Goodall’s gave me some colourful packs of their ‘ready to roll icing’ to play around with and I couldn’t wait to have a go. I tackled it like the balls of ‘maalla’ we used to play with in primary school. At least that’s what it was known as to me, there might have been an ‘r’ in there somewhere, maybe it was supposed to be called ‘maarla’, I really don’t know and it’s the stuff of trivia to which I’m sure some smarty pants out there knows the origins but it doesn’t really matter, I’m talking about that putty-like soft clay stuff that you could roll and shape and mess with, intertwining different colours together creating a marbling effect. What I’m talking about is fun.
With Easter on the horizon I chose to craft an Easter Egg and gave it the double-job of serving as my daughter’s 16th birthday cake. Her favourite colour is green and she loved it.
So what are the steps?
1. Bake yourself a chocolate cake in an oval shaped tin.
2. Put your cake on a board up on top of a high rack or cake pedestal so that you can easily coat the top and sides with buttercream icing
3. Take the entire pack of green ‘ready to roll icing’ / sugar paste and work it – rolling it on a board with your hands until it becomes pliable, then use a rolling pin to roll it out. If it cracks too much roll it up and start again otherwise don’t fret if there are a few cracks that can easily be disguised and covered. Drape and shape it onto the cake on the board. Tidy up the edges with a knife then slide the covered cake off the board and onto your serving-plate.
4. Play around with shaping the other colours and stick the shapes on with a little buttercream. I chose to keep it simple with disc shapes and used some giant chocolate buttons too.
5. Most importantly of all have fun!
Kids would love working with this stuff to decorate individual cupcakes at a birthday party.
‘Til next time, Sheila.