What to write on cake for employee leaving
Cake Decorating: Writing with Buttercream
I teach an entire class two hours of
nothing but how to write on cakes and
your pastry students work for hours on
how to write on something some of your
higher end restaurants will have an
employee that that's your entire job is
to do nothing but write on the plates
and they work at making it perfect I
haven't spent quite that much time on it
but I have the principal down so the
first thing I want to do is I'm taking
my turntable away and I'm putting it on
to a flat surface a couple of reasons
one is it's much easier to pipe on
something that's not moving then
something that is and two you want your
cake to be lower than what you've been
working on you want it to lower it down
and when I am doing like full sheets or
half sheets large cakes you the lower
the cake the better you're gonna get at
writing those on those larger cakes so
if you are a short person in your
counter is pretty high pull out a drawer
and put your cake on that in order to
write on it you'll do have more success
okay so that's one of the first things
take it off the turntable I have an old
cake decorating friend that says you're
the laziest person on earth if you write
in green sometimes writing and green is
appropriate but I'll go ahead and change
the color so that you don't know I'm
lazy or think I'm lazy and I'm going to
use the tip I always use a tip when I'm
writing and I do not cut always use a
tip and I'm going to use a number two I
would suggest using a number three if
you're just starting but do not start
with the number one a one is going to be
very difficult to control that's a more
advanced writing so let's use them
number two I'm gonna stir my icing so I
have no bubbles you want to make sure
this is a fairly workable so if your
icing is
nice and stiff for flowers this might be
the time you want to thin it down and if
I two-tone it its add some yellow here
on that pink that will add interest to
it I also don't want to write on a white
cake with yellow icing because I'm
working too hard at my writing to have
it not show I also don't want to write
in black especially on something that
has he soft pastel colors and I wouldn't
bring in a red to go with these you have
to have the color coordinate with
whatever it is you're working with okay
so here's how we're going to do it when
we write on paper we write with our
hands and our wrists like this when we
write with a cake we're going to hold
our wrists steady and we're going to
write at our elbow so all of our
movement is at our elbow okay so my cake
is on a flat surface that's not moving
another trick is is if I'm writing
something that I'm whatever it is I'm
writing if you put that in paper in
front of you so that when yours you're
writing you can glance up quickly to see
what the letters are because I am not
paying attention to the words I'm
writing I'm paying attention to where my
tip is my body position my pressure
control these are all the things that
I'm paying attention to to the point
where I literally have looked back at a
photo to see that I misspelled my son's
name on his birthday cake my son his
birthday cake misspelled it because I'm
not focusing on what it is I'm writing
I'm focusing in on what I'm doing so if
you write it in front of you that works
to your advantage so you've got your
thing written in front of you you've got
your cake on a flat surface you've got
your icing the right consistency
you've got everything is all set to go
then I'm going to worry about my body
position so I am standing with my feet
at shoulder width apart I'm over the
cake
and I'm going to do the writing the next
thing I'm going to do is I'm going to
put my writing at an angle so that if
it's not perfectly straight people can't
tell okay the other thing and this is
six years of college paying off right
here is that I'm going to make the first
letter fancy and nice and then the next
letters are going to be so my first
little will be here and then right
rather than writing the next letters on
this line I'm going to write them in the
middle of that fancy letter and that's
an advertising technique and you start
looking at advertising print media
you'll see that they actually do that
fairly often so what's the most common
thing we write happy birthday so let's
do happy birthday feed at shoulder-width
apart
I'm over the cake icing is ready build
up the icing nice steady pressure curl
it around
Happy's going to start right here in the
middle bring it down the peas
so all my vertical lines are vertical
the same vertical I don't have them
going all this ziggy-zaggy way and the
one p is longer than the other P they're
a little shorter same thing if I'm doing
double FS double T's any letters that
are doubles one is taller than the other
okay or longer than the other and then
we'll do birthday
come back dot my I cross my T
and I want to go in and point out the R
the R has a sharp edge on it same with
an S no rounding wavy stuff sharp are
sharp FS no loop any loops on my letters
so my T is up and down as straight as
possible D is up and down straight as
possible same with the H now if you kind
of mess this up a little bit don't get
all worried about it because most people
when they're at a birthday party they
know they're there for a birthday party
they know that says happy birthday they
also know whose birthday it is usually
and so you know if you mess up on
spelling something don't mess up on
spelling somebody's name though it's
really bad karma now one of the things
that I can do is I can come back in and
do a little zigzag on my letters and
build them up and make them look fancy
and anytime you are doing something like
that
you always have thin crossing thick you
don't have thick crossing thick you can
have thin crossing fan and thick
crossing thin but you can't have thick
crossing thick so I'm not going to come
in and thicken up the crossbar okay I
can come in and thicken up this little
downward thing I can add a couple little
dots in here I mean you can just kind of
have fun with whatever it is you're
working with we can add
so you can come up and dress it up and
have fun with it or you can just leave
it plain
