Decorating and Finishing Tools

Cake Turntable

The top disk sits inside of the stand’s base. This allows the disk to rotate freely. Place a small amount of icing or other slip resistant pad under a cake set atop cardboard bottom, to keep the cake from sliding. With this in place begin to ice the cake with a crumb coat and then decorate as desired.

Icing Comb

A small plastic tool, usually triangular, with serrated edges in various patterns for decorating icings and other pastry and decorative items.

Pastry Brushes

These have many uses in the Bakeshop ranging from brushing a simple syrup on top of a Genoise cake, to glazing the fruit atop a fruit tart, or painting a sauce for a plate presentation.

Pastry bags

A holding vessel for sweet and savory ingredients. Through the large opening we first insert the desired pastry tip, if using one, and then fold the opening’s edges over themselves, for better handling. Finally, use a rubber spatula to fill the bag, to avoid any unnecessary messes.

Things to consider when using a pastry bag: First, place the ingredient into manageable portions wrapped in a thin layer of plastic wrap, do not fill it with more than you can handle most likely only half way full. This makes reloading the bag much easier. Second, your non-dominant hand controls the tip while your dominant hand controls the pressure, even and steady.

Pastry tips

Tips vary by number and by manufacturer. They add an aesthetic appeal to savory plate presentation and beautiful design to any celebration cake. Use them for making cake borders, inscriptions, flowers and other designs out of icing. It is a common practice to fit the pastry tip inside the pastry bag. Special couplers used to allow attaching the pastry tip to the outside of the pastry bag. Practice makes perfect with this skill. Use slow and steady pressure so as not to leave breaks in the design.

Scrapers

A bench scraper is a small rectangle of stainless steel with a handle along one of the long edges. It is used to portion or cut dough. A bowl scraper is plastic with one curved edge with no handle. Used for scraping out the batters within the mixing bowls.

Rolling Pins

Used to roll out doughs, fondants, and shape types of cookies. Traditional ones we see have the handles, whereas the French style, allows the user to start a roll at the tip of the finger and if necessary end at the elbow. The plastic, pictured, is primarily used to roll fondant icing. Others are beveled from center to ends and which allows a circular motion, friendly to production of pies, tarts, and other items needing a circular shape. Because these are made of wood, care should be used in the cleaning and sanitizing. They should not be left in the dish tank area nor should they be left in the water. Wood is an absorbent material and contamination can happen very easily. Use a clean towel to clean by using the wash, rinse, and sanitize procedures.