One of the hottest cake decorating trends is the drip cake.
The now famous drip cakes have come a long way in a year. A drip cake is essentially any cake with colorful drizzles down the side. You can use chocolate ganache, caramel. There are a wide range of possibilities, and the only limits are your imagination.
A quick tour of “drippy cakes” on Pinterest reveals clever combinations like chocolate salted caramel cake with caramel ganache drip or the watercolor drip cake from Slice Cakes in Melbourne, Australia.
Juniper Cakes in the United Kingdom offers a festive fall idea for a spiced apple and caramel cake, drizzled with caramel sauce down the sides. The cake shop suggests covering the cake in apple buttercream and pouring the caramel sauce on top and “use a clean spatula to push the sauce to the edges so it drips luxuriously!” For the grand finale, you can add mini fondant apples, fudge pieces or cinnamon sticks to your cake to add visual appeal.
What is so notable about this trend, and many others, is how universal the cake decorating business has become. Cake artists worldwide can find each other’s work with ease on Pinterest or Instagram, and the results are globally inspired.
Bake magazine reached out to another celebrated cake artist Andy Bowdy, who is a young and creative pastry chef working on bespoke cakes in Sydney, Australia.
His words of wisdom? “Cakes need to taste as good as they look,” he writes. “For me, the best part of the cake is always the cream, so why is it so scarce? It shouldn't be like trying to find Wally in Wally World. Somewhere down the line the cream to cake ratio got all mixed up. I'm seeking to undo these cake crimes. Fry the dry and lubricate the cake!”
Bowdy makes gorgeous cakes in unique flavor combinations, such as vanilla butter cake with strawberry mousse, vanilla cream, salted caramel and lemon jam. Another favorite is what he calls the Turkish Delight, featuring chocolate fudge cake, dark chocolate mousse, rose water, roasted pistachios, fresh strawberries and pomegranate caramel. His cakes are eye-catching and flavorful with a signature drizzle of sauce down the sides.
Many cake aficionados follow the work of Katherine Sabbath, a self-taught cake artist in Sydney, Australia. According to her blog, after joining Instagram in early 2013, she developed an international following of more than 320,000 aspiring bakers worldwide. This overwhelming social media success prompted Sabbath to leave her career as a high school teacher in early 2015 to focus full-time on what she calls “The Cake Life.” One of her most popular drip cakes features an upside-down pink ice cream cone drizzling down over a teal eight-layer cake with colorful confetti around the bottom.
A drip cake is versatile, fun and tempting, according to Craftsy.com, so it's easy to see why this trend is catching on with cake decorators and cake shops across America and the globe.
Follow these instructions from Craftsy.com on how to make an easy glaze for a trendy drip cake. Materials needed include chilled buttercream fondant cake, heavy cream (whipping or double cream), tempered chocolate or confectionary coating, gel or paste food coloring (appropriate for use with chocolate), an angled palette knife, one tablespoon, microwaveable glass bowl, and spatula.
Weigh out equal measurements of chocolate (white, milk or dark) and heavy cream. Stick to a 50/50 recipe for a ganache glaze, as this creates a really great consistency for drips and drizzles. Combine the chocolate and cream in a microwaveable glass bowl or cup and mix well.
Microwave the cream and chocolate mixture until the chocolate melts. Heating up your ganache can vary depending on your appliance, so we recommend taking it out and checking it every 30 seconds.
Once your ganache has melted enough that both ingredients mix together to form a runny, silky and bump-free glaze, you're ready to roll.
Turning your ganache glaze bright and vibrant colors is definitely one of the best steps. Add the gel or paste to achieve the color you want. You'll need a good gel or paste food color that works well with chocolate.
A super-cold cake is ideal for adding a ganache glaze, according to Craftsy, noting that your warm glaze is definitely not going to play well with a room-temperature cake. Now you can fill in the top of your cake with the rest of your glaze. Try not to add too much. Spoon this on bit by bit, too. If you add more glaze than you need, you're going to end up with a mess.
