she's like no. I can do whatever. I'm already sweaty. I'm already sweaty. I would sweat less. Anne, I'll let you pick. You're my guest of honor for this very first competition. Yes, I pick one tier. You pick one tier? And you like the bottom, middle or top tier? To show your skills, it might be better if you guys switched them all. Shit, oh, oops, beep. Fine, fine. Sorry. We can switch them all. All right, we'll switch them all. Oh my gosh, okay, this is gonna be exciting. You might have to refondant the top tier. Thanks. All right. Just toss some decorations on it, it'll be fine. You guys will be great. Sorry. Okay, all right, we'll do it. Oh man. You're a pro. Do you want me to tell you what it's gonna do so you can do it? No, let's play fair. All right, I'm gonna try Oh gosh, to turn yours into mine. what am I looking? See, I'm so flustered, I don't even know what I'm looking for. This is very stressful. It looks like a bunch of the viewers have had the opportunity to see you guys do different things or attend some of your classes. Where are some other areas that people may have seen some of your work? Oh, would you like to go? Sure. Yeah. I did have a very prolific website. However, it is not up anymore because my husband is taking it down. I am on Facebook and Instagram. I've been on Food Network and TLC "Cake Off" and lots of magazines and I don't remember all the things. Okay, yes. And Craftsy. So if you are a part of Craftsy, you absolutely know both of us from Craftsy. We both have many classes on the Craftsy website, we encourage you to check them out there. You can find me on Creative Cake Design, you can find my actual work on episodes of "Food Network Challenge", the pages of Brides Magazine, Martha Stewart, all sorts of different publications. Most recently you have probably seen me as a judge. I turned in my chef's coat to be a judge, which was awesome on Hulu's newest show called "Baker's Dozen", episode four. But check them all out because they're all pretty amazing. And I also was a guest judge on "Buddy Versus Duff" in the most recent season, season three. So you've seen me a lot of places. I love what I do. I know Anne loves what she does. We are gonna be all over the place hopefully soon. And yeah, come check us out on all sorts of platforms, but especially Creative Cake Design. It's my little baby right now. Don't tell my little boy. Your actual baby. Yeah or my dog. Or your dog. Don't tell my dog. The real baby. He'll be real upset. I'm getting some serious backlash from the viewers. I think I'm going to be voted off the island for making you guys switch all your tiers. Oh good. They're like, you are so mean. This is so mean. Oh Jodi. This is very mean. I'm just the mouthpiece, everybody. Do you want this one out right now or shall I put it away? No, you can put it away. Okay. I'm about to ruin your beautiful tier here. Are there any instructions you have to give each other as you swap here? Well that was one of my questions. Are we supposed to adapt our design we were gonna have to what we have working with now, or are we just supposed to go with what we have and change it? I think that's up to you based on what you want to do at this point. I do love your color scheme though, I will say, Anne. Thank you, thank you. I like your three color. Don't get upset at what I'm about to do to your beautiful tier here. Oh man. You don't wanna move to all black? It's bright, it's very bright. Well I was sticking with the glam. I know, I know I hear you sister. I'm not mad. Okay, good. I'm mad at them out there. I just kidding, guys, I'm not. I gotta rethink everything now. Oh man. I know. They're not sure if that, you know, I think the thing that they're getting upset about is that they don't understand where your visions were going. So maybe you can share what you are going to do What we were gonna do? Okay. and then we can see where you guys land. Is that gonna skew though, us? Well, that's true. Maybe we'll take our visions to the new color scheme. There you go, okay. That's a good idea, yes. Right? We can try to do that. So we'll do the same design but with the new color. With the new color, I like it, okay. Okay. Oh brother. Oh la, la, la, la, la. This is not how it works, people. No, it is not. This is not how it works. Just so you know. Ah brother. You did say they'll be twists. Well I knew they'll It is keeping you on your toes for sure. be twists. I still agreed to it for some reason. Plus you know, this is four hours of live viewing here. We gotta keep it interesting. True, that's very true. We clearly know you both are very capable of doing beautiful cakes. Well sure, especially when we know what we're doing with them. Yes. So we add the challenge of you answering questions and talking about what the sponsors are giving and swapping cakes and we're not asking much. Well I don't know about the viewers and maybe this is a quick poll kind of question just out of curiosity, I think it depends a little bit on how new they are to the cake world but I, so I personally am a self-taught decorator, meaning that I really only took a handful of classes via Wilton at a local craft store and the rest I've sorta just played and learned on my own. Some people, Anne, having gone to culinary school, which is a wonderful option as well. But what I'm getting at is, you know, 15, 20 years ago, when I started getting into decorating more seriously, I was excited to be watching all the "Food Network Challenge" shows and that's where I was learning a lot of my techniques. Not because they were talking to us about it, but just watching them on TV to see what products they were using, how they were using and what texture they were putting on, how they were assembling their cakes. Where they're using dowels or straws or that sort of thing? So the bonus to this particular live event is that you get all of it in one place, which is super exciting for us because I know that Anne shares the sentiment of loving to express our passions and share our knowledge with all of you. So it's kind of a fun scenario where we get to teach and compete and sweat at the same time. But yeah, I don't know. Is anybody else out there like learning from all these cake shows on TV or are you taking classes? What are you doing? And there are a lot more classes out there than when you and I started, that is for sure. Yes and there's a lot more products out there. We didn't really have a whole lot of products readily available to us 20, you know, 15, 20 years ago when we were first getting into this. So you guys should all feel very lucky if you're new to the cake world. There is so much more out there for you. I still haven't pulled out your cakes, I'm really dreading this. I'm really dreading what you're gonna say when you see what I'm doing. Oh no, I'll be okay. Maybe you guys can share your visions for your original one we reveal the final? Oh yeah, we can do that. Good idea. Then people at least understand like where you were going and how you switch gears based on the challenge. I think that's fabulous. I think that's a good idea too. Okay, good. And I'm just gonna announce one more time that Dina Stoner was the winner of the Simi Cakes Beginner Isomalt Set. We haven't heard back from her yet. I know they've reached out so that you can claim your prize. So Dina, if you're still with us, please make sure that you respond back to our team so we can get you that amazing giveaway. Do you still have some of your pink fondant? Oh yes. Let me use that. It's this one. Okay, oh. You need to patch it? That's your top tier, right? Yeah. Okay, or my top tier. I just, give me more. I just added gold and a little more white. Oh it's okay. I'm gonna use this. You know, you guys are working very collaboratively together right now. So I think, I think this will, you guys are gonna be able to make this work and if for some reason you do feel like somebody needs to keep a specific tier of their original cake... She's backtracking. Uh-oh, I think she's feeling the guilt. I'm just saying, I'm gonna leave it up to your creativeness. Okay, thank you. Based on what you need to do. Okay. I don't want you guys to sweat. Oh, we're sweating. What are you talking about? Don't stress, it's supposed to be fun, right? Oh, it's definitely fun. And I think one of the best things that I have found out of all of the cake shows that I've competed on is I have made some of the best friends that I have ever had in my life just by being on a show and competing against somebody else. So, you know, a lot of people shy away from competition and that's totally fine, but I thrive under a little stress and competition myself. So these are great situations for me to put myself into. But I think what I love about it most is just getting to meet all the other people who really love and share the same passion and, you know, you become friends for a lifetimes. Yes, I agree. And the thing is the cake world is pretty small. So when you can find people that you can talk to about things that they understand, it's kind of exciting. Is very exciting. And the black, more black. Oh great. Oh that's really pretty. Is it? Yes, it's gorgeous. I love the mixture of colors, it's really neat. Oh thanks. I tried to put my color back on your cake. So much for having a white cake. Bright, let's color it black. Oh Rachael. There's nothing wrong with a black cake. No, I like a black cake. I was going glam. I think they're stunning, I love them. So you're getting some responses to your question, Rachael. Teri says, I learn from shows, following different cake artists, I use recipes and tweaked from Pinterest, as well as vintage family recipes, all sorts of ways that she likes to incorporate the various things. She loves watching all the competition shows. Let's see here, Catherine says, "I watch baking shows, read, and still don't do much actual decorating, but I really enjoy watching it and seeing the wonderful end products." I'm with you, Catherine. Looks like Yvonne has taken some live cake classes before the pandemic. And Lynette says, "I make cakes for fun, but have learned quite a bit from watching competition shows. I'm now taking some classes to learn more advanced techniques and it's part of why I signed up for premium with Creative Cake Design." Woo-hoo! We should have a bell that we ring any time someone tells us Yes. they signed up. Do we have something that sounds like an oven ding? Awesome Lynette, we're happy to hear that. I'm channeling your purple, see? Ohh. All right. I'm cutting out some floral appliques just to get, I don't know. When I think a glamorous, I really think of flowers. So that's my plan. I love how we're both trying to make the cake back to what we had before. I like how the pattern is showing. It's actually really cool. So it looks better on your cake than mine. So thank you. Oh, you're welcome. Is this like a water color technique here, Anne? Yes. It's pretty. So my original plan was to do this to my bottom tier, but it's actually cool 'cause I'm getting the relief of the-- Is it color alone or did you mix anything with that? This is gel color mixed with some grain alcohol. The grain alcohol dries, evaporates very quickly, which is good because you don't want your cake to stay tacky. You can also use vodka, but the grain alcohol just dries quicker. It's a super high proof, it's flammable. So watch out, Anne. Thank you for that tip. You're welcome. I will not light anything around it. I'm gonna stay over here. Okay. I don't think I have any sources of fire. So I think we're safe. Oh, I'm pretty sure we have a torch somewhere around here. Well we'll keep that away from me. So yeah, big joke in the cake world is that you'll always see cake decorators with a big jug of vodka. Oh yeah. And people are like, oh, you're drinking that? We're like, ha, ha. I did one time, I had it in a water bottle to travel and I don't know how it wound up on my table, but I took a giant swig of horrible, warm, Oh no. terrible vodka. Oh no. I like burned for like days. I think you guys are gonna earn a drink after this. Oh that's happening. Oh the things we do. How about that one's on me. Maybe I'll get back in the good grades. I see where you're going. I don't know about you, but, so I'm not a big drinker. I do enjoy a casual beverage, but I will say that I had a cake, don't worry, it was just for a friend, not a client, that I was really stressing over, I was having a rough day, nothing was going right and I stopped to have dinner with my family. It happened to be Mexican and I decided, you know what? I'm gonna have a margarita. Oh God. I'm just having a rough day, things are not going my way, I'm going to have a margarita and it'll just be okay. And after dinner, I went back down to keep decorating because I needed to finish it. And let me just think things went a lot smoother. I was not judging myself nearly as much and it got done pretty quickly. So maybe alcohol during a competition is a given. I don't know, maybe not. It's like pool or darts, You just get better when you stop thinking about it. Yes, exactly. Except not even you like swift dots. I do have a cool question here from Natalie. I'm not sure what she's making here, but it sounds really yummy. She said, "Can you put fondant over Rice Krispies or do you have to put buttermilk over the Rice Krispies, buttercream, excuse me, over the Rice Krispies first?" I can answer this, Anne, do you have a question or do you have an answer for this question? Go ahead, I do, but I wanna hear yours. So that's what I was gonna say. I have done it with an without buttercream. There are certain items that we create that look really great with that, like dimpled texture that Rice Krispies give. I have a tendency not to use buttercream a whole lot. I actually use chocolate. So I use melted chocolate and cover my Rice Krispies because it fills in all of those gaps really nicely and it doesn't get wet and like move. So when I was using buttercream on Rice Krispies treats, I felt like they warmed up really fast, unlike cake. And I felt like the buttercream just started to move underneath all of the fondant applications that I was doing. So I switched to just using white chocolate and I personally think it works really well. I don't know. Yeah, I usually would use for the most part modeling chocolate. Oh got it, yeah. And then like if we did like a dog head or something, we've kind of sculpted out. Sometimes I put buttercream on top of it a little bit, but the same thing, sort of what you said. I think it depends on what you're covering. I think if you're doing, we also found that we made our Rice Krispies, we would not add as much-- Always much marshmallow or? As much butter. As much butter? 