Every now and then I come across cakes where the cake board is made to look like floor boards and I have always thought they look amazing. When one of my fellow Australian Cake Decorating Network members posted a photo of their wood grain cake board in the forum a couple of months ago, it was a reminder of how I really wanted to give it a go.
Given my new found love of covering cake boards, I whipped up a batch of marshmallow fondant and attempted my very own, and very large, fondant wood grain cake board.
If you search the interweb, there are quite a few tutorials on blogs and YouTube with details on how to achieve this look. There are some where you use a wood grain tool to make impressions in the fondant, or you can use a scalpel to free hand the wood grain. However, the method I chose was to simply paint different shades of food colouring to achieve the wooden look as demonstrated in the YouTube video by Confetti Cakes.
Using the marshmallow fondant I made from the pink and white marshmallows, I covered a 16″ x 24″ cake board with it. The fondant was a little fragile so I couldn’t roll it as large as the board, plus I didn’t think to use The Mat at the time, so I ended up covering it in two pieces so there was a slight join down the middle and a little bit of a wave as I didn’t end up rolling them to the same thickness. But, I just told myself these little imperfections would just add to the real look of the wooden boards.
Take your ruler and with a scalpel or small knife, score your boards according to the size you would like them to be. I made my floorboards 2″ wide, and a full floorboard was 13″ long staggered along the fondant. You will probably need to go over the lines again to give them a bit more depth so they look like real gaps between the floorboards.
Once you are happy with the layout, place some food colouring gel paste onto a plate and for this particular board I used white, gold and brown. You will also need some vodka and so I “borrowed” some of the hubby’s home-brew.
I purchased a couple of cheap paint brushes from the local hardware store, and they were 1.5″ and 2.5″, but I started with the 1.5″ one. Take some of the brown food colouring on the tip of your brush and then mix it in the vodka so you have a “wash”. Paint this over your cake board as your base coat. As it will be quite runny, you will notice that it pools into the grooves and highlights any imperfections (in my case – a join, where the knife strayed from the ruler and a couple of cracks in the fondant). But I’ll keep telling myself it adds to the real look.
Once you are happy with your base code, it doesn’t need to be thick because more “paint” will be added. Speaking of which, again dip the tip of your brush into the brown but don’t put it into the vodka, rather paint some patches onto the board in the direction the grain will be going (i.e. the length of the board). Do this for the gold and white as well, but you won’t necessarily need as many patches of these as they act more like an accent. Don’t be scared to overlap the colours or mix them a bit.
Now dip your brush into the vodka, remove some of the excess and blend the patches into the board. You may need to dip your brush into the vodka a few times if you notice it drying out, but keep going until you are happy with it, and certainly add some more patches of any of the colours if you feel an area needs something more.
You may notice that the colouring isn’t getting into all of the grooves on your cake board. As I was using a light pink coloured fondant, it doesn’t really look that good with floorboards, so I needed to make sure that the colouring got everywhere.
Take a small, stiff paint brush and dip it into the brown colouring and some vodka and use it to ensure the colouring gets right down into the grooves. Once you do this for all of the boards, take your larger flat brush and blend the colouring into the rest of the board.
If your fondant isn’t quite even or even in the grooves, you may notice some pooling of the vodka. If this happens, use the flat brush to try to remove as much of it as you can along the way. Once I was happy with the board, I took the larger brush that I hadn’t used and ran it over the board to clean of any excess that remained. There is the risk that you can spend a long time doing this and over thinking the whole thing. I am notorious for over thinking, but when the first moment I was happy with it occurred, I put down the brush and stepped back.
The board was made a week before I needed it so that it would have some time to set firm. A couple of times during the week I took a peek or two at my handy work as it sat resting on the shelf.
When the next weekend came where I needed to put the cake on the board, I found some tan/caramel coloured ribbon and stuck it to the side of the cake board using double-sided tape to finish it off nice and neatly. The other option is you can cover the sides of your board with fondant (which might be easier if you are using a thicker board) and paint down the sides of them as well.
After the board completely dried, I could see some paintbrush marks where the colours hadn’t been blended very well (namely the patches of white), and I was most proud of my dark little “knot” as it just added to the effect and really made it look like read floorboards.
You can certainly use this technique on any cake board regardless of the size or shape. And if you use a scalpel or wood grain tool to press grain lines into the floorboards, you could also paint these in any colour (e.g. a pastel pink, blue or white for a baby shower cake) which will give you that “shabby chic” look.
This particular board was used for a naming day cake for a lovely lady my mum works with and you will be able to see that one next week so stay tuned.