Hi, I’m Julie Bashore and I’m the founder of the Sugar Arts Institute and I’m here today to show you some more of the wonderful tools manufactured by Ateco. The first thing I’d like to show you is another silicone mat, this is a new mat that they’ve brought out into the market by the request of many of their customers. This is so that if the fondant is rolled out and adhered to the mat, when one goes to flip the fondant over the cake, the mat is translucent so you can be sure of centering your fondant over the cake. And when I say translucent, you can see here it truly is translucent so you can center the fondant over the cake quite well without having to worry about it being short on one side or too long on the other. It’s a great mat, holds well to the table. I’ve already rolled out a little bit of yellow fondant here using the plastic rolling pin. I started off by rolling very gently, working with my hands on the side of the pin and then coming in, just sliding the rolling pin, and what I’m effectively doing here is pushing the thickness of the center of the fondness out, so that I have the nice, even surface. I like my fondant to be thin, but because I’m going to be working with these wonderful design sleeves, I have actually rolled it out thick. For me, this is quite thick, for most of you, I’m sure you’ll think that this is quite thin, I like to keep my fondant thin so that it’s more palatable and easier to cut and eat. Normally I roll it out to 1/16 of an inch; here I have it at about 1/8 of an inch. I will thin it out using the design sleeve. For those of you who have piped basket weave on a cake, you know how time consuming that is. Piping every little horizontal and vertical line on the cake takes a long time. With this rolling pin it can be done all at once. This sleeve fits over the specially made Ateco rolling pin. It’s a lovely rolling pin, it’s nice and heavy so it’s easy to work with, and you just slip the design sleeve over the top. There are several different designs that they work with, this is another design, it is the cornily lace and gives a lace effect to the fondant. This also gives a fish scale effect. This fits nice and snuggly over the rolling pin and all sorts of things you can think of. I actually use this if I want to make little blankets on cakes, on christening cakes; this is a great design for a quilted look. Ateco has these wonderful stainless steel shakers. They’re easy to remove; you can put your cornstarch, your powdered sugar, your luster dust, even your glitter into this. It’s very simple to put on, it has a nice lid on the top of it so that you can preserve and keep your contents air tight and also, I travel a lot, so this is great, it prevents my product from spilling out. I’m going to shake a little cornstarch onto this and with your hand, just very gently, wipe off the excess. Don’t have too much on there because it will dry and crack the fondant. I prefer to start from close to me and roll upwards; some people prefer to do it the other way. So hold the rolling pin down and, very slowly and gently, roll over your fondant. You’ll see there is a beautiful basket weave design. I’m now going to be working with the cornily lace design sleeve, which also pops right over the rolling pin, and it’s the same procedure as working with the basket weave rolling pin. This is such an elegant design and I can say is one of the most favorite designs for wedding cakes. Now I’m going to be working with the fishnet design sleeve, it’s just like putting on a pair of socks. Stretch it open, pull it over the handle, and then push it onto the rolling pin. It has a nice, snug fit, so it doesn’t move. It’s really an extremely pretty design. It can be used for fish scales, mermaid tails, for blankets, for quilting, it really gives a lovely design and you can run away with your imagination as to what you can do with this. If you come in and have a look closely at this, you will see how this design opens up. Look at that attractive design; it could be used for so many aspects of cake decorating.