'Cause then it stays harder. Oh yeah, yeah, stickier. And it we'd leave it out to dry so that it'd be like hard to eat and then you can actually cut it and almost like, stand it down, yeah. Shave it, yeah, yeah. It looks like Pamela just joined premium as well. Yeah, Pamela. Go Pamela, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Said she got into baking, watching all the competition shows, but her neighbors get the benefit of all of her work. Oh sweet. She says she mostly has done cookies because she hasn't yet found a gluten-free recipe she likes probably for the cakes, huh? Yes, yeah, gluten-free cakes are really tricky I have to say. Anne, you can probably speak to this a little bit better. Just I know that you are gluten-free as well. I am gluten-free and I would tell you, it just all comes down to the flour mix. There are quite a few good ones out there now I would say. The cup for cup is a great one and you literally just use your regular recipe and use the flour in... Instead of, you know, cake flour or all purpose flour. King Arthur's gluten-free is pretty good. I noticed that some of them are better for cookies and some of them are better for cakes and you kind of wanna try it with your different recipes. Sometimes I will reduce the amount of flour slightly, maybe by like 20%, just because the gluten-free flour is a little bit heavier. It can sometimes dry out the cake a little bit. But I do also find that things that have a lot, cakes that have a lot of moisture in them, like chocolate or you know, extra sour cream or something like that, it usually works really well because it makes it a little bit more moist. It looks like Danielle made her first cake without a recipe when she was five. Anne, you might be able to relate to this since you started baking at six. Yes. She said, the only problem was they used a bit too much baking powder or soda, she can't remember. She said her next one was great. Unfortunately, her family didn't encourage her, but she recently got back into baking because her husband loves it. Awesome. And she just joined premium as well. Yay! Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Don't give up. I wish my husband loved sweets more than he does because I think that was part of the reason why I didn't. His mom was a big baker but because you know, one, I don't want to make all this and have it sitting around for me to eat. Right. So if you don't have somebody at home, that's going to enjoy it with you, you kind of have to resort to handing it out to the neighbors or whoever. Yes, yes. When I moved from Connecticut to Colorado, again, I had to go through the whole process of redoing all of my recipes for high altitude. I was still working as a physical therapist. And so I literally all weekend long, I would bake and I would bake multiple of the same recipe and then I would take that to work on Monday and everybody had to vote on which cake they liked best. So I had like three lemon cakes all lined up. They all had to sample it, they all had to tell me their favorite and that's actually how I ended up developing most of my recipes once I got here or to Colorado. And yes, I was very loved by all of them until they all were like, okay, no more cake, where we're done. Yeah, there's a lot of chatter around gluten-free. It looks like Amy had a recommendation. That Jules gluten-free flour is the best that she has a lot of success with that. That it's a good one too. I've used a lot of them I have to tell you and I noticed that again with, depending on the recipe, a certain flour sort of work better. I would just recommend don't give up, buy a bunch, make the same recipe with a few different flours and see which one you liked the best. King Arthur does make a gluten-free cake mix too, a chocolate one, it's actually not bad if you aren't feeling up to the homemade. Awesome. Ooh, I have a winner for our third giveaway of the Fat Daddio's cake pans. Janet King, if you are listening, can you please, we're finding, it's probably easiest to ask you to email us so that we can arrange the handoff for you. If you could email us at social@creativecakedesign.com, we will make sure that we coordinate that prize for you. Janet King, please email us your information, social@creativecakedesign.com and I'm going to do the same thing with Dina Stoner, who was our last winner because we still haven't heard back from her. So if Dina, if you're on, if you can please send an email with your contact information to social@creativecakedesign.com, we will make sure that we get those prizes to you. Awesome. Looks like Amy has another tip here. Country Crock butter sticks are amazing. Ooh, For baking and buttercream, almond milk and coconut milk for blends. Yum, I like that idea. That works for me. I actually prefer almond milk or coconut milk in a lot of my recipes because it just adds another layer of flavor. Something you don't really get with just a straight up milk. I think I'm going throw our next poll here as well. Dear God, there's more? Another one? Don't worry, I don't think there's another swaparoo in the mix here. That would be amusing. That would be really mean. I think Rachael would punch me in the face. So our next poll is to ask our viewers whether they would like to incorporate the decor of flowers or figurines into the cake. Oh boy. Please be nice to us. So flowers or figurines? Flowers, figurines are not glamorous. Again, please type your response in the chat box. We will tally all of those and let you know what you decide. So one little trick when you're painting, paint that backside is something that get like what color it might be, so that you know what you're doing before you put it on the front side. Just a little tip. It is, I did that on your cake just now. oh, excellent. I guess now it's my cake. Yes, you did that on your cake, okay, not on my cake. I did that on my cake not on your cake. Oh man. I'm a little disappointed you didn't pick purple for my current cake. Well you know, I was actually going back and forth between doing the middle tier like a deep purple, but then I thought you were gonna do purple. Well I was gonna add some purple decor, but. I do have these colors over here though if you'd like to use them. So I have a random question for you ladies. Yes? Just curious when you are, when people come to you to make cakes for special occasions and things like that, do you have a whole process you put them through of questions to better understand what they're looking for or do you find that they primarily just say, we'll leave it up to you? You do what you think is best. How much of that process do you guide and how much of that is kind of determined for you? So I will say that when I was first starting out as a cake designer, I had a lot of questions for my clients. I really utilized all of their information to be able to design their cake. I think as I've grown and develop my own style and my own look to each of my designs, people now come to me because they want my creativity and they want my input on what they should do with their event. So it's not that I don't ask them questions still, I do, it's just that they're not coming to me, sir, would you mind helping me with this? It's not that I don't ask their input, I certainly do, but they're really looking to me for my guidance and my input and my creativity. And so I still ask all those questions, maybe some hot water? I'm not sure. Sorry, guy, little pink thing that I can't get open. But yeah, I think a lot of times the questions that I'm asking are really revolving not only around the wedding or the event itself, but really about the couple, you know? What they're like, how they met. You know sometimes we're incorporating different elements of their story into their cake. And so it's important to really have an understanding of who your client is and what they're looking for when choosing a design for them or designing a cake for them. But yeah, full, full rundown of questions, all sorts of them. All right, well... Where to go from here? So one of the things I am gonna do is actually color over top of these, but I do want some of the pink to show through still. I don't want to just layer this in all teal. So the color that I'm using here is actually a teal dust with a little bit of grain alcohol. And then I'm hoping to add in a little bit of white edible food color and that will give me less of a translucent appearance and more of a true paint. I guess I could use this too. You can also mix in gel color or there are some really great paints available on the market at this point, a handful actually. Right, I'm gonna go with this 'cause my strong gentleman's taking too long. Okay, I have some helpful information here for our viewers. We've been having a lot of folks ask if the video will be available for replay and it will, it will remain on the same page as they are viewing from right now. So Creative Cake Design, Craftsy, and the Creative Cake Design website. So if anybody wants to even come back and rewatch it again for some of these great tips that I know they're all gathering today, that would be a great way to do that. Oh, and I also have the answer to our last poll question. Oh jeez. So we asked the viewers to let us know whether we should incorporate the decor of flowers or figurines into the cake. Rachael's worried about this. Please flowers, please. Answer is flowers. [Rachael And Anne] Yay! Okay, we're back, they're happy with us again. Thank you. Thank you, yay. I was like, you got pretty far with your flower making there. You would have had to this scrap it. I would probably still use these because I am the type of person, I do not like to make things and then not use them because there's so much There you go. time that goes into this, whew. Now, if they're in smaller little pieces like that, will they stay just as well in a Ziploc or does it have to be kind of a bigger mold? So this will absolutely stay well in a Ziploc for a long time. I am intentionally letting them dry. Wet fondant, the surface of fondant when it is a little sticky, it tends to make the paint, um. It doesn't adhere quite as well. So it's kind of like painting on a wet surface rather than painting on a dry surface. Painting on a dry surface just tends to hold a whole lot better. It doesn't bead up on you. So I'm intentionally leaving these fondant floral pieces out so that I have a nice dry surface to paint on. But yes, you could absolutely put them in a Ziploc and keep them soft. This is where we need, like the "Jeopardy" clock. ♪ Doom, noon, noo ♪ Where is? There it is. Sorry, found it. You really just have to call out to your tools every once in a while. I don't know about you guys, but when I can't find things, the first thing I do is just ask somebody else, have you seen? And then it's like right in front of me and I find it. On one of my Craftsy things, I like literally spent like, 'cause like the producer said they wouldn't help you. And I spent like five minutes looking for my knife that was literally right in front of me. And I was like, oh, and they're all laughing. I'm like, can we edit that out maybe? So one of the other little tips that I'm gonna give is this is just a straight pin on, it's one of our tools, but it's a straight pin and I am just sliding it into my fondant decoration so that I then have something to control it with without putting my finger on and smashing the decor. So that's just a little trick of the trade. I'm using all of the bowls, I'm sorry. Do you need some bowls? There are lots of bowls, I'm good. okay. I've used the bowls that were here. If you need one, just holler at me. I'll be okay. I'm using the piping gel that exploded in your suitcase, yeah. Oh yeah. So just to be clear for any of the viewers, I don't know what I'm doing. Whoops, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm playing with some wafer paper. Excellent. 'Cause you can never go wrong with wafer paper. And one nice thing is that it sets up quickly, not like gum paste that we could just make this with gum paste, but it would take a few days to dry and this will be ready now. Ooh. Ooh. That looks glamorous. Does it? I think we can all take our own take on glamorous, right? Like my seven year old daughter's idea of glamorous would be very different than mine. That's true. I tend to be very quiet when I paint. There's something very soothing to me about painting. so sorry I agree. if I'm not talking. They probably like, would the two of you shut up? We could talk all night long, FYI. We really could. Well maybe this is a good time for us to take a quick little break. Okay. So why don't we do that to allow you guys to continue to work a little bit. We're gonna take a short break. We'll be right back. It'll be about five and a half minutes and we encourage you to please enjoy some free instructional videos with Rachael from Creative Cake Design, which is your online resource for all things cake, where you can find everything you need from basic instruction to advanced techniques. We had three different winners that we've announced already and when we come back, we will announce our fourth. So stay tuned and we'll see you in about five minutes. Hi everyone, I'm Rachael Teufel and I wanna share a handful of tips and tricks with you, working with fondant. Fondant is one of those things that can be really tricky but if you follow a few easy steps, I promise it will be much easier for you to use and you'll make gorgeous cakes. So the first thing with fondant is that when it comes in it's package, it's pretty firm. It's almost rock hard and it comes packaged in just a little bag of some sort to keep it from drying out. And you can tell even just pushing on it, this is really hard. So my recommendation is to knead it first. You really need to get this moving before you're gonna be able to roll it onto your cake. So just start by cutting off a small piece. You wanna keep it manageable, you don't wanna work with too much at one time and always just twist up your bag so that it stays airtight for you and then break this into a couple of pieces. Now you can see it's really firm, I'm putting a lot of pressure on here. So I wouldn't be able to roll this out really smoothly if I didn't knead it first. So I like to just get some small pieces and then squash it up a little bit and you're gonna use the heel of your hand and push straight down on the fondant and then roll it back on itself and push again. And then I'm just gonna set that aside for a moment and squeeze the next one. You definitely get your arm workout when working with fondant. Again, just squish, rotate it a little bit, push your palm back down again. And then I just start all a nice little pile. Push, turn and squish again. Very technical terms here. Okay and then when you have a few pieces, what you wanna do is actually just kind of put it in a little bit of a log and you're gonna do that same process of kneading. So you're gonna bring your palm and fold it back on itself and then just push. And you just wanna continue to do this and this is just a way of sort of warming up your fondant and getting it ready for what it's going to do in the next steps, which is usually rolling it out and covering your cake with fondant. But you can't skip this process. Okay, so now our fondant looks nice and smooth, it's pliable, you can squish it and move it and do whatever you need to do with it. Is a very different contrast to what you see coming straight out of the bucket of fondant. So that's how you knead your fondant and now this would be ready to go for rolling out and placing on your cake. Hi everyone, I'm Rachael Teufel and I wanna share a couple of tips for you in regards to storing your fondant, which is one of the more important pieces when dealing with fondant. Fondant will actually dry out very quickly. It can get a crust on the outside edge. So once you have prepped and kneaded your fondant, if you're not using it right away, it needs to get wrapped up. So my best recommendation for you is if you have room in the original bag with no other fondant inside of it, just pile it all back in the original bag, squeeze out all the air and tuck it away. But if that's not an option 'cause you haven't kneaded it all, all you need is a little bit of plastic wrap as well as a Ziploc bag. So just take a nice long sheet and what you wanna do is cinch this as tight as you can. So I usually start on one end and I fold it over on itself, pushing any of that air out. And then I'm actually just going to pull back on