Cake Talk

I'm trying to be an active and contributing member on www.cakecentral.com.  That website is one of the best places to learn about cake decorating.  I love to participate in the forums so I can learn and share with others.  If you want to see what I've been talking about, go here:

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-fsearch-author-metria.html

Practicing on a Dummy

Practicing on a Dummy

I practiced decorating a 10"x4" styrofoam round dummy cake.  It was iced with IndyDebi's buttercream with royal icing piped on to it.  I tried out several different designs ... now my arm and wrist are dying.  I've never really piped all that much besides simple borders.  I definitely need more practice.  A dollop of corn syrup was added to the royal icing which seemed to help with the consistency.  All this was done with Wilton tip #3.  Which do you like best?

curly C's

cornelli lace

curly S's and drop strings

um ... cage thingie and basket weave

dots and swirly border

hearts and other swirly border

... MORE DOTS!

I like the cornelli lace because it's mostly continuous.  

You don't see many points where the tip was picked up.

This would look better with a smaller tip.

I like these swirls because they're a little more interesting.

It wasn't until later that I realized I could avoid the ugly peaks if I drew the swirls in reverse (inner to outer).

BMW Logo in Fondant

BMW Logo in Fondant

This will be the topper for my brother-in-law's graduation cake.  He's been accepted into BMW's training program.

Stats:

• Satin Ice black fondant circle (about 6" in diameter)
• MMF blue, white, and gray accents
• Gray ring is extruded MMF painted with silver luster dust
• the rest of the MMF was brushed with canola oil for shine

This was actually a good learning experience.  I finally used the extruder for a finished product.  I finally used luster dust.  I finally used canola oil to make fondant shiny.

First I rolled out my black fondant.  Using my 6" round pan, I cut out a circle.  Next I mixed black with white fondant to get a nice light gray.  After kneading it with some shortening, I stuffed it into my extruder.  It wasn't as smooth as I would have liked.  I'm inclined to think that a different type of fondant would work better.  I should run pure Satin Ice through it to verify that theory.

The gray tub was attached to the black circle with a little water.  The water picked up some of the black coloring so I was careful not to roll the gray around in it.

I rolled out some blue and white MMF.  Using a tumbler drinking glass, I cut out a circle from each, about 4" in diameter.  The circles were quartered.  After matching up the blue and the white sections, I could see my quartering wasn't very good.  I had to smoosh and trim the sections together to make a better whole circle.  The circle was then glued to the black with some more water.

 

 

I sprayed some PAM into a bowl.  Using a small paintbrush, I gently brushed some of the canola oil on to the fondant.  This eliminated the lingering cornstarch and made the fondant smooth and shiny.  The bulk of the shine wore off after a while, but it still looks nice.

WARNING.  Luster dust containers are hard to open.  My luster dust jar now has teeth, knife, and nail marks along the edges.  It's an extremely tight fitting cap that has an inner as well as an outer rim to it.  It took about 5 minutes to open without me stabbing myself.  I jammed a butter knife into it and eventually pried it open.

I gingerly poured a bit of dust into a disposable souffle cup.  After adding some confectioner's glaze, I was convinced this was what pixies drink at weddings.  It was sparkle magic.  It looked just like metallic paint.  The gray fondant tube got a couple coats of this stuff ... it shimmered as I painted it on, dust settling into place ... it was a thing of beauty.

After some consideration, I decided to cut the BMW letters and instead pipe "Congrats, Chris!"  I'll do that once I assemble the entire cake.  Right now my circle is drying on the kitchen table.  Hopefully I won't screw it up in the end.

UPDATE (02/09/2010)

The shine has worn off the fondant, but it still looks fine.  I rolled out some more of the gray MMF and used my alphabet cutters to spell "Congrats Chris!".  I actually cut out "Congratulations Christopher!", but that was impossible to fit it on the logo.  Luckily I saved the left over luster dust paint, so I was able to put a nice coat on the letters too.  I'm very pleased on how this came out.  Tomorrow I'll level, torte, fill, and ice the cake.

Rosebud

... Rosebud ...

At the moment, these look like a tray of strange hors d'oeuvres.  These are actually fondant rose buds, patiently awaiting their transformation to be part of my wedding cake entry for the competition.

I first learned how to make a fondant rose from my Wilton Course 3 Class 2.  Apparently I made the buds too small.  Stupid instruction booklet didn't have a lifesize picture of how they should be.

I have high hopes my new roses will be beautiful.  I just have to make a bazillion of them.  There will be more photos to come.

Baker's Joy

Baker's Joy

There are a lot of methods for getting a cake to not stick to the pan.  Up until today, I've been doing it the old fashion way: smear shortening all along the inside and dust it with flour.  Up until today, my cakes have come out ugly.  Today, I used Baker's Joy.  

It was first suggested to me from a cakecentral.com forum post that I had made about cake spackle.  I bought a can of this stuff at Walmart for under $3.  Today I baked a 10"x3" round, 2 8"x3" rounds, and a 6"x2" round for to kick off my busy busy February caking.  Every single one of them baked up tall and looked gorgeous.  The only thing I did different was reduce the heat a smidge and use Baker's Joy.

Here's what my past 6"x2" rounds have looked like ... these were 2 rounds that were leveled and stacked:

The Duncan Hines Red Velvet can be a little delicate.  The sides stuck to the pan mercilessly ... a chunk of the bottom even ripped off one of them.

