DIY cake tin strategies

#1

I want to make a cake tin that’s a few big letters. As a one-off, I don’t want to go searching and have to buy custom tins each time something like this comes around. So…

The magic of seach hasn’t been so magic. Cake tins with squares you can make shapes with, but only if you want super low res pixel art. Otherwise lots of assembly, sticking together strips of cake you bake.

I did find this. tl;dr - cut cardboard base to shape, make walls with tinfoil. But pretty damn fiddly to do, and perhaps if you’re going to finish with all that masking tape anyway, why bother with half what he does.

Anybody have any ideas or a winning strategy?

#2

How about a few different shapes of tins that make cakes that can be assembled into letters?

A straight line and a half circle should do it…? Or is this too much like [quote=“tobyspark, post:1, topic:4969”]
sticking together strips of cake you bake
[/quote]

?

#3

It is a bit. I guess this is where I’m part being a type nerd, and part optimising for future that may never happen (ie. some other bonkers shape).

#4

How wasteful do you want to be? Cos you could get some thin metal sheet and make gigantic “cookie cutters” to stamp each letter out of a rectangular cake.

A bit like:

#5

That was my starting thought. I’ve done that before with some small cutters I bought. For three big letters, I think I’d be just pretending my kitchen knife was a scalpel, bypassing any actual mould / cutter.

But yeah, this way there’d be more offcut than cake…

#6

Sounds like you could use one of these…
Cake Ribbon

#7

Aaaargh! That prototype doesn’t seem to have ever hit the market.

#8

There is a cake shop at the top end of Lordship Lane that hires out tins if this is all too fiddly. Not sure if they have all the letters but they might.

http://www.sugarcraftboutique.co.uk

#9

There is This. It’s kind of diy.

#10

If the problem is disposing of offcut cake, I can help with that :smirk:

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#11

A strip of well annealed aluminium would bend nice and smoothly. Not sure how you feel about the possible link between aluminium cooking utensils and Alzheimer’s…

#12

High temperature silicone?

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#13

This seems a good idea to me, there’s a bunch of places you can order the polymer from online.

Then the limit is your own imaginering.

#14

Silicone - Does it come in strips? Or am I making a mould to make a mould?

#15

IMG_20170211_120919602.jpg2592×4608 2.2 MB

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#16


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For the record, I thought this might be a faff, and it is. It’s hard to bake evenly too. If I do this again, no f’in way am i doing that masking tape and foil trick again! For type, and keeping to this scale, I’d just do tray bakes and cut out. As @TomHedges says, offcuts of cake is one of the better problems to have…

To do this properly, I think the aluminium strip that @RichM suggested has most promise. You’d lay it into a tray and seal in with a bead of silicone applied from a gun. That would get a nice rounded edge too.

8 Likes
#17

Oh - and I tried to capitulate by buying a ring tin, but could only find domed ones at the catering supplies shop down the road.

#18

On a similar theme, I’m doing personalised lasercut jigsaws for the party bags at my daughters’ joint birthday

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