Penguin Christmas: Completed

Penguin Christmas

Merry Christmas, Hang and Sandi!

(+5 skill points -> 225/400)

Oh, what a fun cake!  This is for my co-worker and his wife for their family Christmas.  I'm glad it's done, though ... I've been working on it for a week.  It turned out even cuter than I planned.

Stats:

• 8" round
• Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix
• iced and filled with semi-sweet + milk chocolate ganache
• covered in white MMF
• border with royal icing
• fondant accents

This was my first chance to work with Satin Ice (brand of manufactured fondant).  I ordered red, green, and black 2 lb. tubs from www.fondantsource.com.  The price, including shipping, was the cheapest I could find.  It shipped quickly and arrived on my doorstep last Thursday.  I was so excited I started making the bodies for the penguins right away.

These penguins were inspired by this etsy page: http://www.etsy.com/shop/fliepsiebieps?section_id=5990881.  The entire body is fondant except for the eyes and arms.  I was able to pipe on those using the royal icing I had made for decorating cookies.  I made the creases for the toes with the edge of an old clay tool.  The nostrils indentations were made with a toothpick.  These little guys ring out with personality that I didn't expect.

I also started the Christmas trees early.  The large Christmas tree got scrapped because I ended up making it look ugly and figured it was too heavy for the cake anyway.

I used scissors to snipe the branches ... it looked much better when I watched Buddy do it on Cake Boss.  Mine came out dry and rough looking.  Oh well.  I hope the decorations detract from that.

The cake baked up so nice ... this is the highest rising cake mix I've ever used.  I tried making ganache with 12 oz of semi-sweet morsels plus a handful of milk chocolate morsels.  When it came to icing the cake, I could see that the milk chocolate morsels didn't get incorporated into the rest of the chocolate.  They were still soft and spreadable, but it looked like light brown splotches all over the cake.  I let it chill in the fridge over night to set.  When I rolled the fondant on to it, I noticed the ganache might have been too hard.  I could smooth out a lot of the roughness.  You can see it along the edges in the picture below.

 

Otherwise, icing and covering the cake went really well.  I'm really getting the hang of eye-balling how I need my stuff to be.  I'm not even measuring the sugar when I make fondant or royal icing.

Typical bead border on the bottom.  But the fun part was the top.  All my little guys first got skewered with a toothpick.  This cake was making a 3 hour car drive, and I wanted to make sure there were no casualties.  Each got secured with some royal icing.  You can see it peaking out underneath them.

My previous cake proved I could make an icy/drippy border, which was perfect!  Again, using icing I had made for decorating my sugar cookies ...

This whole cake came together really well, and I was super-pleased.  It feels pretty good to be proud of a cake.  Oh and this was cool:  I was worried about the cake for the 3 hour drive.  I put it in a cake box with the top cut off (because the Christmas trees were too tall).  Then I put that box into this little wooden crate that I took from work.  The building management for our office had bought us a gift basket full of candy, nuts, etc.  They came in this simple wooden box/crate things.  The 10" cake box fit inside it PERFECTLY.  The cake was now snug, safe, and very portable.  I only have one more crate left ... I wonder if I can order them ...

FAILs:

• I need to figure out how to mix semi-sweet and milk chocolate for ganache
• ganache set too hard ... or maybe that wouldn't have been a problem if I iced it smooth to begin with
• you know what?  Satin Ice doesn't taste awesome all by itself ... it tastes chemically ... I may have to try coloring my own MMF with Americolor gel paste to get a rich red, green, or black without sacrificing taste ... I hope no one eats a penguin
  

FTWs:

• figures turned out super cute
• Satin Ice fondant was very easy to work with
• I really love that drippy snow border!!!
• wooden crate held the cake box safe and snug
  

Merry Christmas, Hang and Sandi!

Now for more pics!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Texas Snowmen Cookies: Completed

Texas Snowmen Sugar Cookies

It's my first year addicted to cakecentral.com ... and I've learned at Christmas time, everyone makes "melted snowmen" sugar cookies.  They're all over the galleries ... grinning despite the horror of their predicament.  I've decided to make my own version ... and they have to be called Texas Snowmen!  Hahaha ... just kidding ... we don't get enough snow to make snowmen ...

