Quartermaster Cake

This week's cake project had me diving into my first ever Scout cake... more specifically, a SEA Scout cake.  Yes, there is such a thing as Boy Scouts on water, and their equivalent to the Eagle Scout award is the Quartermaster Award.  Sea Scouts is a co-educational program which means that not only do boys participate in all their sailing adventures, but girls do, too!

This was the first time I experimental with food-friendly metallic painting.  I've used various luster dusts before to give some of my ribbons a little shimmer, but this is the first time I turned those powders into a "paint" and went for the full blown metal effect.

After cutting out my pieces of the quartermaster medal from fondant I had tinted gray, I piped on some finer details with royal icing.  When that dried, I mixed CK Products silver luster dust with a little clear vanilla and made what was, essentially, paint.  I had been told that you're supposed to mix vodka or lemon extract with the luster dust, and I had intended on using the lemon, but in my foggy head of late night television, I grabbed clear vanilla by accident, and it worked just fine!  Phew!

Need a recipe for royal icing?  All  the ones I have make a ton of icing which is much more than what I needed for my little medal, so I went to allrecipes.com and found a recipe that I scaled to make a solid 1/2 cup.  Plenty for my little project.

Royal Icing (makes 1/2 cup)

2-1/4 teaspoons meringue powder

• 1 cup sifted confectioners' sugar (always use pure cane)
• 1 tablespoon and 1-1/2 teaspoons water

I jut mixed all the ingredients with an icing knife for 5 minutes or so until it had a peanut buttery consistency and a slight matte finish.  Worked great!  Oh, and the cake pictured above is a 14" round chocolate cake with raspberry mousse filling and vanilla buttercream on the outside.  Yum!