Stocking Your Pantry
While traditionally decorated cakes have been reserved for special occasions, they may just as well serve as everyday snacks or desserts in your home. If you are a budding cake decorator it could in fact be recommendable to treat them as such, even if it only is so as to have an added reason for regular practice of your skills. However if you do you want to make sure that you have what you need for it readily available. Suffice it to say that it is very frustrating to discover that you are out of candy colors or buttercream icing in the middle of a decorating project. Moreover chances are that the more familiar you become with the art the less meticulous you will be in the planning stage of a project, thus reducing the likelihood of you spotting a shortage of a needed element before you get started. Avoid it by stocking your pantry as follows:
Baking ingredients.
If you are into making your own cakes you will need to have a good supply of flour, sugar (both brown and white), baking soda, baking powder, vanilla extract and shortening on hand. The added bonus of going for this inventory is that you will have everything you need for cookies, bread and other typical baking projects. However if baking is not your thing you can limit this section to an appropriate amount of your favorite cake mix.
Covering ingredients.
If you have not already, put sugar on the list of what you want to always have in your pantry. It is the primary ingredient of almost any type of icing you could want. White sugar and icing sugar, otherwise known as powdered sugar, are the types you are most likely to need. Also keep glycerin on hand if you are into fondant, baking chocolate if you prefer ganache or chocolate plastic and ground almonds if you want to make your own marzipan. Note that you might need additional ingredients for icing, but that most of them are perishables of which it would be a bad idea to keep a stash unless you consume them regularly. These include eggs, butter, cream, milk, lemon juice, cream cheese or other icing elements that would have to be refrigerated.
Again, if you prefer an easier approach you can simply replace some of the above elements with pre-prepared icing mixes or even, in the case of marzipan, the ready-made thing. While these will impair your control over the texture and quality of your icing, they may often be stored longer than the respective ingredients. Also remember that while decorating elements such as fondant can be made at home, you could just as well save yourself a lot of time by purchasing it ready-made whenever you need it.
Decoration supplies.
Anything you often use as decorations for your cake falls into this department. Sugar is the given one, as with the other two sections. Indeed, sugar has an enormous part to play in almost any cake decorating project. Baking Chocolate and fondant or butter-cream ingredients may also feature into this point, should they not already be on your shopping list as icing supplies. Finally marzipan, candy colors, confectionery items and ready-made sugar shapes are other items that keep for a long time.
Remember that while it is handy to have these items at home for cake decorating, you will still need to make extra rounds to the supermarket in order to buy perishable goods or to re-stock your supplies on occasion. Moreover in being aware of what goes into your cake and your cake decorations you should realize that while practice makes perfect, you should not overindulge your appetite on your creations.
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