Stats:

• No Fail Sugar Cookies (NFSC)
• half-sphere of marshmallow fondant (MMF) for the partially melted head
• MMF carrots
• everything else is royal icing

 After rolling out the sugar cookie dough, I used my large biscuit cutter to make circles.  These cookies baked easily, and afterward I put them in the freezer until I was ready to decorate them (a few days later).  I had also made half-spheres of MMF days in advance.  The cookies thawed for an hour before this party got started.

My royal icing was made with All Whites pasteurized egg whites, some vanilla, and enough powdered sugar until it was the consistency I wanted.  On the top of each cookie, I piped an outline of the puddle with some medium consistency icing (tip #2).  A half-sphere of MMF was placed inside the puddle to represent the partially melted head (glued one with a wad of royal icing).  Then the interior and all over the head was flooded with thin consistency icing (tip #4).  The carrot was orange MMF with little score marks by my xacto blade.  I piped on black coals and brown branches out of more royal icing.

These were super fun to make.  They've been a hit on cakecentral.com and my facebook post.  I'll be making more of these over the Christmas break!

 

 

 

 

Texas Snowmen Cake: Completed

Texas Snowmen Cake

Merry Christmas, Emanuel!

(+5 skill points -> 220/400)

This cake is a Christmas gift for my friend and co-worker Emanuel.  If you look on cakecentral.com nowadays, there's a flood of "melted snowman" decorated sugar cookies.  I decided to make my own design for it ... and stick it on a cake.

Stats:

• 8" round
• Duncan Hines yellow cake mix
• semi-sweet chocolate ganache icing and filling
• covered in MMF
• snowy border in royal icing

This was my second cake using ganache ... hence the chocolate smudges in the picture.  It went pretty well.  Not much to say on the making of this cake except for the snow.

I've been practicing "flooding" for decorating Christmas cookies.  My royal icing was made with All Whites pasteurized egg whites, some vanilla, and enough powdered sugar until it was the consistency I wanted.  On the top of the cake, I piped (tip #2) an outline of the puddle with some medium consistency icing.  A half-sphere of MMF was placed inside the puddle to represent the partially melted head.  Then the interior and all over the MMF half-sphere was flooded (tip #4) with thin consistency icing.  The carrot was orange MMF with little score marks.  I piped on black coals and brown branches out of more royal icing.

For the border, I wanted it to look like more drippy snow.  The thin consistency royal icing was piped right on to the edge.  Moving the tip downward gave me some lovely drips.

I'm very pleased with how the border turned out.  I'm going to do this again for Sandi's Christmas cake (coming soon!).

Let the Christmas baking begin!

No Fail Sugar Cookies (NFSC): Completed

No Fail Sugar Cookies (NFSC)
Trial Run

(+5 skill points -> 215/400)

This will be the only time I'll give myself points for sugar cookies, cuz hey!  This is a cake blog :b  Here are the No Fail Sugar Cookies (NFSC).  This recipe was from cakecentral.com (recipe here).  I can only assume the name is from the success rate for making these cookies.  Several people on cakecentral use this recipe ... it's super popular.  Taste-wise, it didn't exactly blow my mind.  They were basically regular sugar cookies, and I probably wouldn't be able to pick it out from several other recipes.

Stats:

• NFSC 
• flooded royal icing
• colored piping gel decorations

It's been a while since I've decorated sugar cookies.  Last time was a couple years ago with those big tubes of Wilton colored decorator's icing that taste awful.  These came out a'ight.

Cookie recipe was pretty basic.

I let the dough chill in the fridge for a couple hours.  When I took it out, it was pretty hard.  I sliced it with a large knife and worked with a little at a time.

Rolling the dough on to a flour covered cutting board was a easy-peasy.  I broke out some old and new Christmas cookie cutters.

The scrap dough was easy to re-work with for rolling out more.  It took a little over 15 minutes for them to bake.

 

 
This was my first attempt at using the flooding technique.  Here's a good tutorial on that from sweetopia.net.  I made some royal icing with my left over All Whites (pasteurized egg whites) carton.  The cookies were piped with tip #4.  After piping all of the cookies I thinned the icing down with water as per the "10 second rule".  Flooding the cookies was enjoyable ... almost therapeutic ... I used a wet paintbrush to help fill in any gaps.

On my last cake, I used the Wilton black piping gel and it looked great.  I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday and bought almost every color they had.

