Perfect Cake Lace - Every time!

Also known as sugar veil, this medium can be tricky to master. It took me a while to work out how to use it and get perfect results every time.

My tried and tested product of choice is Claire Bowman's cake lace. It comes in two parts, a bag of powder and a small tub of liquid. To make the lace, measure out your desired amount of water followed by the powder. Mix until smooth and then measure and add the mystery liquid (it behaves very glucose-like) and mix for about 4 minutes.

It seems very time consuming, but there are positives, I promise. Firstly, it comes in white. You can have any colour you like by adding dust colours, which is not something you can get with pre-made coloured variety. You can make as much or as little as you like - it just depends on how much you need at the time.

The only down side I can see, is that I over mix (to try and get all the lumps out) and have to let it sit for about 5 minutes to get all the air bubbles to rise to the surface.

Air bubbles + cake lace = bad combination!

Now I don't have the proper equipment (because it's ridiculously expensive) so I use my mini offset spatula to get the lace into the grooves of the mat and a regular old plastic ruler (much like the ones you get from school) to remove the excess.

My top tip for you is this: Do not bake it in the oven! All you're doing is drying it out - so if you're in a hurry then go ahead and bake it, but if not - save yourself the gas (and possible third degree burns) and leave it out overnight. The oven bit is the tricky bit and timings differ for every oven; it's just too much to think about.