it, tighten it up and just roll it. And this way, all of the air has been cinched out from around the fondant and it won't allow it to dry. Now this will definitely hold, even if you're just gonna use this a little later after kneading it within a couple of hours, but if you're going to store this long-term, you really need to get it into something that has a little bit more protection. So any sort of plastic bag will work. And again, cinch it down to one corner, try to get all that air out as best you can. I like to just keep folding it over itself and that sort of works the air to the top and then just make sure that your Ziploc bag is nice and tight and sealed and then you can just leave this out. Again, if you're gonna use this within a day or two, totally fine just like this. You can also store it right back inside of the bucket because this is also going to eliminate a lot of the air that can kind of come in and out. Just make sure this is sealed nice and tight. So that's how you wanna make sure you store your fondant to preserve it, so that it'll last a little bit longer. Welcome back to the "Competitive Cake Duo". We hope that you enjoyed that video, we are back. How are you guys doing? Feeling the pressure. Are you? Time is ticking away. It looks like you're making some more progress though. It's amazing what you can do in five and a half minutes and run to the bathroom all at the same time. So what are we doing right now, Rachael? I am just painting some of my floral appliques. I'm trying to utilize some of the other colors that are in the overall cake design and try to tie each of the tiers together. So that's my thought process. Nice. And are you still working with some watercolor technique here, Anne? Yes, so I'm water coloring my wafer paper and then I'm gonna make these little decorations with them. I'm bringing the black and then some of the other colors that I used on that other tier. So hopefully and a little bit of gold, it ties all together. Really pretty. I'm hoping everybody can see what you're doing on the paper there. Beautiful. I'm gonna make my way back over to my desk and leave you guys to continue the creative process. I'm gonna see what our chat is doing here and if we've got more questions from our viewers. Looks like our mics were maybe on for a little bit during the break. Uh-oh. Oops. It is live TV, everybody. No surprises here. Well, good thing you didn't take yours to the bathroom. Oh thank goodness. Good God, it's all everyone needs to hear. Oh, here we have a question from Judy. How does wafer paperwork? Okay, so wafer paper is a very cool little tool. You can do so many things with it. You can make flowers out of it, you can make ruffles out of it and you can make these cool sail things. If I had some more time, you can like what I'm doing basically, but really wet them with some piping gel and water and then you can kind of mold them and it looked like very fluid, but you have to let them dry over night or put them in an oven. I'm just using them to make these little triangles right now that I'm going to use as decoration. But they're very light and airy, much lighter area than you would get from anything else really. Yeah, it's a very unique texture compared to a lot of the sugar products that we traditionally use on cakes. You know, most of our decor is made out of modeling chocolate, gum paste, fondant, sugar, and so there aren't a whole lot of translucent type materials that we use and wafer paper is one of those that works really well for that. Translucent, that was the word I was looking for, thank you, yes. Yeah, translucent, yeah. The isomalt is really great for translucency too. Oh yes. That is true. But it is a slightly more challenging medium to work with because it's hot sugar. You have to be really careful. Yes. So some people shy away from utilizing isomalt because of that factor, but you can still get some great, great techniques. Yes. Well this might be a good time for us to announce our fourth giveaway, which is a baked out go, which is from Bake Deco and with a Fat Daddio turntable. Is that correct? Oh, nice one. Yes. So for a chance to win, definitely leave a comment in the chat box and tell us what your favorite part of this live cake decorating competition has been so far. Our winner will be selected at random from all the submissions in the chat on Creative Cake Design, Craftsy, Facebook and YouTube. And we will announce the fourth winner by 12:30 and just a friendly reminder before the break, we had winners, Michelle, Dina and Janet. So hopefully you three have connected with somebody from our team and have made arrangements on how to collect your giveaway, awesome. Yeah, the Fat Daddio turntable is quite nice. It is made of plastic, but it's pretty heavy-duty still and just has a very lovely spin to it. I for one do not like icing my cakes without a turntable. It really makes your life a whole lot easier. So if you're thinking about which tools you might wanna invest a little bit of money in for decorating, it really is a turntable and some good offset spatulas, a nice straight edge. That's gonna help you just really achieve a great look with your buttercream for all of your buttercream cakes, as well as your fondant cakes. What she said, yes. I was gonna say you're lucky you had the turntable yesterday 'cause I've had that problem where I don't have a turn table and I'm using like a bucket and it is much harder. Yeah, it really, what's interesting about icing a cake in buttercream using a turntable is I actually use the turntable more than I use anything else because it just helps everything glide smoothly and flow rather than trying to force your icing into certain areas. So yeah, it's a huge help. I mean, you're painting or decorating a cake, it comes in very handy. Yeah. Piping borders on cakes, a turntable is super helpful. You know, when you're doing small stuff like this, maybe not so much, unless you're doing like a cookie for instance where you're piping a lot of different colors or even, you know, painting a cookie, even something like this, I really could paint with this on a little cookie turntable but because I can't really touch the edges otherwise I'll, you know, make it a little misshapen, the turntable wasn't an option for this particular style. I would guess that several of these tools are probably things that people could request as stocking stuffers for the holidays. Yes. Oh yes. Yes, a lot of it is not expensive, like Rachael was saying. And at the craft store, they always have those 40% off coupons. You can get a lot of them. And even a lot of, we use a lot of clay tools in cake. Yeah. So think outside the box, really anything that you think would be cool imprint. I mean, a lot of people, we use the cover of the, cover of the big light. Oh yeah, yeah, that. Gee, it's like a quilted pattern and we'll use that as an imprint mat. It looks like Natalie is getting creative for the season. She said she is making a center piece of Christmas presents made from styrofoam and then covering them with fondant. Ah, very cool. Nice. So she's not using cake because they will sit out for several weeks. But she's wondering if you have any concern with the fondant holding up being out for that long? And as long as it doesn't get wet Yes. or the other issue is any direct sunlight where it might cause it to heat up too hot and melt or lose color. So just try to keep it out of direct sunlight and you'll be good for months literally. Literally yes 'cause all of our display cakes would be out for years Yup, yeah. and just use shortening to cover the cake or something. Don't use butter, obviously, because it will go bad. Yeah, styrofoam, to put fondant on styrofoam, you do need to get it either wet with water or piping gel or shortening, one of the three options just to allow the fondant to stick to it. You don't wanna put buttercream underneath it or anything like that though. That will go bad. The other option for all of your supplies. So I know you're still holding out to see if you've won the Fat Daddio's turntable but if you have downloaded the coupon book, there are amazing coupons in there for you guys to be able to purchase whatever you would like. I know specifically that Baked Deco has a 15% off coupon for all Fat Daddio and Satin Ice products, I think minus the big, huge 10 pound tub of fondant. But you know, if you're looking for that turntable, head over to Bake Deco, take a peek, get your coupon and you'll be good to go. I am almost done painting, Anne, almost. It looks great. Thanks. It's actually kind of, kind of fun that we switched cakes. You're not totally out of the woods, people, but I find it fun because it's kind of fun to see what you're gonna do with my cake. Well yeah, and I had big plans for that black and white cake but I know, and I'm totally ruining it, so. It's not black and white anymore, so. It's gonna be hard find you. Lauren just made a comment online. She said, Anne, you made her remember her pottery classes in college. She's like cake decorating and decorating a clay pot are very similar. Very similar. Yes they are. It's funny because I dabble in fashion when I'm not here moderating things like this. Moderating, okay. And I see a lot of overlap in this too with color and textures and patterns and just the creative piece. Tons. And then you talk about Rachael with your questions for incorporating people's personalities and things into the cakes you're being hired to create and so much of that is similar for me as a wardrobe stylist, I have to ask a lot of questions to get to know them. Oh, we need to get with Jody. Yes we do. You know, I may be extremely fashionable when it comes to cake, but for myself, I could use all the help I can get. So Jodi, we're gonna have to hook up after this. Well, it's fun. It's the creative process, right? It's just being able, I think that's why we can sit and watch this for so long even if we don't have skills in this area because it just stimulates those portions of the brain for us. Yeah, that's great. Oh, somebody is asking about the CakeSafe behind you too. Oh. We're gonna get to that. That's coming up. Stay tuned. Yeah. It's a lifesaver truly. If you've delivered any cakes at all, small or large, the CakeSafe is truly a life saving box for me. It allows me to take cakes to the top of the back roads of the mountains to get to the, you know, most of the time people think of ski resorts and they think of, you know, taking the ski lift up and there's a little mountain lodge up there and you can chill and hang out up there, which is great and then you ski down. But during the summer, we do a lot of weddings up there. And oftentimes, we are driving our cars up these back road mountain, like dirt roads with cakes in the back and if they are not protected properly, my first couple of years decorating cakes, I had no idea what I was getting myself into delivering up to the mountains and I did not have a CakeSafe and I can remember hitting a bump. There was a big, huge pothole in the middle of this dirt road up on the mountain side, Oh my gosh. Missed it completely. I had no idea, I didn't see it, but my car did not miss it. And I just, I remember hearing this like thud and thinking-- It's like a body. I really hope that wasn't the cake. And honestly what happened is the whole cake like bounce. I mean the whole car was bouncing. So of course the whole cake bounce and it came right up off of the box that it was in, it was just a cardboard box and the top of it hit the cardboard box and it was buttercream. And I just remember opening my door and seeing the slanted cake on top. And I just thought, oh my gosh, what am I gonna do? This is not okay. How do I hide a slanted buttercream cake? You can't fix that on-site, it's not feasible. And luckily I was able to cover it with a bunch of fresh flowers on the top and nobody knew, but that was like the turning point for me to say, okay, let me really seriously look at what options there are for transporting cakes. And CakeSafe was like the only option 15 years ago when I first started delivering cakes to the mountains. And I truly don't deliver cakes without it anymore. Even if I'm just popping down the street to drop something off somewhere, I always take my CakeSafe because he has a rod that goes right through the cake. It holds it center. You can tip your box 45 degrees, you put it on a plane, I do that all the time, and nothing happens to your cake, it's amazing. So if you are struggling with deliveries, the CakeSafe is the best investment you can make in delivering cakes. Well you're creating a frenzy here. Now everybody wants to win this. Well it is So it is that's coming up. You guys have to stay tuned. important. to see that we do that give away, but let's introduce our sixth poll question. Oh geeze. Wait, there's more? How many do we have? Well from what I understand, there's at least seven. So we're getting there. Oh my gosh. Oh Jesus. The six pole question is utilizing a technique. So we wanna know from our viewers, do you want hand painting or airbrushing? Hand painting, hand painting. We already did that. You guys both agree on that, huh? Hand painting for the win, that's what you say? I think we're both already doing that, so yeah. Yeah. Well let's see what the, we'll see how nice they're gonna be now. Maybe we shouldn't have said that. I can't wait to airbrush a black cake. You know, that's fun. Right? So please write to your answer in the chat and we will compile all of those and then let Rachael and Anne know what you've decided. Another fun twist to keep you on your toes, ladies. Oh goodness. Thank you so much. We don't need any more. I was just getting like, all right, all right, I can see this happening now, yeah. I have my vision. You guys were just getting resettled, huh? Yeah. Totally. You're footing again. Well, maybe they'll be nice to us again, Anne. Maybe. They were nice with the floral thing, but I'm guessing they're gonna They were nice. wanna see airbrush. Oh. Airbrush is boring. I was trying to sway them away from from the airbrush. I'm gonna airbrush my cake later anyway a little bit. So you'll see it. Oh yeah? Well some are getting specific. It's not only whether it's airbrushing or hand painting, it's colors they'd like to see. Oh. Oh wonderful. Oh boy. Do you guys wanna hear a funny story? Always. Always. So when I was pregnant with my daughter, it was the end of the night, like very late, and you know, we got a little slap happy as you would do when you worked for 25 hours in a row. Yes, hours on end. And my staff decided it would be really funny to to airbrush abs onto my pregnant belly with airbrush color. Love it. It was hilarious. Oh, that's fantastic. Oh, that's a lot of gold in that bucket, Anne, well done. Sorry. That's okay. Now, do you ever combine those two techniques together? Airbrush and painting? