Paris Cutler - Planet Cake

Welcome to Planet Cake

Long before Planet Cake was born, a decorated cake gave me my first real career break. Straight from school and only 18 years old, I was working as a runner in one of Sydneys top stockbroking firms. I ran all over town delivering trading dockets, constantly exhausted and earning a very low wage but seeing it as an opportunity for greater things. After six months that opportunity came when I was invited, along with everyone at the firm, to a 60th birthday party for one of the senior partners. The rumour was that if you could impress a partner, your career would be fast-tracked straight to the trading floor. My delight quickly turned to unease when everyone began discussing their gifts (I can remember through my haze of anxiety that a gold Rolex was mentioned). I could barely afford my rent let alone an extravagant present.

However, I discovered that the senior partner loved Harley Davidson motorbikes, so I decided to make him a very special cake. This cake was crudely designed and poorly executed and I felt sick with embarrassment when I arrived at the party, only to be overwhelmed by his response. My motorbike cake was placed as the party centrepiece, I became the belle of the ball, and from that moment the senior partner took an active interest in my career. It was an amazing lesson in what giving a little time and imagination can achieve in a material world where people can buy anything they want. However,much to the dismay of my family, I left my big break in stockbroking (I found myself reading craft magazines instead of financial reports and spent my lunch hours talking to the florist about her displays for the company foyer rather than networking with clients) and fell, quite by accident, into my dream job.

When I first stumbled across Planet Cake in 2003 it was a tiny little shop located down a Sydney side street and had already been operating virtually unchanged for seven years. The shop was originally established by Margie Carter, a world-class cake decorator who we are fortunate enough to still have at Planet Cake as Artistic Director. The original store was painted electric blue and had a dusty figurine of Astro Boy in the front window and cupids on the walls; in terms of size it was not much bigger than my daughters bedroom. However, inside was a magical world of cakes. It was this atmosphere of creativity and the exceptional quality of the work that persuaded me to invest in the business and become owner of Planet Cake.

From these modest beginnings weve moved to a much larger production kitchen (in which weve created many celebrity wedding cakes, including that of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban). Our kitchen also serves as a classroom: we began holding decorating workshops in 2004 and have now taught hundreds of students, and trained and employed many talented cake decorators. We are a true team, with a specialist in every area: novelty, figurines, sugar flowers, piping and wedding cakes. It is the creativity and high-quality techniques of this team that we want to share with you in this book.

The best starting point

Unbelievably, Planet Cake exports from Sydney as far afield as Europe and South America. This is entirely due to the way we set up our cakes and our use of ready-to-roll (RTR) fondant icing, which does not require refrigeration. I constantly receive questions from aspiring decorators wanting to know how we achieve the sharp edges on our cakes, and keep them moist and delicious. If you have ever eaten a dry novelty cake with unpalatable thick icing, then youll appreciate the method Im going to show you to avoid that.

Spending the extra time to make sure your cake is perfectly sculpted and covered with a completely smooth layer of chocolate ganache before you ice it allows you to use one layer of thin icing. It is this that will give you the sharp edges and crisp look every cake decorator craves. This book is set out in a specific order so that you spend time learning to ganache and cover a cake perfectly before moving on to the top layer of decorating. This is the same method we use to train students in our kitchen classroom.