Equipment

I store most of my smaller equipment in a toolbox...

It has two sections, so I keep larger items and things I don’t need as often, like ribbons and dowels, in the bottom section

I have picked up a range of different modelling tools over the years

The make-up brushes are for applying coloured dusts and glitters

I make silicone moulds as needed using these kits

I have bought a few silicone moulds for specific projects. The leaf veining moulds are incredibly useful – very life-like results

Cake smoothers are essential to getting a flat surface on the sugarpaste

I have a long polyethylene rolling pin (60cm) and an short one (23cm). The long one is great for rolling out large pieces of sugarpaste for covering cakes or cake drums. Not only can you roll out more smoothly, you can also pick up the sugarpaste with the rolling pin to lay it over the cake/board. The smaller one is needed for small scale work. Polyethylene rolling pins are perfect for sugarpaste, as wooden ones have some texture and the plastic doesn’t stick to the sugarpaste as easily

I used to sprinkle icing (powdered) sugar on a stone surface or large polyethylene board, but have found that using a rolling mat is quicker and gets better results. The only challenge is that it tends to spring back up into a roll, so I tend to pin down the corners with heavy items to help keep it flat

Stencils are very useful, particularly for making flowers

The ‘plunger’ style of stencil are quicker and useful when you want to give definition or shape to the sugarpaste...

But they can get jammed from time to time

For roses, I love the ‘Easiest Rose Cutter Ever®’. It really does work and saves a huge amount of time. If you are a professional sugar flower maker, I am sure you would turn your nose up at it, but for amateurs, it is awesome!

Sometimes, for lettering, I try to recreate by hand specific fonts (such as the Hello Kitty or Star Wars fonts), but for standard lettering, I really like this kit. It looks very professional and saves a lot of time.

When you are letting sugarpaste sculptures dry, having foam mats, either flat or textured, are really helpful to speed up the drying time by allowing air to get to more of the surface area of the object, as well as helping to keep the shape intact

Sometimes, I use polystyrene blocks to help keep the shape

A turntable is very useful when working with both cakes and when modelling sugarpaste

Non-slip mats are sometimes very useful, particularly to put under boards that you are working on

In order to colour sugarpaste and buttercream...

you will require edible colours...

The liquid ones are good for mixing

Edible ink pens are also useful for writing on sugarpaste

And lustre dusts/edible glitters are also useful

Make sure they are edible if they will be used for anything that might be consumed

I have accumulated a range of paint brushes of different thicknesses. Very fine brushes are necessary for detailed painting onto sugarpaste (such as eyes)

CMC edible glue is essential for adding to sugarpaste to make it harden, as well as mixing (a very small amount) with water to form a liquid, edible glue

For air brushing, again you need to ensure the paints are edible. I have borrowed an Iwata Silver Jet from Debbie Brown, that I use with Kroma Kolor airbrush paints. This is a high class, flexible piece of equipment

Perhaps slightly bizarrely, I find a builder’s triangle useful for getting straight edges when covering cakes with buttercream

Piping gel is useful for water effects, such as lakes or waterfalls

If you are doing lots of modelling, Saracino is fantastic. They do a great ‘skin tone’ colour

I use disposable piping bags (cleaning traditional ones is a pain!) and have a set of different piping nozzles

I have used a large number of sugarpaste brands over the years. Buying a good quality brand makes delicate sculpting easier. Also, buying coloured sugarpaste is useful, particularly with dark colours. In particular, black sugarpaste is really great, as otherwise you need to add a lot of colour manually and this makes the final product hard to work with. SweetArt (from Portugal) is fantastic, particularly for sculpting as it sets hard. My main brand is Sattina. I particularly like the plastic tubs, as this means you can reseal and reuse it without too much drying out

For chocolate, I always use Callebaut. It is a proper, professional brand that performs well (and is easy to temper), yet isn’t too expensive. I always use the microwave technique for tempering. There are lots of YouTube videos about this technique (including one by Callebaut) and these make it easy. Tempering is crucial if you are trying to get chocolate to set (clearly, it is not necessary if you are using chocolate as an ingredient in a ganache etc.). This applies to dark, milk and white chocolate. Buying chocolate chips (‘callets’) makes it much easier to melt them compared to blocks

I have accumulated lots of different sizes and shapes of baking tins over the years. Thicker, higher quality ones are always worth buying, as they build and retain heat more evenly. Ones with removeable (‘springform’) bases are useful, as it reduces the possibility of the cake breaking up when you unmould it

Dowels, either plastic or wooden, are important when creating cakes with height to ensure that the lower levels don’t get squeezed, or to help sugarpaste sculptures to keep their shape

The thicker, hollow dowels I find useful when making two-layer cakes (with the sculpture on the top level and the cake(s) on the lower level) – you have to carry the cake carefully, but they do ensure that the cakes don’t get squashed

The final, and most extravagant piece of equipment that I own is an Agbay cake slicer/leveller. You can buy cheap cake levellers (that look like coat hangers) that do the job fine and are adjustable. The Agbay costs a lot of money, but is fantastic. Hard to justify if you aren’t a full-time cake maker, but wonderful to own and use! It is ultimately adjustable, and the serrated blade is very sharp