Maggie May

This is a cake I made in April 2008 for a baby shower one of the girls at work was throwing in anticipation of the arrival of Little Maggie May. This cake is white cake topped with buttercream icing and royal icing flowers. The letters and the royal icing flowers were all done ahead of time. I made the stork, blanket and baby out of packaged gum paste.
This was my first attempt at making figures out of gum paste. I felt the stork turned out really cute, and the blanket had a really nice texture to it. The baby was passable at best, but compaired to the first attempt dubbed "ugly baby" it was excellent. I think I still have ugly baby around the house somewhere.

Meringue Powder

Meringue powder is a replacement for putting egg whites in the icing. Without it, the icing will not stiffen up correctly or hold it's shape. This is extremely important when making royal icing flowers and the outer edges or dam when doing flood icing.

Meringue powder can be found at most craft stores that carry cake decorating supplies such as Michael's or in the cake decorating section at your local big box mart.

Flood Icing
1 lb powdered sugar
1 tablespoon meringue powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
Approx 3/4 cup water
Mix together powdered sugar and meringue powder.
Slowly add water to the mix until the consistency is smooth but still stiff enough to peak.

At this point reserve about 1/6 of the icing to use for outlining.

Color if desired.

Slowly add more water to the remaining mixture, till icing is smooth and does not hold peaks.

Separate into bowls and color as desired.

Be sure to put your icing into an airtight container right away. This icing hardens quickly and I usually keep the piping bags under a damp paper towel while I am working with them to keep the tips of the bag from crusting over. In an airtight container you can keep this icing fresh for two weeks or possibly longer.

Flood Sugar Cookies

Letting the kids creativity shine today. This morning my official helpers and I rolled out some fun sugar cookies to decorate in bright spring colors.

These cookies are topped with a simple flood icing that is always a big hit with my family, and with my co-worker too. Fill one bag with a stiff white icing to outline the cookies. Then add more water to give a thinner icing that would flow evenly over the cookies. Seperate into 4 equal portions and color as desired.

Put each color in a disposable piping bag with just the very tip cut off. Since the icing is thin, the smaller the better. For my kids to be able to use the piping bags effecively, I have to secure the back with a rubber band or twist tie or they will have icing all over the place coming out of the back of the bag.

Now outline each cookie with the stiffer white icing. Then let the kids fill in the color with the flood icing, just like coloring a coloring book. My girls got creative with a few dots here and there. It was a lot of fun and they really came out pretty in the end.