Advanced Decorations

The key to decorating — besides having a steady hand and an awareness of neatness and symmetry — is to make the finished product look tasteful and elegant rather than busy or cluttered. This chapter offers methods and techniques, as well as a few tricks of the trade, for using basic materials to create decorations quickly and economically. The decorating formulas covered here include caramel glass paste decorations, decorated sponge sheets, decorating with fondant and royal icing, decorating with sauces (or sauce painting), the production of Florentina decorations and containers, tuile paste decorations and containers, unusual and tasty decorating pastes made from fruit and vegetable purees that can be shaped into fanciful forms, and piping design templates for special-occasion cakes.