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yes. Oh wow, so either way, right? Nothing should be for not. No, I think it'll, I think whatever they choose is an easy incorporation I think. Okay. Obviously with kind of coming in with an idea of what direction I wanted to go, but then having you guys switch these things up on me, anything's possible. Well, they both been watching you hand paint here for a while now, right? Yeah, so that's why I'm, So they probably want some airbrushing. they probably want airbrush. They wanna get some That's okay. techniques and tips from you guys around that. Okay, well, I'm actually, I'm not gonna lie, I'm really excited about airbrushing because I found a really cool airbrush. Yes, it is very cool. So we travel in with a lot of our supplies and materials and we have to be very specific about what type of items we're putting in our bags and what we can carry easily. And normally, you have this like huge air compressor and a long cord and then you of course have your air gun and all your little paints. But I found the most adorable airbrush I ever, That is amazing. I need that. I am so excited to use this. So I kind of really hope you guys say airbrush. But even if you don't, I'm gonna use it 'cause it's too cute not to. But it's literally battery powered. You charge it, it's portable, this is gonna like make my life a whole lot easier. I wish I would have found it sooner 'cause I would have made them a sponsor and gave it away cause literally-- Maybe for next time. It's just, what, have you seen this? This thing is so cute. It's amazing. Who makes it? Like literally. What's the brand? I don't know. Well we'll find out. I'll have to post it at some point, but you just put your little paint inside this top cap. I just gotta get the cap off. Ooh, maybe it twists on so then it doesn't spill. Yes probably. Doesn't it pop off? They'll normally they pop off, but this one, oh, there it goes. Yeah, so you put your paint in the top and then you put your little thing on and boop, boop. I can't wait. So pick airbrush, I'm all for it. Can't wait to try that. Okay, let me pull out a cake and get these little guys on. What did I do with my modeling chocolate? Which tier? I think I lost it. Oh, it's right here. So we should probably recap all of the choices that or decisions that our viewers have made thus far that have been directing how this creative processes going. So that's the cool part about all this for anyone who has joined us a little later in the program here is that you guys are completely working on the fly and pivoting as needed based on the answers we're getting from the viewers. So how you as a viewer are participate is when we throw a poll question up, all you have to do is type your answer in the chat and then we will tally those and direct Anne and Rachael accordingly. So here are some of the specific polling results thus far. We asked you guys about style and you chose glamorous. We asked you about color scheme and you went with bright. We asked about decor and we went, was it organic? Yes, yes. Organic, thank you. I'm trying to remember all these now. Yup. Then we asked if we should be mean or nice and let them keep their own cakes or switch them up. And we made them swap, that's when I got voted off the island. And then we asked some more decor questions around flowers or figurines and y'all chose flowers. So this last poll was around technique, hand painting or airbrushing? So let me see if we've got any results coming in for this here. Okay. It looks like the answer is airbrush. Airbrush. Airbrush it is. Here's here's a good reason. One of our viewers, Teri said that just bought one and I don't know how to use it. That is a good reason. Oh. So this would be super helpful Yes. for you guys to show some technique around this. For sure, for sure. Okay, so one thing that you always wanna do when you're applying decor to a cake is look for your flaws and your imperfections and then cover them up so nobody knows. So I am-- What are you saying about my cake? Nothing, nothing, your cake is beautiful. My cake is beautiful now. No, that is terrible. Yeah, so I have a tendency just to kind of spin it around, take a peek, look and see if I need to cover anything up and then I will place, you know, a piece there. It just sort of depends on, you know, if you have a specific, thank goodness you guys picked organic at this point because if you have a specific design that you really need to follow, it's not as easy to do that. You can certainly plan for, you know, different areas of your cake to have decor. But if you're following something that's very rigid and you don't have the flexibility to kind of put things wherever, that makes it a little bit more challenging. See, I knew you'd like that. Oh yeah. I left the giant gaping hole in the back of the cake. Oh thank you, thank you, Anne. Have you made your Wow those are flower yet? so pretty. This is amazing to watch, especially for somebody like me who does not know how to do this at all. It's funny, we even have some viewers that aren't bakers. I know for instance that my husband Paul is tuning in. Oh, hi Paul. Hi Paul. He's like, this is so fun to watch you guys. He's like, I'm learning all kinds of things about baking a cake, decorating a cake. So when you get home, there'll be a cake waiting for you, right? Yeah right, I don't think so, I don't think I'm that lucky. Oh, come on, Come on, Paul. Paul, you can do it. Paul's gonna be like, really? So those do fold right up over the top, right? And you're push them up. They do, so again, this one's fondant, so it's not fully dried. And so it has that little bit of flexibility. And even if it tears or cracks a little bit, like those types of things are very easy just to mend and cover up. So yeah, they can absolutely fold over edges. I probably in a traditional situation not necessarily in a competition like this, I probably would have done the floral appliques out of modeling chocolate rather than fondant because they actually hold up a whole lot longer and they stay really flexible for a long time. The problem is I want my background to match what is already here. And so in this case, Anne covered her cake in fondant, which is great and works wonderfully. And so I wanted to use the same fondant color so that it blended a little bit better with the background. So my personal preference is modeling chocolate here but fondant absolutely works and it's not a problem. Do you ever mix modeling chocolate and fondant? I do that sometimes. I do, yeah. I like mixing when I have a deep pattern. Yeah. It just holds a little bit better, but still like, smoothes onto a cake nicely too. It's so fun to see the comments. They're like, I had no idea of where Rachael was going with the partial painting on the flowers but now I see it. But we do have a lot of questions around how you guys are attaching the flowers. Like what are you using to make them stick to the cake? So I personally, right at the moment am just using a little water because remember fondant, in modeling chocolate, fondant, gum paste, they're all sugar in its base. And when sugar gets wet, it gets sticky. So this is, well, this is actually a little bit of the fast drying grain alcohol. But what I like about it is because they're thicker pieces. I want enough alcohol to get on here and get wet and make it a little bit tacky, but I also want it to dry faster so that it doesn't slide. And so this particular grouping that I'm placing here is put on with a little bit of grain alcohol. So you can see like it's starting to slide right now 'cause there's too much alcohol on it. So if you just take that off, I'm gonna get just a dry brush, wipe that back off and then try again. So now it's a little tacky, but it's not wet just because it's the grain alcohol and now it will stay put. So you can use water, you can use alcohol, you can actually use a little bit of piping gel or gum glue. If it's a larger piece, you might need to use something that's a little bit more stable, like a white chocolate that is melted and then you use a little cold spray to adhere it. It just depends on how heavy your decor is. So each of the decor items that I choose to put on my cakes, I sort of have, you know, my go-to for attaching them as well. That tends to be just alcohol because it dries fast, but you know, bigger objects, they really need something that's gonna hold a little bit better. So chocolate, maybe even royal icing. And I often use an icing that's a made out of shortening and confectioners sugar and corn syrup. And I use that because you can take the item off if you put it on. See Rachael is much better at these things and she probably puts it on and it's perfect. But I put it on, I'm like, eh, I don't like that. So I wanna take it off. Now if I'd use, you know, something like piping gel, you're gonna have a big blob on your cake. So that can easily be wiped off, but it doesn't always hold as well. So it's kind of a, you might wanna go in first with like my kind of icing and then really solidify it later. It's a personal preference. Like I think so often a lot of people feel like there's just a set way to do something and with sugar, it's just not like that. There may be some general rules to follow, but I think that's why I like playing with sugar so much. And I literally say playing with sugar. I'm not working with sugar, I'm playing with sugar. This is so much fun for me. Like, it is kind of a place for me to just be creative and not think too technically, I guess is probably the right way to put that. It's fun, it's something that you get to explore with, you don't have to follow all the rules. Like I said, sure, there's some general rules that work really well, but you can always break the rules and try something new and different and see if it works. If it works fabulous, if it doesn't, it's okay. Try something new, try something different. Can we zoom in on what Anne is doing right there? We've got some viewers asking to see if we can get a close up. Oh, very pretty. I'm using Rachael's paint pallet as flower formers. And I'm basically, I'm using modeling chocolate just because it's going to set up quicker than gum paste and I'm just gonna make an abstract kind of fantasy flower. I'm just using circle cutter and I am, I'll show you what I do here. I cut it, I first have to roll this really thin. You really wanna have, when you're making flowers of any sort, you really want the paste or modeling chocolate to be very thin because it looks more realistic obviously, unless you're kind of trying to go for a cartoony look. And it's called the ball tool and this just, you can add a little ruffle to the edge. I need a little sugar on that. It kind of thins it out and gives it a little bit of a ruffle as you can see and then I'm just gonna kind of pinch the bottom together. And I'm just using these little forms just to give it a little shape so it looks natural when it's together and not flat. Normally I use bigger ones but I didn't bring them with me. So we will see how it looks. One thing I like about the cake decorating in general too, is that, you know, I love also all sorts of medium of art, obviously, I love to draw and paint. But the is that, I'm just like Rachael mentioned, our type A personality and when I draw or paint, I go back at it and I look and I'm like, ugh, I don't like that. And I'm like tempted to just rip it off and throw it away. And cake goes out the door or gets eaten. So you don't have to stare at it forever. So you don't have the chance to make a new one when, you know, if you really don't like the way it turns out, it's not just staring at you on your wall. Well, I have our winner for our fourth giveaway if we wanna announce that right now. Yeah. So this was for Bake Deco's giving of the Fat Daddio turntable and our winner for that is Danielle Nuun-Weinberg. And Danielle, if you would please email your contact information to social@creativecakedesign.com, we will be sure to get that over to you. So again, it's Danielle noon, none might be nun, N, U, N, N, hyphen Weinberg. Congratulations, Danielle. Yes, that's exciting. Yes. You're gonna love your turntable. So I know that we're sharing a lot of tips and tricks and you guys have lots of questions, which is fabulous. One of the places that is great for not just connecting with instructors like ourselves, but also with other people who are knowledgeable in the sugar industry is to join our Creative Cake Design Facebook page and it is a private page where we can go in, post some photos, ask some questions, get some tips and tricks. So it's a great place for all of us just to be able to connect and share and help each other, which to me is really all what this community is about. It's about learning and sharing and being able to pass on the art of cake decorating to anybody who wants to learn, but also to make sure that our craft continues to grow and that we all can be successful in making a beautiful cakes. So I hope you will join me over there. I will definitely be popping in to answer questions and post some things on my own as well. So if you're looking for some interaction, that's a great place to head. All right, I'm hesitating to pull out the airbrush quite yet because I don't want it to go everywhere yet. Oh, what color are you airbrushing? I was thinking I was gonna go with teal. Oh wow, do it up, girl. I know, like I'm not gonna hold anything back here. I will mention this when I airbrush at home, I actually use an airbrush box by CakeSafe. So CakeSafe has a lovely transportation box, but they actually have this really cool filter that has acrylic boards to it that sort of encloses your space. And it has a fan that basically pulls all the air that is in front of this box and it pulls it out through a filter. And so it catches all of your excess airbrush. So it doesn't go all over your kitchen and all over, like basically through your vents, into the rest of your house too, if you're baking in your own home. But it's a fabulous piece of equipment to help prevent the overspray of airbrush color. So I encourage you to pop over there and use their coupon through our coupon book and get that as well. They have a lot of great products. So I encourage you to check them out. I think I'm just gonna go for it. Do it. If teal gets everywhere, sorry. Well I'm using teal too. So it's cool. You sound very sorry. Yeah, I'm real sorry about this. Sorry. I blame all of you. Yeah, really. We were friends until the airbrush. Well yeah. Rosina was asking us there are specific airbrushes for cake and food use. Yeah, so there absolutely are brands that are specifically made for airbrushing cakes. However, any airbrush can do the same job. So don't feel like you have to specifically get a cake airbrush. Any airbrush will work. Just don't cross over your medium. So if you're gonna get an airbrush for decorating cakes, keep this one a food safe airbrush, only use food safe colors in your airbrush. I know a handful of people use airbrushes for makeup, which is really cool, but we wouldn't want to put makeup in this one and then rinse it out and clean it and then put food color in here. You don't want that kind of cross-contamination. So just buy an airbrush that's designated specifically for using it on cakes. Let's see. And most of them are big and loud. So this is very exciting. Yeah, this is really cool. So I think I mentioned a little bit earlier about the airbrush. This particular one is portable. When normally you have this huge cord and you just kind of wrap it around your arm and you can do, but you're limited to like a certain space. I am so excited about the portable air brush now and very inexpensive as well. Not nearly as expensive as a lot of people think, so. I need a little baby jar. Did you use all the jars? I used everything, I told you. Okay, it's okay. What do you need? It's all good, I'm good. Oh, to put your. Yeah, I'm gonna do a little test color here. Wait, let me find one. Maybe we have more. Oh, you didn't have to go get me a jar. Well they're not very small. But I used them all, I feel bad. It's okay, I'm good. Oh what about one of these? Wanna use one of these? She's so helpful. Again, the guilt. You guys work well together. Oh perfect. Here's a big bowl. Oh God. So there are colors, gel colors for decorating with fondant and coloring