Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

My nephew wants a burger n chips cake for his 16th. I am using paul’s tutorial but I don’t have an air compressor, can you do it without it? Also why a 10 inch carved instead of a couple of 6 inch cakes? I don’t have a 10″ square tin

Hi wardiep

I guess there’s no reason why you can’t use the six inch cake pans as long as you still have a reasonable size cake after carving a little to get the bun shape. You don’t need a compressor or airbrush to colour the bun. Just use some petal dust or lustres, blend them in and gradually apply lightly to the fondant. It’s better to build the colour up until you’re happy with the shade. You can seal the colour by spraying the finished cake with PME clear glaze which you can buy in cake decorating stores. Keep the spray a good few inches away when spraying as you may end up with streaks, do a little at a time, you won’t need a lot. I don’t have an airbrush and find sealing the colour this way works just fine.

thank you 🙂 one more question, flowerpaste is very expensive, can I use sugarpaste with tylo for the lettuce, tomatoes n onions?

You could do, but you won’t get it to roll out quite as thin. If you’re based in the UK, Sainsbury’s do their own flower paste now in the cake decorating isle, I’ve used it and it’s ok for just over £3.00, can’t remember the weight off the top of my head but still a reasonable size and plenty enough for all the salady bits. The other thing I meant to say is try and start the bun with an off white fondant rather than pure white, something like ivory. White is quite hard to cover with petal dusts so the ivory will be a good base to make the lovely golden orangy colours for the bun. You can just colour it up yourself, again gradually because colour develops, best done the day before you need to use it, it’ll give you a better idea whether you need to put a little more colour in.

This could be done much more easily and virtually without carving using the already rounded hemisphere pan. The bottom third could be used for one side of the bun and the higher sliced off part could be the hamburger. Then just use another hemishphere pan (or the same one again) for the other side of the bun. Check out the free tutorial at “Wicked Goodies”.

Sure it could be done more easily just like most things I guess, but then you’re not employing your carving skills and rising to that challenge! I’m useless at carving, small cakes like this give me the confidence I need in my knife weilding skills. I feel so much pride once the job has been achieved. It’s good to have the pracitcal knowledge in the absense of shaped pans.

I agree with you madeitwithlove that it is much more fun and satisfying knowing that you’ve done everything from scratch even if it is a little less perfect. And it is especially satisfying knowing that you’ve succeeded at something specific that was difficult for you. But just as I’ve never heard you speak against the use of cake mixes, I think people should be aware of what is available and then be able to choose accordingly. Perhaps someone would care to spend less time carving a basic cake and more time enjoying the making of all the vegies that can be added to a burger cake. It’s all a matter of individual preference of how each of us prefers to spend our time.

Couldn’t agree more franke! As for cake mixes, I’m a coward when it comes to using them, I do prefer to make cakes from scratch because I know how they behave during baking. I’ve tried mixes and always manage to fail. There are some good mixes available, I believe Paul uses the Puratos professional mix. On a more domestic/professional level Wright’s flours produce some excellent flours. Many members have used them and have given great feed back. Even I’ve manage to produce a decent cake from their madeira mix. To see comments type in the search box ‘Toffee cake’ or ‘cake mixes’. As you’ve so rightly said it’s a matter of preference on all aspects of baking and decorating.

Hi Paul I think it will be safer to add dowels for transportation reason I got an order this week and need to delivery it with fail can you inform the safest dowels position for this cake

Hi mariamaljamil

Paul stuck the top of the ‘burger bun’ down with ganache. Ganache is very stable and should hold fast. However, you could travel the cake in two sections and assemble the top ‘bun’ to the ‘burger and relish’ at the venue.
If you would like either Paul or David to give a more definite answer please contact them with your query at
[email protected] and ask the same as you have in this thread.

Hope this helps and Good Luck with your cake.