The Power of the Crimp

Last night’s cake decorating lesson was all about sugarpaste. We covered boards and polystyrene dummies with a layer of sugarpaste and also learnt about embossing and crimping. The picture shows my crimping practice on a test dummy.

I’m still a beginner with the crimper but here are some tips that helped me improve:

1. There’s no need to push the crimper right into the sugarpaste, a milimetre or two is enough.

2. Hold the crimper as shown in the picture. Gently squeeze the crimpers together slightly – squeezing too hard makes the indent stick out and look silly and untidy.

3. Move the cake so the section you are crimping is directly in front of you, you shouldn’t have to move around the cake. This will make it easier to position the crimp.

My crimpers are from ebay, I got a set of 3 for about £7 which is pretty reasonable. There are lots of different shapes available including heart shaped ones. I’m not sure that I’d use crimping on any of my own projects as it looks a bit old fashioned but it’s required skill for this unit though so I’m going to crimp a simple serrated scallop around the top of the cake.