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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Crazy Pizza Cakes

"Crazy Pizza Cakes"
with Brian Stevens

 

Last Sunday I attended another Capital Confectioner's monthly class, "Crazy Pizza Cakes" with Brian Stevens.  Remember Brian?  He was on TLC's Next Great Baker.  Our cake club is fortunate to have him as a member and I learned a lot from class.

Stats:
  • 12" round yellow cake, carved
  • iced with buttercream
  • covered and decorated with Fondx fondant
  • red buttercream "sauce"
Class topics:
  • the color wheel
  • color theory
  • airbrush basics
  • sculpting
  • using a torch

We learned a little bit about the color wheel and how to properly mix colors.  I haven't done this since grade school!  One important tidbit we learned through trial and error was that Americolor's airbrush red plus blue does NOT make purple.  It made some ugly greenish brown color.  Brian attributed it to whatever dyes they use.  I'll be sure to buy purples instead!


I bought an airbrush kit from TCP Global a few months ago, but never really used it.  As soon as our club announced that Brian would be doing an airbrush class, I signed right up.  My kit came with 3 airbrushes, the Master S68, Master G22, and Master E91 with a Airbrush-Depot TC-60 "Salon Air" compressor. I was not very pleased with the compressor.  It could not keep a low (~18) psi consistently; spurts of air and then nothing.  Higher psi's faired better, but I'm not looking to blow a hole through my cake.  Brian, of course, made everything look easy!


We carved and iced a 12" round cake for our pizzas.  This was my first time working with Fondx and it was really nice.  It was soft and pliable, no elephant skin ... I forgot to taste it though!  Oh well.


Brian had us airbrush the "crust" with shades of ivory, chocolate brown, and warm brown.  I made sure to make some irregular burn spots so it would look like pizza I'm used to seeing.


Close-up of my paint job

Close-up of our "sauce" (various red shades with buttercream)

Now with toppings!  All fondant


Of course Brian had to teach us how to use torches.  He brought a large, medium, and small.  Above are the larges, which made fast work.  The medium was like a creme brulee torch that you can buy at Bed, Bath, & Beyond.  The small was neat because it was like a pen, for fine detail work.


After torching

Yummy caramelized fondant!

Smelled like roasted marshmallows ...

Coming away from this class I want to airbrush everything!  Cake, t-shirts, stage make-up ... well, I'll try not to get ahead of myself.  I still have a lot of practice ahead of me before I can be where I want to be with airbrushing.  I might consider investing in a new compressor.  Thanks, Brian!

My coworkers enjoyed this treat!

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like manly fun -- using torches for cake decorating. Your cake made me hungry for pizza!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cool, it looks like a real pizza

    ReplyDelete
  3. This pizza looks so delicious, well done to you! The sauce looks really good! Just a shame that I am trying to stop eating pizza :p

    ReplyDelete

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