Baking & Snack - November 2009 - 74

CAKE DECORATING

GOING
UPSCALE

Manufacturers
develop automated
decorating
equipment to help
processors add value
with more elaborate
cake designs.

BY SHANE WHITAKER
lthough traditional shell borders and rosettes will
always be popular designs for cakes, consumers today want more elaborate decorated cakes.
They desire upscale, gourmet cake designs, and
accordingly, bakers are looking for automated cake decorating equipment that can accommodate these requests by
making designs that the competition cannot.
Bakers add more value to their cakes by offering increasingly complex designs beyond the standard shell borders
and rosettes, according to Stewart Macpherson, vice-president, sales and marketing, Unifiller Systems, Inc., Delta,
BC. Consumers appreciate and are prepared to pay more
for upscale, fancier cakes, and accordingly, bakers are using
higher-quality ingredients such as real Belgian chocolate,
caramel and fruit fillings and adding
particulates to the top of cakes.
Unifiller is also becoming more
involved with cake manufacturers
at the R&D stage, so it can work
with bakeries to create unique designs for their cakes. "We can help
them do it easily and reliably by
machine but make it attractive
enough that it doesn't look mechanically produced and so it looks
different than the competition," Mr.
Macpherson said. If the baker wants
more sophisticated designs such
as 2-color rosettes or for the top

◀ This servo-driven icing depositor is
versatile and portable so it can be rolled
away for sanitation.
HINDS-BOCK CORP.

BAKING & SNACK / November 2009

and bottom decorations to be different, Unifiller is able to
accommodate those requests.
Because consumers want the higher-end look versus
the standard, inexpensive iced cake look, today's decorating equipment is geared toward being able to finish a base
iced cake with rosettes, shell borders, string icing and other
specialty toppings, according to Eric Riggle, vice-president,
Rademaker USA, Inc., Hudson, OH, said.
Rademaker's most popular fully automated cake decorating lines are for round as well as quarter- and half-sheet
cakes. However, the lines need to be flexible. "Today's cake
manufacturer wants high speed and hand-decorated qualities but most of all they want the flexibility to quickly shift
from one type and flavor of cake to another such as a yellow cake with white icing to a devil's food with chocolate,"
he said. "The cake decorating company does not have
the demand to run long, continuous production runs of
one type of cake for days on end. It must be able to make
multiple product changes per shift, quickly."
ADDING VALUE. Unifiller's automated cake decorating
equipment helps add value to cakes. "One of our latest developments to instantly add value to sheet cakes is a machine
that will cut, separate and fill cakes 'on the fly' with custards,
jams and icings automatically, so now you have increased the
value of the product with just the cost of the ingredients," Mr.
Macpherson explained.
Another new technology from the equipment vendor allows cake producers to apply melted chocolate,
ganache or caramel drizzle automatically onto cakes. "We
can put spirals or swirls in one, two or three colors onto a
decorated cake and instantly add value again with the ingre-

Baking & Snack - November 2009

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