Palette knife takes cake decorations up a notch

By Norhidayyu Zainal

KUALA LUMPUR, March 4 -- At a glance, Siti Noor Zihan Sheikh Abdullah's style of decorating a cake made her appear as if she was spreading butter on a slice of bread.

However, a closer look revealed that the 46-year-old baker was working on cake decorations that require high precision using a palette knife to create a difference on her cakes.

Similar to the use of a piping bag (x-nozzle), various techniques using palette knife can produce intricate cake decorations such as flower petals, leaves, trees, hearts and stars with a more neat result.

Siti Noor Zihan, who has been involved in baking for more than 20 years, admitted that her passion as a cake decorator has resulted in her being more creative in her work.

“As a baker and instructor, I like to try something new and different, so I diversified the cake decorating technique to the palette knife technique in 2016 as a new module in the course I offer,” she told Bernama.

Siti Noor Zihan, who has a deep interest in painting since childhood, said the use of palette knife for painting has long been popular abroad such as in Italy, but is still new in Malaysia.

“I am very interested in drawing on canvas or board. I see art (using a palette knife) as an interesting and unique art.

“As I always ‘play’ around with cake decorations, I decided to adapt its use and techniques to decorate the cakes,” said a baker who published her book ‘Seni Hiasan Kek Perkahwinan Buttercream Cake’ in 2014.

She also said that as she was using icing from buttercream and cooking chocolate as the main ingredients, she needs to master some palette knife movement techniques to make a cake decoration such as scenery or flowers.

“There are several techniques used to paint and shape flower petals and leaves such as impasto decoration art and sculpture painting through a combination of colour tones so that it looks more original and 'alive',” she said, adding that she took about 30 minutes to complete the decoration, depending on the pattern and size.

Batu Uban-born Siti Noor Zihan also admitted that using a palette knife to decorate a cake is more challenging and complicated than drawing on a canvas or board, which is more fun.

“Decorating cakes is more challenging because I need to be more careful, if not it will be messy. Most importantly, there must be interest and passion to do it,” she said, adding that her cake is priced at RM250 and above, depending on the size, pattern and ingredients used.

-- BERNAMA