Today, this is what I pulled out of the oven:

Before I flipped the cake out of the pan, I used a butter knife to make sure the sides weren't sticking.  That was completely unnecessary.  I flipped the cake pan with the cake resting on my left hand.  I'm used to banging the edge of the pan against the cooling rack to "coax" the cake out.  Today, it fell right into my palm.  It wasn't crumbly or delicate.  It was perfectly formed.  

The cakes in the 3" pans baked up so tall, I'm now considering torting those instead of making new layers.

 

For the 10"x3" round, I put a flower nail in the center of the pan sprayed with Baker's Joy.  After I flipped the cake, it was plucked out without consequence.  Not sure why the middle of the cake looks like brains, but I assure you, it's cooked thoroughly and smells delicious.

 

I've seen the light!  Baker's Joy it is from now on!

What's Cookin'?

What's Cookin'?

"A bowl of soup?" you ask.

 "Nope, try again," I say.

"Looks like pho," you say.

"No, I'm not really that into pho," I reply.

  "Ramen, perhaps?"

"Yes and no."

"What do you mean, 'yes and no'?"

"What do YOU mean, 'yes and no'?"

"...what?"

"Knock, knock..."

"Look, will you just tell me what it is!"

It's fondant, baby!  Fondant ramen.  I've somehow Frankensteined my favorite college dinner with my cake decorating hobby.

Stats:

• MMF bowl
• MMF extruded noodles
• edible varnish + brown food coloring as the soup

I've had the idea of making a ramen cake since my birthday in November, but was too lazy to do it.  Now that I've been experimenting with some things, it was a great opportunity to recreate my favorite <$0.25 meal.  I bought some Tylose powder (brand name for stuff that helps make gum paste) to try out mixing it with my marshmallow fondant.  After covering a cereal bowl with plastic wrap, I draped a layer of MMF over it and cut the excess.  It dried for 48 hours, but still wasn't as hard as I would have liked it.  Perhaps I should experiment with pastillage.

It's been a while since I practiced with the extruder.  For the noodles I tried the disc with multiple small holes.  I called it quits after extruding 5 different logs of fondant that only partially filled the fondant bowl.  Each log was mixed with a lump of shortening to soften it up.  It was definitely more difficult to turn the extruder with the lumps that had less shortening.

I've been wanting to try out the edible varnish recipe from cakecentral.com (here).  Unfortunately during the process the mixture accumulated many bubbles.  Hopefully my fellow cakecentral members will answer my plea for how to make the varnish sans bubblies.  After mixing in a blob of brown food coloring gel, it looked good enough to eat.

There's a real bowl underneath the fondant bowl.  It's there for insurance.  I was scared that the varnish was hot enough to melt the fondant, but it did fine.  The noodles, however, did seem to sink and soften a bit.

At the moment the "soup" is about the consistency of a Jello Jiggler.  Perhaps tomorrow it'll be rock hard.  This has been a very enlightening experiment.  A version of this will most likely be my "Special Techniques Not On A Cake" entry in the competition.

Unfortunately I'm all out of real ramen :(

Chocolate Cuppies with Caramel IMBC

Dark Chocolate Fudge Cuppies

Caramel IMBC

Who needs a reason to bake?  I sure don't.  My in-laws came over today for grillin' and chillin'.  I've been itching to make another batch of IMBC, so now seemed as good of a time as any.  We all enjoyed these yummy numbers.

Stats:

• Duncan Hines' Dark Chocolate Fudge cake 
• IMBC with some melted caramel and cream
• 1M tip swirl

I complained to my husband.  I don't understand how people can make cupcakes without a huge mess.  I got batter everywhere trying to pour into the cups.  My arm ached from holding up the bowl.  I told him I've been making cupcakes since I was a kid and can't seem to get a good system going.  I don't understand how professionals do it.  He pointed out that I don't make cupcakes every day.  There must be some secret.  On TV I've seen bakers use ice cream scoops to transport batter from bowl to cup.  I couldn't find our ice cream scoop and I think my batter was way too runny to do that.  Maybe a pancake pourer ... that's a real thing, right?

For a while now I've had this bag of Caramel Bits, convenient little balls of caramel ready to melt.  After making IMBC normally (except for forgetting to add vanilla), I melted about 1/4 cup of caramel.  After nuking it in the microwave, stirring revealed it to be very thick and gummy ... which is, I guess, what caramel is like (hey, I've never done this before).  I was afraid it wouldn't mix into the icing ... there would be huge globs of sticky goodness in my silky smooth IMBC.  I poured in some heavy whipping cream to thin it out and it worked nicely.  It mixed in fabulously and gave the icing a lovely light, nutty color. Everyone loved the taste.  This is definitely a keeper.

Yesterday my family and I went to the cake supply store yet again.  I needed to pick up some cake dummies for the upcoming cake competition.  While I was there, I bought a 21" canvas decorating bag.  Ok, I didn't realize this at the time (the bag was folded up), but this thing is huge.  My father-in-law called it a dunce cap.

The whole batch of IMBC took up less than half of the bag.  I wasn't even sure how to wield this thing, but managed to ice the cupcakes without incident.  Here they are with a swirl using the 1M tip.  I didn't do the full-blown 1M swirl (requires 2 passes), which was a good thing because 1 batch of IMBC can't cover 24 cuppies with that technique.