buttercream and all of that. And just like you would expect, there are actually specific colors made for your airbrush as well. And basically the difference, oh, I really should have put a glove on for that. Basically the difference between a gel color and a airbrush color is that the airbrush color is alcohol based. Allows it to dry very quickly, rather than a gel base, which is made from water basically. Now you can use grain alcohol with a gel color to create your own airbrush colors, it's definitely doable. I just find occasionally you end up getting some chunks of paint in there, clogs your airbrush, then you've got to take time to clean your airbrush out. So it's usually easier just to use straight airbrush color rather than using gel. And you could also use, not to interrupt you, I use a lot like the luster powders mixed with vodka. Oh yeah, luster powders mixed with grain alcohol works great too. Okay. Oh boy, let's see. Oh boy. Well, while you girls are working on that, let's announce our fifth giveaway. It's another set of the Fat Daddio pans. Too hard, pushing too hard. Pushing too hard. We did the three inch pans for our first giveaway. We did the two inch pans for our second. So what are we giving away this time, Rachael? For the Fat Daddio? Let's do the back to the three-inch again. Back to the three-inch, okay. So this will be for our three-inch deep Fat Daddio cake pan set. So in order to get entered for that giveaway, all you have to do is post in the chat one of your favorite things about the live event today. One thing I should mention about airbrushing is that don't be alarmed when you go home and blow your nose and it is all of the colors. All you people too out there because it travels. It does, it does. That's why I'm like hesitant to start airbrushing already because... It's all right, it's all right. we're all gonna end up with teal noses very shortly. But that's why I highly recommend the airbrush box from CakeSafe because it really cuts down on all of that mist that just goes right into the air and unfortunately up your nose. You could also wear a mask, I will say that. We're all sort of used to wearing masks these days. Very true. You can absolutely wear a mask if you wanna help prevent that. Alright and then the other thing that's important when you're airbrushing is first of all, you wanna make sure you have the right color before you go to your cake. So what I'm gonna do is put a little bit of color into the airbrush first. Not a lot, just a little, You wanna make sure you don't have any dripping because if it drips off the airbrush and onto your cake, there isn't a whole lot you can do. You can try to pull it off, but it's not easy to do. I'm gonna let that sit for a moment. And again, the turntable is your friend. So gonna bring my turntable in. And I'm gonna get a paper towel. So one of the ways to know what your airbrush color is gonna be is to make sure that if your cake is white, use something white to see what the color of your airbrush is going to be. If your cake is teal or purple or whatever other color, just to use an excess piece of fondant, roll it out and just leave it sitting so that you can have a test, a location, to be able to see what color is gonna come out. And there's a couple of different methods with your airbrush. We'll have a far more in-depth lesson on Creative Cake Design, but basically there's two pressures. One is gonna be just pulling down and that starts the air and then down and starting to pull back adds color. And then it's just a matter of, you know, keeping your airbrush at a certain distance away and that last piece that just happened there, that's called a spray. It's like an overspray basically and that's just because it builds up on your tip. I think I'm gonna take this plastic tip part off. There is a hole on it, which is great, but I think it's... I'm just gonna take my weight stuff over here. That's a good idea. That's the other thing you wanna do is make sure you don't have, like normally I would save airbrush for the very last thing that I'm doing and I would not have anything else sitting out because everything that's out right now is basically gonna turn teal. It is very true. It literally just puts a coating on everything. Are you using a Fat Daddio turntable by any chance? This is I believe this is a Fat Daddio turntable, but it's the low one rather than the tall one. I'm gonna put more in because I like my color. Sorry. Why you sorry? I don't know. No, don't be sorry. I always say sorry. Don't be sorry, I do too. I'm just curious how big your kitchens are at home. My kitchen pretty big. I mean to store all these tools and all these things. Oh well... I'm guessing you guys need a lot of space. Half of my stuff is in my basement and my mother's house. You too? So ma, if you're watching, I know. I'll get it out by January. That was the promise. I think it's not so much just about like how much storage you have, but being conscious about how much stuff you just have in general. Like don't overdo it. There's no reason to overdo it. Buy your necessities and you know, when you've been around the industry for 16 plus years like we have, you accumulate a lot of stuff that you don't need. So purge every once in a while. Very true. I suppose that goes for everything, not just cake stuff. That whole does it bring you joy thing? Yes, yeah. And the trends change, I was talking about that last night that you know what was in style five years ago on cakes was not in style anymore. Right. So you know, you can get rid of some of the stuff that you're probably not gonna use again. Did you say you have cakes that sit out for a years sometimes? Display cakes, yeah. Display cakes? So the foam cakes, yes. And is that, that's fondant? It's fondant, yes. Okay. So it can last a really long time, yes. Yeah, I have display cakes up on shelves in, well it was in my studio when I had my storefront, but there are a couple of cakes that I created that I just love and I can't throw away. So I actually have cakes throughout my home that I love and they have been there, gosh, I closed my studio storefront over five years ago and they're still there and they're still great. So they get a little dusty, you gotta dust them off every once in a while. But other than that, they will last as long as they don't get wet or too hot and the animals don't find them. That can sometimes be an issue as well. Well our viewers are really loving the interaction between you two and are taking away so much helpful information. So let's throw out our final polling question. Oh God. Oh, another one? I feel like this is going to be a fun one. Okay. Oh God. So the final polling question is, do we want these two lovely ladies to continue to compete or should we ask them to collaborate? Awe. Oh, that's so nice. It's so nice. I think you guys would like to collaborate. I think so. Oh sorry. But you kind of have some of your cake parts back. Yeah. yeah, well we can have all of our cakes bag, it's be great. So we need everybody who's viewing right now. How we gonna mix them together? I don't know. Your recommendations in the chat, do you want them Unless some of our elements to both of them. to compete or collaborate. And once you have done that, we will tally the results and then share them. We just gotta rethink everything again if, if they say collaborate. Oh yeah, all right. So maybe they'll just want us to, you know, throw down with each other. Everybody keeps saying, why can't they have both? Why can't we do both on everything? Both? They just wanna let you guys do what you wanna do. How can we do both? We did hand painting and airbrush. Yes. Was the only thing we didn't do so far is-- The figurines, which you both kind of went, erh. Not doing a figurine. Well first of all, I mean glamorous and figuring don't really match to me. Yeah. And also when they take time to look good. Yes, of course. And so for something like this, I mean, normally when you make a cake that has figurines on it, you make the figuring like far in advance, yeah. Well in advance. And I wanna mention once more because I see some questions here about signing up for the giveaways, our next giveaway is gonna be announced at one o'clock and all you have to do to sign up in the chat there is share one of the things that you're enjoying most about this live sugar debate today. And then we will randomly pull a name from all of our various streaming channels in the chat and announce a winner. So that's for the next set of the Fat Daddio cake pans. So definitely get your responses into the chat before one o'clock when we announced the next winner. How's that poll going? Yeah, right? We might have to rethink everything again. Oh brother. And they're the same sizes. It's not like we can stack them on top of each other. I know, well the only thing that I could think if we do have to collaborate is we could put a separator in between. So, yeah. Oh, it'd be really tall? Do we have separators? Well, we have cake boards that could serve as. Oh I see what you're saying, all right, and then we can Separators. stick things in there. We could cover it with stuff. We only have an hour, but. Right? Nothing like throwing it at us last minute, but. Yeah, we are nearing the one hour mark aren't we? Yeah. Yes, we're getting there. We're just gonna have to start assembling here soon if we are gonna actually Yes, we are. have cakes to show. Yeah, you know. I just want you to know that I ate all the fondant that you gave me. Do you have a stomach ache? No, it's good. Oh good. It's giving me the energy to keep going. My children sometimes sneak in. My daughter like eats it. I'm like, no, Piper, what are you doing? And she's like, nothing, and her like mouth's all green. Well, well, well. I'm gonna leave this for a moment. Don't use the airbrush until like clean it out if you plan to use the airbrush. I will not. I don't even know what I'm doing, I'm just-- Well, I definitely hit bright colors on the nail here. Yes you did. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't like what I'm doing once again. It's very quiet with anticipation. Well here, I'll give you some more questions 'cause they're coming in so fast and furious, I can hardly keep up. okay. One, did I miss the name of the work surface plastic area they're using? That from Bingo. That's the name of the guest. Oh, okay. Did I miss the name of the work surface plastic areas that they're using? So this is from The Good Cook and that is one of our sponsors and there is a coupon in the downloadable coupon book. So grab yourself an awesome mat from The Good Cook. I love it, it works extremely well. The best part about it is it already has measurements and things on it. So when you're rolling out fondant or gum paste or those types of things, you can literally just roll it right there and know exactly how long it is without having to pull out a ruler. And it's just nice, a nice surface in general to work on. Everything peels right off of it. It's fabulous. Amy had another good tip in here, can too, she says, "I give my kids the extra overworked fondant to practice sculpting and using the molds." Yes, I do that too. That's awesome. She says, "It's edible Play-Doh." Yes, I do that too. That's fun. It is fun. Creating little cake decorators. Oh yes, they are actually. They can both fondant a cake, which is pretty impressive. Does your son do it? Does he help you with it? He used to, yeah. He's 14 now and you know, Yeah, you're not cool. 14 and playing with Play-Doh isn't quite cool anymore. He's actually very creative and very much an artist and loves, loves helping me in the kitchen. He's super helpful. Oh that's cool. But usually what he does is arranges my stuff on my counter to say things. So like I had sticks of butter sitting out and he ended up just arranging them to say, I love you. It was so cute. Awe. So yeah, he's a very thoughtful kid, loves to do things like that. I thought that was going somewhere way different. Oh, well. So. It looks like we have an answer to our poll, ladies. Okay, what are we doing? Well, they've all been extremely complimentary of both of you and they say they collaborate so well. So that's where they would like this to go now, is to collaborate. Okay. So this'll be interesting to see what you do with all of these tiers. I have no idea what to do. Well do I tell you what I was gonna do and then you can tell me yours? Yeah, you tell me what you were gonna do. Okay, so. A good time to hear the visions. Well originally, I was going to paint that all different colors. Okay. And then the middle tier, I was going to do some splatter with some gold and do some of these geometric cutouts, but just like random, like, you know what I mean? Like little-- Organically rather than geometrically. And paint them a little bit to match. Got it. And then the top tier, I was gonna put a little bit more of the burgundy and then I was going to accent with these wafer paper things and some of these flowers. Oh the sails. Yeah and sticks. Okay. What were you gonna do? Well, I was gonna go a different direction altogether. I had the floral pattern on my middle tier and I wanted to make flowers out of modeling chocolate as well. So I was going to have the middle tier as the flowers and then I was gonna do just something geometric on the bottom. Okay. This is not right. So... But now my flowers, my modeling chocolate's so warm. I know, mine is too. It's not fitting up to it. Oh, I can just stick it in the fridge. Maybe what we should do is pull out our tiers and decide how And then we can see. we're gonna stack it? Yes, that is a good idea. So one of the toughest parts about picking collaboration for us, although I love the idea of collaborating versus competing because I love Anne and I really didn't wanna compete against her, not gonna lie. Was a little worried about that. But I love collaborating because I think that's an awesome, just it feels great to collaborate with somebody and not always feel that tension of having to compete and do better than somebody else. So that's the real reason why I'm glad about collaborating. But the problem with collaborating is we both started with a 6, 8, 10 round. And so trying to put two sixes, two eights and two tens together are gonna be more challenging. So gonna think through our options. Yup. Figure out if we can use all of them, which I think could be cool. I think we have to use We just gotta decide how. all of them though. What's that? Do we have to use all of them? Well, we don't have to use all of them. Okay. I'm a little worried about the black now. Like the black doesn't fit with anything. Yeah but, so I added the black into these. Oh did you? And I actually that, and I did add some black. I figured when I made. I would add more darkness like after it was stacked. Yeah, yeah. Because I was gonna do, like that, I was gonna do on that and then this here. Got it. See how it flows. Yeah. All right, let's see. Gonna throw that in there. I mean we could make the smaller ones like separators, but that's really high. Like we could put that under on that and then put that on top of it. Oh, that's true. We could do that. So we could always ground our design with a dark base, like the black, rather than using the air airbrush. We have too, yeah. And I can have more black into that tier, like darker. Right, what if we... What if we don't use this one? What if we use the black and we don't use the top one then? Okay. And then we maybe combine these two with something smaller in the middle. Almost like a double stack tier, but something separating it. Okay. And then we can