Petit Fours Class

Petit Fours Class

at Central Market

For Christmas my mother-in-law signed me up for a Petit Fours class at Central Market taught by Laurie Mathers.  I had a great time learning how to make these little darlings!

Stats:

• cream cheese pound cake (which she demonstrated making)
• Swiss Meringue buttercream (which she demonstrated making)
• lemon curd & raspberry jam
• covered in candy coating (a.k.a. almond bark)

This class was very similar to my cake ball class that I took at Whole Foods, but by far better.  It was a full 2.5 hours, had more one-on-one time with the instructor, didn't feel rushed, and came with lunch!  The only down-side was that there were other cooks and assistants in the kitchen preparing meals for other parties at the same time.  It was a little distracting to say the least!

Another problem was not enough tools.  We sat in tables of 4, but only got 2 offset spatulas and 1 large knife, but 4 little steak knives.  I let my fellow decorators have the better tools for more time and did ok with just my butter knife and waiting for a turn. I would have liked to have more time to crumb-coat the sides, but I got them pretty straight to begin with by trimming them.

Having made cake balls really prepared me for dipping these things.  Laurie dislikes pouring the chocolate on the cakes over a rack because then they get stuck to the rack.  She demonstrated making poured fondant, but she likes the candy coating instead because it's easier and tastes better.  She let me dip one of mine in the fondant, and it was a little more difficult.

Yeah ... I was "that girl" in class.  The girl that has worked with royal icing before.  The girl that already knew how to pipe with the different tips.  The girl that knew the difference between Italian and Swiss meringue buttercream (the instructor couldn't remember which was which).  So yeah ... mine were the prettiest :b

I think I like making these more than cake balls ... or at least it's something different for a change.  I've decided to make some of these for my girlfriend's baby shower in March.  They are prettier to decorate.  I don't like candy coating as much as white chocolate though ... I'll probably do a 50/50 mix. 

Competition Work Log: Tiered Wedding Cake

Competition Work Log:

Tiered Wedding Cake

• 1/31/11:  Finally got my last styrofoam dummy for Dallas Foam.  Sanded smooth most of its surface area.  Covered the tops of 6", 8", 10", and 12" rounds with a 50/50 fondant/modeling chocolate mix.  ~2.5 hours.
• 2/01/11:  Covered the sides of the 6" and 10" with white modeling chocolate.  I had to re-do the 6" because I wasn't happy with the first pass.  This was my first time to roll out on to freezer paper and I must say it worked great!  Colored more modeling chocolate white.  Mixed black fondant with modeling chocolate (will be used for trim).  I'm now a bit unhappy with the green color.  It looks really green ... like ... golf course green.  I'm hoping my color scheme will all come together when I add the trim.  ~ 2 hours. 
• 2/02/11:  Aren't I the busy beaver??  I covered the sides of the 8" round with modeling chocolate.  Before doing so, I applied my colored accent stripes to the rectangular piece of modeling chocolate (~4"x24").  I used my extruder to make narrow strips and glued them to my rectangle, then wrapped the cake with it.  Turned out awesome.  My only concern is that I only used a tiny bit of water to glue on the stripes ... hopefully it was enough to keep them on for good.  ~1 hr, 45 min.
• 2/04/11:  I've been keeping my cakes in the den closet so the toddler, the husband, and the 3 cats won't mess with it.  Hubby and I were cleaning up the den area and he had to put something in the closet.  After placing the whatever it was, he said "Your cake has a crack in it."  My heart practically stopped.  Turns out he was referring the to seam on the side of my 8" round that I was planning on being the "back of the cake".  It was pretty good motivation for me to make some Royal Icing and patch up some of that gap where the ends met failed to meet cleanly.  Later on I covered the sides of the 12" round and let me tell you ... it's a lot harder to do any technique when you're working with 3 feet of continuous material.  I made a 4"x36" rectangular strip of modeling chocolate and put my accent stripes on it before attaching it to the dummy (this time using piping gel as adhesive).  It only had a minor tear getting it on, but easily rubbed away.  This is definitely the biggest cake I've ever worked on.  And tomorrow, I'm finishing it dammit!  I need to finish a cake a week to be in time for the show.  ~2.5 hours.
• 2/05/11:  So I didn't finish the cake yet.  Hit a snag when my plan for my 2-tone damask design didn't work.  Hubby and I put our heads together and I mocked up a suitable solution, but didn't really have a lot of time to continue tonight.  Instead I put vertical stripes on my 8" and 12" tiers.  They look great!  Hopefully I can finish the cake tomorrow.  ~2 hours.
• 2/06/11:  Superbowl family time prevented me from finishing this cake ... but I'm getting closer.  I put the damask designs on my 6" tier.  It looks ok ... not thrilled but I think the 10" damask designs will go better.  ~ 2 hours. 
• 2/07/11:  ~whimper~ cake ... won't ... end ... Another couple hours cutting out and trimming the damask design for the 10" tier.  I'm fighting the urge to slap everything together and call it done.  I'm trying to decide if I want to coat the non-white portions of the cake with 50/50 corn syrup/alcohol to give it some shine.  Still not sure how I want to finish the borders.  ~ 2 hours. 
• 2/08/11:  Ok.  Stacked all the tiers.  Put trim on the bottom of each tier.  Dusted it and tried to take off  excess powdered sugar by painting it with Everclear.  Stood back and looked at it.  Had Hubby stand back and look at it.  Decided the top tier ... the tier I did first ... looked like crap.  Had tons of finger marks, the cuts weren't straight, and we couldn't figure out how to fix it.  I took it off, threw it in the sink, and ripped off all of the decorations and coverings.  :(  I'll have to redo the this tier all over again.  ~3.5 hours.
• 2/10/11:  FINISHED! It was a lot faster to re-do the top tier than I thought (probably because I knew exactly how to do everything).  It looks great.  I even decided not to put trim on the top of the tiers because it didn't need it.  A day or two before the competition I'll dust and shine it up.  ~2 hours.

