Silver Spoon Mich Turner Professional Cake Decorating products review

I told you a while ago (in a blogpost here) about some fabulous baking products from the Silver Spoon Create range that the lovely people at Baking Mad sent us to try out. Well, they also sent us some products from the new Mich Turner cake decorating range, designed for professional cake decorators : Madagascan Vanilla Ready to Roll Icing, Ready to Roll Marzipan and Pearl, Bronze and Gold Lustres.

 

I first used the ready-to-roll icing on our Pudsey Bear Banana Bread that we were challenged to create for Children In Need.

 

I love ready-to-roll icing because it's just like edible playdough so you can release your inner child and just let your imagination run riot. With a bit of training, you can create wonderful sugar dough models like the ones that I told you about in the Cool Kidz Cakes book that we reviewed here.

We didn't do anything nearly as complicated for our Pudsey cake though. We just rolled it out (on a table covered in a bit of icing sugar, as you would roll out pastry on a dusting of flour), shaped it slightly and bingo, Pudsey had his bandage. The offcuts were eaten like sweets because the icing has a lovely vanilla flavour !

I was impressed to see that you can cover the rest of the block of icing in clingfilm and come back to in a few days time. Our next project was a fabulous Christmas cake made from a Whitworths kit that I told you about yesterday here.

Once the cake had totally cooled, it first needed to be covered in marzipan. Now, I'm usually not keen on marzipan but I couldn't resist having a little nibble off the block and I was seriously impressed by both the taste and the texture. It's a paler yellow than I am used to with a much more natural, delicate, pleasant taste and a beautifully soft texture. It's totally moreish, even for someone who thought they didn't like marzipan much !

The marzipan is also ready-to-roll and, just like the icing, you roll it out on a surface dusted with icing sugar so it doesn't stick.

You're supposed to used boiled jam to stick it on the cake and prevent it sliding but I admit, I just spooned some straight out of the jar and it seemed to work just fine !

We then repeated the operation with the rest of the ready-to-roll icing (which had only gone ever so slightly hard on the edges after several days in the cupboard wrapped in clingfilm and which came back to life and regained its soft springiness with a bit of gentle kneading).

We rolled the leftover bits of icing back into a ball, rolled it out again and the girls had great fun cutting Christmas-themed shapes out with cookie cutters. 

The girls then excitedly discovered the Gold, Bronze and Pearl Lustres and asked if they could "paint" all their cut out shapes. Obviously I said yes - and had a play too !

You're supposed to use a food-grade brush with the lustres but, after telling the girls that no, they definitely could NOT use their brushes from their painting set, the best I could come up with was ... ahem ... cotton buds ! Oh well, it worked !!

The girls were incredibly impressed with how fabulous their cake looked. And I was impressed at how easy the Silver Spoon cake decorating products were to use, despite the scary "for professional cooks" label !

star rating : 5/5

Baking Mad have some fabulous tutorials on getting the most out of these products :

http://www.bakingmad.com/tips/howtovideos/how-to-decorate-with-mich-turners-lustres

http://www.bakingmad.com/tips/decorating/how-to-cover-a-cake-with-silver-spoon-ready-to-roll-vanilla-icing-designed-by-mich-turner

Other reviews you may be interested in :

Our Pudsey Cake for Children In Need !

 Silver Spoon Cakecraft - Baking Fun with the Kids

Silver Spoon Create Cake Decorating products review