Sweet Magazine 2013 - A Sweet Year Volume One, 2013 | Page 53

karen
portaleo
accessible: “what I make... is beautiful, delicious cake” and that’s what
drives her popularity.
Karen openly laughed at me when I asked if she enjoyed baking cakes.
Her grandfather was a pastry chef and she grew up surrounded by
food, but she says the best thing about working at the Highland Bakery
is that she can take an order for a cake and doesn’t need to do the
baking; “I just look at the order, work out what I need and send the
details to the bakery - I don’t have to do any baking!”. Karen’s intricate
and incredible sculptures are created in under three days, “the cake we
use in America is light and fragile, and so it stales easily.” Completely
amazed at the details she can put together in her self imposed time
frame
I asked how she did it; “I’ll work all through the night if I have to. People
will look at my cake and say ‘if it looks that good, it can’t taste good’,
and I take that as a challenge!”.
Most of Karen’s cakes are towering 3D sculptures and I asked for her
top tips on creating armature. Karen says the biggest mistake we all
make is designing the internal structure for our cakes - any cakes without considering the delivery. We make armat ure that will hold the
cake, fondant, and all its filling, but won’t withstand the car trip. Karen
stressed that the internal structure of cakes should be designed with
movement in mind, not just the execution of the client’s brief.
What can we find in your tool box? I do 90% of my work with a leaf and
flower dresden tool, if I only had my dresden tool and nothing else,
I’d still be able to work. The weirdest tools I use are probably wooden
spoons, I use them to slap the modelling chocolate around and get it
into the right shape faster!
What is your favourite sugar medium to work with? Modelling chocolate!
Modelling chocolate is most like clay and easiest to work with. If I want
to add a nose to a character, I can add it and blend into the rest of the
face seamlessly. I can add or take away from the chocolate and blend
it completely. I use modelling chocolate for the flesh, and gumpaste or
fondant for costuming.
Karen’s number one tip for getting started in the cake decorating? Go
and set aside some money for fondant. Play with it! Cover baking pans,
recover baking pans and do lots of practice. Practice with things that
aren’t precious. Waste some fondant, waste some cake and buttercream
and write it off as an investment. Going to classes and looking at online
tutorials is great, but you’ve then got to practice - your own trial and
error is where you’ll learn the most.

You can read the full interview with
Karen in the Winter issue of Sweet
Magazine available in the AppStore.