put Put that on top. that one on top of either of those. Like, it wouldn't matter. Okay. So in essence, if we put this one on top or this one on top, then we can do some sort of separator in the middle and maybe with flowers or something else. Okay, I kind of feel like put that one first 'cause then the black will. Oh sweet, yeah. Right? And then we put a little bit more black and then it'll kind of-- Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah? Okay, let me dowel this one for the eight and I will find a six inch round foam core board and we can. Okay, oh a foam core. Yeah, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, right? I don't know what else we would use to separate 'cause I don't have, we don't have like-- Styrofoam. I usually a styrofoam. Yeah, well it's styrofoam, but it's a board. Well yeah. Okay. I mean, we don't have dummies here. Okay, no, we don't have any extra dummies. See, we should have gotten the pillars. We may have gone to a store last night look for any last minute inspiration and we saw pillars and we're like, wow, they're still pillars. Or you could use the Fat Daddio pans. We could, that is definitely an option. Let me see what I have. Okay. That's not gonna be right. So not sure this is gonna be the most beautiful cake. Is there any way that thing's gonna fit in the safe? The CakeSafe? Not that CakeSafe, no. Do you have CakeSafes that are big enough for something? Yes, they do have bigger ones, yes. Yes. Much larger. Oh good. So these are just foam core boards. This is actually what I use under all of my cakes because they're so stable. But the good part about them like, you could glue two of these together and then now this becomes a separator. You don't have to use cake there, but you have a separate or something to be able to put the same size tiers together or opposite. And then you can either cover that with fondant or you can stick things in, you know? So let me get the hot glue gun going. Oh my gosh, this looks super exciting. So while you guys continue to work, I'm gonna announce our next winner. This is of the Fat Daddio cake pan set. So this is the third set of pans that we've given away. And the winner is a Tasha Height. So Tasha, if you would Yay, Tasha. please email your contact information to social@creativecake.com and one of our team members will be sure to get that over to you. So congratulations to Tasha. So we've had, we've had five winners so far. We had three before our break, Michelle, Dina and Janet, and we've had Danielle and Tasha since after the break. So we still have some amazing things to give away but we want to remind you that you guys can be entering your comments in the chat on any of our streaming areas. So whether it's Creative Cake Design website, the Craftsy website, YouTube or Facebook, we are compiling the information you're putting in the chats through all of those different streaming channels. So feel free to do that and then we will know that your comments are being incorporated not only into the polling that we're doing, which I think we're pretty much done now. We're just gonna let you guys do this. Thank you. Please. There's only an hour left. I don't think we can 'Cause there seems to be, add anything else. Yeah, there seems to be enough going on in the last hour here. So we're all done with the polling but we do still have some fabulous giveaways from our amazing sponsors. So with that, Fantastic. this is really pretty. I kind of wish I had a closeup view. We need a camera like looking straight down on you guys 'cause there are so many amazing details going on with your fingers and how intricate the work is. Very pretty. So for those of you who do know me, I love the color purple and we're probably not gonna get full on purple in the cake anywhere in decor, so I'm using straws. So I'm gonna get my purple in there anyway FYI. There you go. I did put some purple in there. Yeah, there's a little purple there. All right, well you guys keep at it and we'll check back in here in a little bit. So then if we do some geometric cutouts maybe to match the colors yeah, I think that'd be great. of that. Do you think we should do a combo of colors with those like you did with this tier or just one? I feel like the main color and then add like random. Nice. Right? Yep, yeah, that sounds awesome. I'm not sure what color, but let me think about this. You know some of these decorations I made that I wasn't really sure what I was doing with them, I was gonna kind of, like prop them up with some of these sails like in corners. Oh cute, okay. But I didn't know, I wasn't sure if I was going to airbrush them or if I was gonna keep them white, but we can always, I don't think we should do white though is what I'm trying to say. Do you? Oh this is the other idea, the epiphany I had in the bathroom. My epiphany was I was going to watercolor these so they're all different. Oh, I like that. And then they will look, well I'll work on our piece and I'll cut it out. Sure, yeah. Yes? Let's do it. Okay, okay, great, wonderful. Okay, and we decided-- Oh I'm sorry, one more thing. In between though, we could drop a couple of those and those and just, it's solid, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So we decided this tier was next? Yes. Okay. Okie dokie. So I'm gonna say one more time to please if you are a winner of some of our fabulous giveaways, please email in your contact information to social@creativecakedesign.com. I should paint first and then cut them out, right? Yeah, that'll be easier. We're having some questions here on the chat from Colleen wanting to know what TV experience you both have. Excellent. Well we have both competed on "Food Network Challenge", which is how we met originally. And then we both were Craftsy instructors for a long time and they did a big gathering and we were able to meet up there as well. So that's how we've become really good friends. I have not competed on any other shows aside from "Food Network Challenge", but I recently was a judge, both on "Buddy Versus Duff" season three, and I was also a judge on Hulu's newest baking show, which is called "Baker's Dozen". And that was a really cool experience just to be full on judge. I got to taste everything, it was like a dream come true. You know, you always, That is exciting. you always wanna be on the other side of these competition type things. You don't always wanna be the competitor getting all these twists and turns thrown at us. Right, yes. But yeah, what about you Anne? Well, I also "Food Network Challenge", I was on a few of those, I think three or I can't remember how many and I was on two of the TLC "Cake Off", "Ultimate Cake Off", that was kinda short-lived. And then I did a competition on "Rachael Ray". Ooh. That was kind of fun. I also did a Food Network Special where we built a life-size wedding dress cake for the bride and they came Holy moly. and filmed us. That was pretty cool. I think Craftsy. I feel like there was some more random ones, like little interviews on CNN and things like that, but I don't remember them all. Yeah, I was also on one of the, one of the things that I enjoyed doing was I like to travel with my cakes. And so I got to travel to the "Today Show". Oh, that's fun. yeah, in New York city, both with and with cake and then one of them was for the "Kathie Lee & Hoda" show for when the Broncos were in the Super Bowl, for the 50th Super Bowl. Very cool So I got to make helmet cakes and they sat on their desk and they had no idea they were cake was just kind of awesome That is so cool. until they cut into them of course. That's very cool And then they were so excited about that, that they invited me back to create a wedding cake for one of their couples who met on the "Today Show" and then got married on the "Today Show". So that was really cool too. But yeah, you know, these types of experiences are always exciting and a learning experience and Oh for sure. it's fun more than anything. Little stressful. Yeah, I mean you know, they always throw things at you in the competition ones anyway. Yeah, kind of like you guys are doing today. Sort of, sort of. yeah, we usually have a whole lot more direction I'm not gonna lie. A lot more direction from the TV shows, to be honest. Yes. We usually know the theme going in and we don't know all the twists and turns that they're gonna throw at us, but we certainly know many of them. We kind of know what to expect and especially once you've done it, one time, you kind of know there's gonna be lots of twists and turns. Yes, for sure. All right, so one of the things that I like to do when I'm stacking a cake and putting a faux tier in the middle is I actually like to decorate the faux tier while it's up here because I want to make sure that my fondant covers everything. So I'm gonna dowel this first. I'm running out of purple dowels. So I'm gonna have Oh no. to switch to blue. Oh my God. It makes me sad. This is not good, guys. Look, I'm putting purple, see? Yay, purple. I'm going to add some darker in there when I'm done. Okay, awesome. Okay, the collaboration thing is making me very happy because I don't feel like I would have finished my cake on my own, Yes. not gonna lie. Yes, I agree. It's more fun. It is way more fun. I mean, it would've been nice if we knew from the beginning, just saying. Ah yeah, that would have been way better. And maybe had a plan going in too, but. This is showing your true talents. Oh right, is that what it is? Yes, your ability to think on your feet and change gears quickly. You have to have that ability or learn it because unfortunately, a lot of times, cake does not go as planned. Correct. So many times that I would take an order and you know, you think something is gonna be easy and then it turns out not to be, or something falls apart on it, or it just doesn't work and you have to kind of MacGyver your way together. And there are other times where you think something gonna be so hard and you're like, oh, that was easy. That doesn't happen as often. No, not nearly as often as you'd hope it does. But you have to be able to kind of adapt. I think that's what people have been enjoying most though is watching you guys Switch gears? switch gears and have, you know, have little things that you have to, as you said, MacGyver or fix, 'cause clearly this doesn't always go as a perfect process at home either, so. It doesn't, it is very rare that I make a cake from start to finish without any problem arising at some point in time. And the main reason for that is just simply because it's food, it's cake, it doesn't always react the same. even though it's cake and it's buttercream every single time, the humidity can change the consistency of your fondant or change the consistency of your buttercream even, or sometimes you overcook or under cook something and you've gotta adapt to that and redo it or whatever the case may be. So I think that's what's so appealing to me to be in this industry is because it's very rare that I do the same cake twice. It's very rare that everything goes smoothly. And so I'm constantly thinking and brainstorming about what else I'm gonna do, how am I going to do it? What will happen if it doesn't work? How do I make it happen? I can't tell you how many times I've had to think on my feet because something didn't go right at the last minute and I'm like a nervous wreck and scrambling and screaming at my husband to help me because I'm not gonna get it done if I don't you know, if I don't change gears and switch up. So I feel like that's a lot of what our industry is all about. Yes and there's probably a group somewhere for the husbands to. Yeah, I'm sure there is. A support group for all the emotional Absolutely. turmoil they've been through. What color are you thinking here? We'll have the turquoise up and then the pink. Do we put black? You wanna do black there? Here, let's see what this one looks like. I feel like it might recede the black. Oh. Right? That actually looks cool, you guys. It does look cool. I'm kind of excited about that. I'm digging that. Do we want it to blend or pop out? That's the real question. I don't know. That's so cool. I think black will be cool. Are we gonna put anything in there and let it show off? I don't know. I guess it depends on, I mean, we could make more of these things, but change color and have them coming out. Oh, that's cute. But the ones I have, I don't know what will work, but hey. Okay. But I have all these little fun ones that we can, see? Yeah. All right, I'm gonna go black. Go black. And if we stick something in there, great. Okay, and if not, that's fine. Yeah, let me move this over here. So maybe this is a good time for us to announce our next giveaway, which is the mini CakeSafe box. It doesn't feel very mini to me but apparently it is when you start layering all these tiers. It's the smallest of their boxes, but have no fear, it is certainly still effective. It's how I transport most of my groom's cakes or even just my two tier cakes, my little two tier cakes. So they're still chatting about this since we mentioned it earlier. So I think this is gonna be a hot one. But to enter your chance to win this particular prize, leave a comment in the chat box and tell us what is your favorite part of the live cake decorating competition, "The Sugar Debate". Again, you can use the website, the Creative Cake Design website, the Craftsy website, YouTube or Facebook chats, and we will select a winner at random from all of those submissions and we'll announce the winner by 01:30. So we have 15 minutes to get your comments in there. We don't have much time to finish our cake. No, I'm gonna let this dry a little before I cut it out I think, right? Do what? Let that dry a little. Oh yeah, yeah. That's beautiful, I love the gold. Are we going to use these things? I don't know. I think we need to focus on what decor we're gonna put on the black because otherwise we're not gonna- This no? Aren't we doing this? Oh right, yes. Sorry. What are we doing on the, are we doing anything on the turquoise? I don't know, but I think we need to do something. Some gold splatter. Oh, gold splatter. Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Should I splatter it up then now before you? Yep. Oh, should I know? But then it'll splatter everywhere if you do it later. Yeah. Yeah. Oh geez. These are the conversations I have with myself usually, not with a partner. Yes, yes, yes. Well, do I do it now or do I do it later? Those are the types of things that you need to think about though if you are, you know, if you're at home decorating and you're trying to decide what to do next or what sequence to do things in. Honestly, just thinking out, well, if we do gold splatter on the turquoise cake while it's stacked, everything else will get gold splatter too. So you have to be really careful about your process in when you're doing things before stacking or after stacking. So should we... I usually airbrush it with . Should I do that first? Yeah, yeah. But this needs clean. So hang on. Here, I can clean it. Thank you. Okay. She's very helpful today. Gotta earn my keep somehow do you have airbrush cleaner or just used Windex. I just use the Windex and then rinse it. They're really loving this collaboration, you guys. Yay. I am too, it just took a ton of stress off. Yes, this is way more fun. Plus if we fail miserably, we did it together. We're not gonna fail, Anne. No. I was a little concerned. I was definitely concerned I wasn't going to finish, which I think is the concern of every competitor on every baking show. Yeah, 'cause you think you have all this time, then all of a sudden, And then you don't. it's like, ah, wa, wa. You do not have time. Okay, do you still have piping gel out? Yes, there. One of the 40 bowls I have. So piping gel is a great medium to put on styrofoam because it fills in a lot of those little gaps and holes. It fills it in better than like just using straight up water or even alcohol. You definitely could use either a royal icing or a buttercream here too, but I just feel like it's a little wasteful. I'm airbrushing with the grain alcohol and as you can see, it takes off all the powdered sugar, which is a great thing to do on black or any dark colors. Often at the end of when I decorate my cakes, I'll put some pearl luster and kind of give the whole thing a little squirt and it gives the whole thing a nice sheen. Does the black need any? It might need some. I can leave it in here. Yeah, leave it and then if we have time, let's try it. Yeah. So somebody asked earlier on and I'm forgetting who it was now because the chats keep flying by, but they were asking what cake projects you're most proud of? That's a good question. Do you have any that stand out in your mind as being all time favorites? I mean like the life-size wedding dress. Besides this one right now. The life-size wedding dress was pretty intense. It's pretty impressive. And then for me, also one of our "Ultimate Cake Off" one, we did Lego Land cake and, oh just looking at all the gold, and we made this really cool cake that had a working water slide for the little mini figs that we did and it rotated and lit up I think I missed that. and all that, yeah. That's awesome. I would have to say that my most proud moment was the geode cake that I created five years ago now, maybe maybe six, five? I don't remember, it's been awhile. And the reason for that is just because it was so unexpected for me to go viral. It was not a cake that I thought would, oh wow, you just got gold everywhere. I know, it's what I just said. This is it, guys. That's gonna be real interesting, Anne. I was neat for three hours. You're not gonna get invited back after that. I was neat for three hours, okay, that is impressive for me, thank you very much. That is pretty impressive, I agree. I think more than anything that Geode just surprised me, which was awesome, but it also, it was a sense of validation that I not only could be creative, but I could set a trend and really influence the world of sugar art, which I think is a huge accomplishment for anybody in the industry to be able to have a cake go viral. So that's definitely my proudest moment, but probably one of my favorite cakes that I've created is my next one. Ah good answer. Bam, bam, bam. Good answer. And the reason for that is just because it allows me to be creative again and do something, hopefully that out does the cake before it. That's always my goal and it doesn't always work that way, but that's always my goal. Plus though you feel like sometimes you're like in it, you think that something's really great and you look back and you're like, what was I thinking? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Should I paint the top of this or just leave it white? Yeah, let's try to get, well, I was gonna scrape it off. I was cleaning my knife. I was gonna scrape a little black off and then we can. I mean, do you want paint? You can always leave it white. Oh, yeah if you're gonna do the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then leave the black band. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll save us a step. Okay. Oh my goodness gracious. So much going on. See for everyone watching, Rachael is like one of the people that I can always aspire to be, who can do all the geometric. Everything's very neat and precise and I am, as you can see a total disaster. And when I start to work, things start flying and which is why I wanted organic. But it's always fun when someone like Rachael and someone like I get together because the two strengths Absolutely. together can make a masterpiece. I agree, Anne, I agree. And it's definitely for me, like I decorate alone, like many cake designers, we decorate alone. And that's mostly because typically, we're starting out just decorating for ourselves or for our family or for our friends. We're not necessarily doing this as a business from the start. But oftentimes it turns into a business, especially if you're really good at what you do and you really enjoy it and I think so many of us never really think we're gonna be in this industry, but it kind of happens. And I don't know where I was going with that now, but... That you work alone. That I was what? You work alone. Oh yeah, I work alone. So it's really nice to actually have somebody to bounce ideas off of. Yeah, see, now she's finishing my sentences too, great. It's just super helpful to have another creative person to bounce with. Yes, yes because a lot of times, half the stuff that we do is very like last minute. That's beautiful. Like, oh, that didn't work, so let's do this. Right. There's lots of thinking about what might work or how do we fix this? And those types of things happen better when you're working with someone else, to have those conversations. So if you are working on your own, you can always hop on Facebook chat pages, post pictures, ask questions, you can join the Creative Cake Design Facebook page too and those people are the ones that become your Anne. Your Anne to your Rachael. That's how you're able to collaborate with somebody else if you are working alone and you're in your own home and you don't have the ability to brainstorm with someone like this, hop on the chat, hop on Facebook, hop on social, get some ideas that way. Okay, that looks amazing. Okay. Well not amazing, but it's fine. We need, I wanna stack that but I also wanna get. Here, let me dowel this one. That's really cool. Oh, it's all right. Oh stop it. This is against everything you probably believe in. No, I love this. This is amazing. Look at this, this is great. Can you zoom in on that? We all know who's cleaning the table when we're done. I'll clean it. I'm teasing. All right, should I start cutting these out? Okay focus, focus, focus. I guess, is this dry enough? We have to start cutting them out because it's only have half an hour left. Uh-oh. We don't even have a half an hour left because we have to present No, oh you're right. at like 1:45. Maybe we'll squeak it out. Okay, okay, okay. Ask for more time. Shouldn't we get more time? Yes, hey guys, here's another poll. The answer is yes. I think it's going to be beautiful. Always more time. Sorry, Jodi. Oh, I should have done this in black. I couldn't have done on black can't really see the sides. You can put black on black though 'cause then it would be a cool texture rather than a color. No, I'll do some black. But I'm saying that I shouldn't have, you can see the colors on the sides, the white. Oh. I'll just quickly over them. I think it looks awesome. Okay, well your black will look good actually. You're giving these viewers some courage. Oh good. DW said that, "I personally have been afraid to work with fondant but now seeing this, I'm given courage." [Rachael And Anne] Yay. And then William asked when you're baking these cakes, doesn't matter if you live in a high elevation area or low elevation area and what can you do if your cake falls in the center? Yeah, if your cake is falling in the center, there's a couple of things that's happening. You absolutely need to change your recipes for high altitude. There are some really easy ways to do that in order to accommodate high altitude and that's typically adding more structure. So you're gonna add more flour and you're usually gonna add another egg. Not always, but usually. It depends on the recipe. Sometimes it's just an egg white that you're adding. It depends though. So there are some sort of general high altitude rules like that. The other thing is don't disrupt your cake while it's baking. So that's probably the number one reason why cakes will fall in the middle is because you get too antsy and you wanna check it and you go to tap it or put the toothpick in and you ruin all that structure of basically the reason why a cake will rise is because it's creating gas in between all the molecules that are within a cake and it's elevating the cake. And if it doesn't have an opportunity to actually bake and set and tighten up that structure that's there, that's when your cake starts to fall. So there's a couple of things, like I said, adding an extra egg or adding a quarter cup of flour. It depends on your recipe a little bit, but there are some measurements and some guides out there and it's definitely something I can think about adding to Creative Cake Design as we continue to produce content. But it's usually 'cause people get a little antsy. Yes or they take it out before it's cook all the way. Yeah, if you, yeah, if it's not fully baked and you're removing it from the oven too early, then your cake's just gonna fall. It doesn't again, that structure has to be set before you. This looks very glamorous. Oh I think so too. It's kind of fun and glamorous, not gonna lie. The bright color choices really took it to a totally different place in my opinion. Is there a specific recipe for the edible paint? That's from Teresa. Edible paint. You mean like what I'm doing or? Yeah, that went on I think. So no, I'm just using gel color mixed with the grain alcohol and I just mixed it in a palette like I do normal paint. So you can just mix the colors together until you can get the color you want. And this is sort of similar to what I was saying before is that the food coloring is different than regular paint. So it does take some getting used to. Would it look cool to put a couple of random of these? I don't know, maybe I'm getting too crazy now. You can put one up and see what it looks like and take it off if we don't like it. True, yes. That's the beauty. So what I'm doing here is adding some stability to our cake because we have a double tall tier here that's stacked on the next. It doesn't really, it's just got such a high base of support, like center of gravity, and so it's really important to make sure that this can't tip over in any way. So three wooden skewers. I do have a little purple hammer. Not with me though. It didn't make the cut this time. I stack my cake very differently than that. You do? Yes. What do you do? I pre drill a hole in the bottom of each board. And I obviously dowel, I dowel with that part Yeah. the same. Okay And then I hot glue a thicker center dowel onto the bottom board and then we drop the cakes down on top of that. Oh nice. Yeah, that works too. Yeah. So I know a fun poll question we could ask. 'Cause I wish we could give you guys more time, but I'm afraid that we are done at two today. Yes. Is what would the audience like to see in terms of content on Creative Cake Design? So if you would like to share what sorts of things you'd like to learn moving forward, that can influence some of the content that's available through the website. That would be awesome 'cause that helps me and helps me do my job better as the, I'm managing editor of the site, I get to pick and choose kind of what topics we're gonna cover. But you guys are the ones that guide that content. So any feedback you can give would be amazing. So I've definitely add that into the chat as well This is the front here? and we will capture all of that and share it with Rachael and team. Well, hang on, I gotta, I'm gonna rotate it. Which thing where you? This thing right here, right? Yeah. Okay. So remember there's always a front and a back. We're gonna put this to the back. So if you have an imperfection that you're not happy about, then just put it in the back, cover it up and you're good. Okay, that's pretty. Oh, those are beautiful. Once you're done with that. Okay, I'm almost done stacking. Do you think that we could do it like kind of spurts? Yes, well they want organic so. Yes and we don't have very much time left. So that just works out. Correct. Okay, you done? All right. Yeah, do you want it on the turntable? Is it stable? The turntable or the cake? Both, no, I just forgot the turntable. I felt like. Okay. Can you move to the middle? I can do that. Awesome. Oh and it's 1:30. So we should probably announce the winner of the CakeSafe Box. Oh, big time winner here. Because this has been a popular item. So they're polling the results right now. Sorry, I was going to put a border on that pink one. No, what one, the pink one? Yeah, I'm sorry. No, that's okay. It's terrible. Oh wait, I was gonna put black ones then white. We can still put a border on it. What do you want? I mean, I don't know. Maybe pearls or? Just pearls, yeah, pearl would be good. Do we want piped pearls or molded pearls? Whatever's faster. Can you guys remind everybody what that smaller black tier is? This a smaller black tier is just simply foam core cake boards that are hot glued together and stacked just so that we had a little bit more height in order to separate the two tiers. I think if we were to put these two on top of each other, just the way they were, I'm not sure it would've looked quite as nice. So that was kind of the thinking behind it. Oh my God, I keep doing the same thing. I keep putting it on the wrong way, there we go. Good job, Anne. All right, do you want help with that or do you want me to figure out what we're gonna do elsewhere? You could figure out more deals, yes. We have like 15ish minutes. Figure it out. Okay. Figure it out, Rachael. Okay, okay. This is crunch time. Okay, I have our winner. Our winner for our giveaway number six, the mini CakeSafe box is Judy Dinolt. Congratulations, Judy. Oh, lucky Judy. Please email your contact information to social@creativecakedesign.com and one of our team members will make arrangements to get that amazing giveaway to you. I think we're gonna have some jealous people here. Oh yeah, for sure. There were a lot of folks saying, I wanna win that. Do I put this like this or like this? Like this, right? Well don't, are you lining them all up? Should I not? No. It's organic, remember? I know what I was going to kind of. Oh, now I know what you're saying. Still make a pattern, but. Oh. Is that how you do it, in a line on the cake? Sure. There's no rules in cake, Anne. I started doing it like this and I was like-- Oh, oh that works too. I was thinking we would just like. Oh I see. I see, do little clusters. You know, two or three here and there. Oh, I hear you, sister. Because it's not geometric, it's organic. That's a better solution. Oh, what have we got going there? There's no rules of cake. It's true. You can tell it is hot in here, you guys. Our cakes are bubbling up. So when a cake is cold and it comes out of a refrigerator, especially if it has fondant, it changes temperature and things start expanding and air when it gets warm expands. So if you ever get a bubble underneath your fondant, just a little Exacto knife and smooth it back down and you're good to go. Good tip. Well since we're getting close to 1:45, which is the time that you both are racing towards right now. Right. I'm wondering if we should put up our final giveaway. Ooh, good idea. Okay. So the final giveaway is another set of the Fat Daddio cake pans. This is the two inch set I think that we have left. The two inch set, okay. So in order to enter to win, all you have to do again is leave a comment in the chat box and tell us what your favorite part of this live cake decorating competition is and the winners will be selected at random from all the submissions in the chats on not only Creative Cake