A cutting wheel in Cake Decorating is a tool used for cutting out or tracing around shapes in fondant, modelling paste, pastillage, marzipan and so on. It is used to help give your cut a nice clean edge, where other tools such as a knife or scapel might drag at the paste or leave a rougher edge.

Probably the most common or at least most well known tool used is the PME Cutting Wheel, it has two different sized wheels that can help you get into those nooks and crannies.

Some of the things you can use it for include cutting a line freehand, cutting out ribbon strips or tracing around a template (sometimes a paper template is all we may have!)

Another option is the Wilton Fondant Cutter embosser that has two cutting wheels and an embosser (which we will cover in another tools series).

But you can also use a pizza cutter, my one here has a straight and wavy edge. The pizza cutters however are quite large and not very dextrious for cutting out letters and the like. But they are good for large squares or ribbons or even cutting the fondant away from the edge of the cake.

As you can see many tools have more than one use!

You can buy a cutting wheel from most Cake Decorating Suppliers in Australia and Internationally, check out our Supplier Directory for your nearest supplier, although you can purchase from many of them online as well!

Remember you are only limited by your imagination! Have you discovered a very cool tool to do the same job, please share it with us by leaving a comment or contacting me through the contact page.

So when you are starting out there are a lot of things to take into account when trying to get your cake level, how it is baked, how you measured, how you cut or torted (optional), or even whether your bench is level.

More importantly when you start stacking cakes, it becomes even more important for the ones underneath to be level!

There’s a great hardware item you can use the spirit level!  Now don’t be put off they come in all sizes, you don’t need one that is a foot long!  You can get little ones which are perfect for cake decorating.

You can get them from hardware stores like Bunnings (I picked one up for $2), so another nice cheap item.

Or try your cheap shops, when I was in Hot Dollar the other day I found this little baby, along with two tape measures (one for home, and one for the bag, another helpful item!) for $3.99.  This one is great because it has the vertical, horizontal and angled level you can use and just the perfect cake size, so not a huge space stealer!

Once you are more experienced you can start to judge more by eye, but I think you’ll find not very many experienced decorators rely on judging it by eye when stacking is involved I’d highly recommend getting things even with this gadget!

How to use:

• Place on top of cake or
• Hold against side of cake or
• Place against any line of cake that you need to check is level
• Check if line moves inbetween the two centre lines, if so cake is level!

Do you get your cakes level using another method?  Please leave a comment letting us know how you do it!

There are loads of tools out there, cheap and expensive, this new series will hopefully shed light on a variety of equipment.  You don’t have to agree with everything I say, it’s totally up to you to decide what is useful for you and what isn’t.  If you have any tips or tricks with the tool we discuss, please go ahead and post a comment!

Today’s tool is

Tweezers

As any woman knows there are different types of tweezers!  In Cake Decorating it bodes well to have several different types. Pointy ones, flat ones, bendy ones, they all serve a purpose dependant on your needs. They can make a cake decorator’s life much easier for those little things we can’t grab hold of and those nooks and crannies we can’t get our fingers into!

You can use them to do such things as

• Place small items on a cake
• Place small items on the side of a cake
• Pinching the bottom of items on a piece of wire
• Poke holes in models such as eyes

and so on!

The really big bonus is that they don’t have to cost a lot!  Always a bonus.

Inspired by my recent Cheap Shop, Cheap Tools, Getting Creative post I popped into Hot Dollar to pick up some ribbon and cupcake wrappers, and there I spied a packet of 4 different tweezers for the grand old price of $2.50.

My favourite ones are the angled ones they really help get into awkward positions with their little angled head.

Remember if you are using them to apply edible pearls or small items like that, the items need to set or you need a very light hand, I don’t have the light hand and have squashed many an item, so that’s my tip to go with this tool!

So go on pick some up today, you never know when you may need them!

Do you use tweezers in decorating?  What ones are your favourite?

The three main sugarcraft/clay guns that I know of are often referred to as the silver one, the black & red one and the green one. Real creative I know!

The silver one is the cheapest (around the $20 mark) and usually the first port of call for most beginners, due to it’s cheapness, however, nearly everyone I know who got one, tried to use it once and then threw it in the back of the cupboard, in the bin, or scoured the internet trying to figure out what they were doing wrong. It has a push action and frankly it’s a nightmare to use, so not recommended (if you want to try one that bad, feel free to borrow mine before outlining the money! ) Available from clay suppliers and often in the clay/scrapbooking areas of places like Spotlight, K-mart and so on.

Next is probably the most commonly used one, the black and red. It has a squeeze action due to it’s spring system. Much better to use than the silver one! But still with it’s own drawbacks. First of all if it breaks it’s difficult to get replacement parts, basically you need to buy a second one to use as spare parts. It’s considerably more expensive, although if you shop around Complete Cake Decorating Supplies in SA are the cheapest I’ve seen it currently round the $50 mark but when everyone else was selling theirs for $75+ they were selling them for around $45. The barrel isn’t huge and you have to make sure your fondant is well worked, the smaller the hole disc the used the harder it can be to work. But still recommended!

Finally we have the newest addition to my cake tools! The green one! Another clay based tool this little baby rocks! It’s around the $36 mark, it has a bigger barrel then the others and comes with more discs, but best of all even with no spring loading it’s the easiest of all to use. You just need to twist and it does the rest of the work. Yes you have to use both hand for this one but the positives for this one far outweigh the negatives for me and you can even use a stiffer fondant such as chocolate fondant with a smaller disc and with the bigger barrel you get much more out of it! Available from Clay Princess.

Here’s some further pictures showing you the guns and barrels in comparison to each other.

I’ve heard of people making their own but aside from these three (oh and playdoh ones!) I don’t know of any others in Australia. Do you? Are they any better than any of the ones discussed? Feel free to post a link to where they can be bought.

All comments ARE MY opinion, as always I recommend you find the one YOU like.
Check out Maria’s fab post on How and What to use a Sugarcraft Gun for