Unfortunately the other colors weren't as bold as the black.  Most were very clear looking.  Oh well, there'll be a time and place for those to come in handy.  For now, I'll have to stick to coloring royal icing if I want it to look right.

Afterward I still had a lot of royal icing left over ... so I just piped a bunch of stuff on to wax paper.

 

The little blogs are kinda neat ... perfect royal icing buttons.  I'll pop them off later and see what they're like.

FAILS:

• the outlining is very noticeable ... I'm not sure if I need to flood it more or use a smaller tip ... probably need to use #2
  
• Wilton decorating gel: only awesome in black
• too lazy to color royal icing

FTWs:

• flooding technique badge earned
• tastes ok (but could be better)
• now I have a bunch of buttons I can use ... for something ...
• royal icing made with pasteurized egg whites was just fine ... cheaper than using meringue powder
  

Ganache: Completed

Cake Covered with Ganache
(+5 skill points -> 210/400)

This cake was just for fun and to practice using ganache.  That's why it looks like Captain Obvious decorated it.

Stats:

• 7" round
• Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake box mix
• filled and iced with semi-sweet ganache
• covered in MMF

This cake mix was great.  I baked a 7" and an 8" round at the same time.  The 8" was done after 1 hour and 25 minutes, but the 7" was still goey inside.  Poking it made it deflate in the center.  It finished baking another 15-20 minutes later.

 

The cakes baked up nice and firm.  The edges looked amazingly clean.

 

Here you can see how the center fell ... when I leveled it there was a little hole on the top.  It leveled and torted nicely though.  I did put too much batter in and it overflowed while baking.  It was a nice 3" tall after leveling.

 

I was researching how to make ganache (see previous post here).  For this I tried a 2:1 ratio of chocolate to cream.  This is a 12 oz. bag of Nestle semi-sweet morsels with 6 oz. of heavy whipping cream.

 

The cream was put in a saucepan over medium heat until it started to lightly boil.

 

The hot cream was poured over the morsels in a pyrex bowl.  Let it stand for at least a minute before stirring.

 

I stirred for a while but wasn't able to get all the lumps out.  Nuking it for 30 seconds helped me smooth it out some more.

 

I covered it with plastic wrap, letting it cling to the surface of the ganache.  It wasn't very hot, but I let it set and cool for a couple hours before using it.

 

Filling and icing the cake was a cinch.  The ganache went on smooth.  It was the consistency of ... oh I dunno ... maybe slightly warm tub icing?  It wouldn't stand up if you peaked it, but it wasn't exactly runny either.  Nice ... thick ... chocolate ... mmm ...

 

I smoothed it with my spatulas like I would do regularly with buttercream.  It's a pretty thin layer.  I'm concerned about the taste ... maybe there isn't enough ganache?  Or maybe the ganache is strong enough tasting that it is just the right amount ... I won't know until tomorrow when I bring the cake to work.

 

The motivation for trying ganache was to help make my fondant-covered cakes look cleaner.  It worked like a charm!  I refrigerated the cake for maybe 45 minutes.  The chocolate firmed up, but wasn't hard.  I brushed on some piping gel around the edges and on the top so the fondant would have something to stick to.  I rolled out 14" of white MMF.  It went on like a dream ... I even used my smoother in motions I only had seen on videos until now.  Usually the smoother gets icing on it or doesn't glide along the fondant well ... but this time I looked like a pro. 

 

Best looking cake I've ever done.

 

 

 

Let's compare it to earlier work, shall we?  Here are the 2 rounds covered in MMF that I did for Aunt Mimi's birthday cake:

Lumpy, lumpy, lumpy!  I'm going ganache and never turning back.  I might try different ratios ... maybe white chocolate ganache ...

I still have to try putting ganache over buttercream ... that might be my next experiment.  The ganache needs to be warm enough to be pourable, but cool enough to not melt the buttercream.

This was pretty much an all win cake, especially since it was just for practice.  I'll tell you later how it tasted ...

 

 

 

 

UPDATE (12/08/09): I brought the cake to work. It looked and tasted great! The ganache filling looked so nice and even. It tasted not too sweet and not too bitter.

Co-worker praise:

Very tasty and looks great. Getting the fondant that smooth is difficult.
A+