Design website, but Craftsy, Facebook and YouTube. This is the front, right, right here? Yes 'cause that's the back. We're not spinning thing cake around, right? No, you guys only get to see the front. Sorry, guys. This is the one sided cake. Right. All right, I gotta put this mold in the freezer. It looks like you're getting a lot of great suggestions here, Rachael, too for what sort of content people would like to see moving forward. Awesome, hopefully our team can capture all that for me. Are you liking where this is going? I love it, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's very glamorous. I think so. I think one of my Super glamorous. Personal favorites. And fun. And fun, yeah. I think we kinda took everything and made it work. We're amazing. It's like we're slap happy near the end and you're like, everything looks great, it's looking good. Yeah sure, slap it on. And this is only four hours, not five or 10 or eight or however many the other ones were. Let me just say it is not easy to decorate a cake, especially a three tier cake in a four-hour timeframe without knowing what you're gonna do. Now obviously we kind of came in with some different molds and some different patterns and things, but I truly had no idea what I wanted to do in the end. No, I didn't either. Okay, hopefully that was cool enough. Probably not, but we're gonna try it. Tammy's asking Rachael if you'll be doing more tutorials. Lots more tutorials. There are lots of tutorials in the works already that have been filmed and in the queue and more filming to come. So yes, basically with Creative Cake Design in this next month of December, there will be lots of new content continually being added and then once we hit January, we will absolutely have new content every single week. So what you see is just a little taste of what you're gonna get on Creative Cake Design and we will be filming and posting more every week. Oh, I'm laughing at some of these. They're like, my favorite part would be eating the cake. I've been eating it with my eyes. That's what I'm looking forward to as well. I'm hoping we're gonna taste this cake. For sure. Yay. We've got a vanilla and a chocolate. So my cake was all made with, I believe I had the chocolate cake, but I can't remember now. And Anne had all three tiers of vanilla, so. Are we putting this ugly flower on? It's not even hard. That's up to you. Do you have one? Do we need to put a flower on? I don't have, I don't have a flower because I never got to it. I ran out of time. Mine's not hard enough. I have a flower. Okay, so I have this situation but I could paint it. Oh that's pretty. No it's not. Do we have any gold drughes in the middle that we can use? I know that we can use these, like a pink gold. Oh perfect, yes. But where am I gonna put that? Because it's a soft. Like on the top? Like here or somewhere? No, that's not gonna stand. Okay, not gonna hold. Maybe like that or like in here? Maybe we scratch it. Yeah, it's kinda ugly. I like some of those flairy things and what about the-- Oh yeah, those. These are cool. Yeah. Let's bring those in 'cause I think that will help. So we're gonna present this at about 1:45 and you guys are gonna kind of walk us through all the different tiers and how it all came together, right? Okay. Or just kind of have them here. I think up here. Yeah, I think it works. Yeah. Racial and Anne, you guys are gonna give us a walkthrough. We'll give you a run down. Okay, a run down on everything, but we wanna make sure everybody sticks with us right until two because we still have the winner for the final set of Fat Daddio cake pans. Yeah, you don't wanna miss that. And we wanna give you a bit more information on how to make sure that you get everything out of this viewing opportunity before you sign off. So definitely stick with us here right until two o'clock today. I don't know if I'm gonna have time for these pearls. All right, forget the pearls. Well, I mean, I'm trying. Well then we get the pearls. The other mold did not work. It did not work. We should mention that free download for the holiday coupon bundle again too because a lot of the tools and things that you've been showing today, it sounds like there are coupons available to get some of these things at a discount for some great savings. Absolutely. And please, please, please help support our sponsors. They have been so amazing not only with providing you guys with all the giveaway items, but also helping us to be able to create these cakes by providing us with product. So huge thank you to Satin Ice, Fat Daddio's, CakeSafe, Bake Deco, Simi Cakes and Confections and of course Good Cook. Okay. Maybe, ah yes, we have pearls. Oh yay. Some. Some. You wanted go on the black tier, right? 'Cause it's happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am just going to use a water I think or actually a little piping gel 'cause that's right there, whoops, man down. What? No, I dropped a pearl. Can I turn it? Yes. Okay. As she sticks something on. Maybe not, it's fine. You can turn, I'll go back. It's all good. The geometric has coming in here too. It's kind of hard not too. We're kind of getting it all in here, I love it. Really, this one's got movement. Yeah, that one's really cool. We should put that somewhere good, okay. Keep it for the front. I'm working on the back. Okay. Oh, I can put some ugly ones on the back to cover of the seam. Do we want one there or no? Sure, why not? It's the back and nobody's gonna see it. We're not showing you the back. We're not showing you the back, sorry guys. It's only at a front this time. They're not missing anything. It looks just like the front. If we were displaying this somewhere, we would just put it up against a wall and then nobody could walk to the back. That's right. You guys have two minutes. No, Jesus, I need the front, No, no, no, no. I need the front, I need the front. Oh God, okay. Although everybody on here is like, I would watch these two all day. [Rachael And Anne] Awe. That's so nice. Oh my God. No, stay. Where's the cool one? I lost it, oh, here it is. So I might just make a couple announcements here while you guys are doing this. Yes. Might buy you a couple more minutes too. Oh yay. Oh that'd be nice. So we hope that you're gonna check out the Creative Cake Design, your online resource for all things cake, where you can find everything you need from basic instruction to advanced techniques. This is a community of enthusiastic cake decorators wanting to create beautiful projects with edible mediums. I also wanna mention that depending upon which platform you're joining us today, that you should also consider following us on the other platforms. So whether that's YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram, definitely head out there to find Creative Cake Design as well as Craftsy. Did you wanna say anything else? Yeah, extend it, extend it, You want me to keep going? extend it. Keep going? Well, we can mention our sponsors again. Yes. Yes, great idea. Our amazing sponsors who gave away such awesome giveaways today and our final winner is going to be announced just before 2:00 p.m. for that last set of the Fat Daddio cake pans. But a big thank you to our sponsors CakeSafe, Fat Daddio's, Bake Deco, Simi cakes and Confections, Good Cook and of course Satin Ice. Oh my gosh, you guys, this is really coming together. Big one, what do you need? I don't know. Where do you wanna put it? I don't know. Okay. You know, there's a little saying that I always talk about with my clients when we're doing wardrobe stuff, which is everything should have a buddy. And I feel like that's what's happening here with how you're tying in all the black together and the pastels are weaving all the way through. You definitely a lot of funning. There's some buddying going on right now. Awesome. Maybe let's overlap one here and then you wouldn't see that. Oh good idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ha, ha, we're showing you. Yes, ha, ha. That was a good idea. Let me do it down here. Here we go, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a genius. Yeah, you can just overlap that, nobody knows. Well this one looks a little obvious, but that's okay. Where's that bottle of vodka? It's right down there. Little for the airbrush, a little for me. Right? You need it after this, this looks terrible. I need one little piece. So just finishing off the cake with a spray of airbrush, especially when you have a dark color, like black, super, super helpful. It just gets any like excess finger marks, powdered sugar. They're not super stable. Oh got it. Do we want glitter? I have quitter. Whatever you, yeah. You wanna throw it? Go for it. Okay, Anne. When in doubt, you throw glitter on it. When in doubt, add glitter. Yes. I feel like it's glamorous. It's very glamorous. I'm gonna get our hot glue gun maybe going. Oh right. Jodi, you got anything else for us? Well, I was gonna say it's 1:45, I don't wanna stop it though. No, no. I don't wanna stop you but I do think as you continue to do some final touches there, maybe you can start walking us through what we're looking at, whose tier was which, which what your initial inspiration was around it but how you brought this together collaboratively. Kind of walk us through the cake piece by piece here. Yeah, it sounds great. So if you didn't join us from the beginning, I actually made the bottom tier and this was, so I had a black tier and I actually had a white tier with some textures, some floral texture to it and then Anne made the top two. And let's see, we have hand painting, we have splatter, airbrush. The airbrush itself did not make it to this cake because we eliminated one tier, two tiers, and we have molded pearls, we have wafer paper sails, we have some geometric shapes, we clearly have glitter now. Sorry, Rachael. I think Anne just snuck that in over top. I didn't even see ya. Let's see, so we did glam. We did floral. A flower didn't make it, did it? No, well, I mean it's around, it just-- It's just it's too hot in here, it's not our fault. You did bright. I'm hot. We did make it. What, the flower? Yeah, they're just not on the cake. It's just not on the cake, but there is flowers already in the texture and there's flowers in the painting. So that's okay. You did bright. Yeah. We did bright. We did bright colors and we swapped for a while. Yes we did. And then we collaborated and I'm really glad that we got to collaborate. So thank you all seriously for being able to help us collaborate. I think that was a brilliant move in order for us to actually pull this off because I don't think I could have done it without you, Anne. I couldn't have done without you either, Rachael. We're gonna have a nice cocktail later. Yes for sure, for sure. Well this was such a fun way for us to celebrate the launch of the new website, Creative Cake Design. Yes. We're so excited that both of you could be here. And thank you to the entire team at Creative Cake Design for helping all of us pull this off for you guys. I'm so glad everybody was able to join in the fun and watching us create this cake. And I hope that you will check out all the information and tutorials on Creative Cake Design as well 'cause there's lots of information there. And do you know what goes really good with cake, you guys? Uh-oh. What? Bubbles. Bubbles! Oh yay! Congratulations to both of you from taking this competitive Thank you. cake decorating competition Thank you so much. into a collaborative one. So cheers to you. And while you guys enjoy this hard earned sip, I'm gonna go back to my desk and give us just a few closing comments. I'm coming back for a piece of cake. Absolutely, I'm going to start serving it up. And I think they want pictures. So definitely cut from the back. Cut from the back? Okay. Yes. So I'm heading back over here. We're gonna do a few more announcements. We should finish it up. Maybe just a little. Yeah, just a touch. Let me give this to you guys too, here some of the, for serving, okay. Oh perfect. Do you have a knife? I do. Knife. Where's the carton? All right, I think we can announce our final winner here for the last set of the Fat Daddio cake pans and our final winner is Paula Bohan. Congratulations Paula. Yay, Paula. Yay, Paula. I know everybody's been so supportive. Everybody's been cheering everyone on in the chats, even though I know they all were hoping that their name was being called. So thank you for being so good to everybody in the community. Paula, we will reach out to you to make arrangements to get you that fabulous giveaway, but please also give us your contact information by sending an email to social@creativecakedesign.com. Don't forget to download that free holiday coupon bundle. We've been putting a link to that in the chats. Definitely take advantage of that. There's some great money to be saved there with those coupons for fantastic supplies and products, many of which we featured today. We wanna thank our amazing live audience for joining us for this competitive cake duo, although I think we should have called it Collaborative Cake Duo, you guys. "The Live Sugar Debate". Thank you both to Rachael Teufel and Anne Heap for participating. Do you guys have any final comments you'd like to make before we wrap this up today? Yeah, go home and make some cake. Oh you're already home, make some cake. I would just say no matter what you choose to do as far as your cakes and your designs, just remember that anything goes, have fun with it, be creative, think outside the box and oftentimes you'll figure something out that you never thought was even possible. So I encourage you if you're looking for new techniques or doing something a little different than normal, check out Creative Cake Design. We have lots of tutorials online for you to learn everything from the basics through building a giant cactus cake. So please check that out and thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your feedback and your wonderful questions to the polls, despite our unhappiness with some of them. But Anne, thank you so much for joining me and for helping Of course. create this beautiful cake for our celebration. Thank you for having me. It's very funny. Yes, yay. And Jodi, thank you as well. I'm serving up the cake. I'm coming over, thank you. After all this, you're gonna cut it? So I just wanna remind everybody again real quickly to not only remember to get that free holiday coupon bundle, but also please check out our Creative Cake Design website. We hope that you'll consider joining us with your membership. And I wanna thank again our sponsors for today's event. CakeSafe, Fat Daddio's, Bake Deco, Simi Cakes and Confection, Satin Ice and Good Cook. And with that, we wanna thank you all for joining us. We hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day. Yay, all right time to celebrate with cake. Time to celebrate. I'm gonna take a picture of it. Well, I'm just gonna cut the back first. Oh right. I'm gonna be your taste tester. Oh, excellent, okay. How's that? Well, there isn't a ton there, but small pieces for everybody to get started. This was the chocolate, yum, my favorite. All right. Look at how beautiful that is. Just so everybody to see the different layers, Yum, yum, yum, yum, so eat at all. Just take right in, right? I'm gluten free. But thank you. Right, well I'll enjoy your piece. It does look delicious. You are gluten free, Anne? I am. That's good. A lot of people were saying that the comments online were really helpful for that. Delicious. It smells really good. Enjoy everybody. Thank you so much for joining us and have a great day.