Crazy Cakes by Brian Stevens

Crazy Cakes

by Brian Stevens

Maybe you've seen Brian on TV already.

He's on TLC's Cake Boss: Next Great Baker.

I had the pleasure of visiting his booth at the Austin Bridal Extravaganza show that my mother-in-law, future sister-in-law, and I attended last weekend.  We've chatted a couple times previously because we're both in the Austin area cake club and we both work in the video game industry.  I congratulated him on his work in Sony's DC Universe Online that just launched and, of course, on his work on TLC.  So far in the series he's still in the competition and we're all rooting for him.  Here are the display cakes that he had at the bridal show.

Gollum won 2nd place in Show Cakes in the Austin cake show last year.

I recall Brian posted a thread on CakeCentral.com a long while back.  He was trying to break into the wedding cake industry and asked about effective advertising.  He likes to do special effects with cakes and his art background really helps him push the envelope for sculpting and design.  When everyone looked at his site, their basic reaction was, "Uh ... you don't have any wedding cake pictures!"  Now, this is Austin and we do pride ourselves on being weird, but it's true ... he did need to showcase some specifically wedding oriented designs that would attract brides.  Here they are!

We even got to sample their stuff!

It was a long bridal show and Brian's booth was literally the last one we visited (it happened to be in the corner in the end opposite of where we started).  We saw a lot of cake vendors and I'm happy to say his booth was definitely the most unique and I'm sure really stood out from the others.

Brian, I hope you got a lot of orders!  Congratulations!

Internal Structures

Internal Structures

Do I know what I'm doing?

Absolutely not.

This hot mess is how I'm practicing for next month's cake competition (http://thattakesthecake.org/).  For the past few nights my kitchen table has been subjected to some serious prototyping.  Since this is for competition, I'm going to keep some details on the down-low.  After the show I'll discuss my designs more in depth.

This is the first prototype for a 3D sculpted cake of a cartoon character.  He will be standing straight up and will hopefully stay that way for several days.

Here's what I started with.

Stats:

• 8", 7", and 2 6" rounds of doctored Spice cake
• Rice Krispie Treats
• Wilton Decorator's Buttercream Icing
• big ole piece of scrap wood
• 2 1/2" galvanized floor flanges
• 1/2" PVC piping, some threaded, some not
• several 1/2" PVC couplers
• PVC cutter
• foam core
• modeling chocolate
• fondant

I've never built an internal structure for a sculpted cake.  I've never taken a class for this.  So for the most part, I don't know what I'm doing.  I'm going off what I've seen on tv, notes on CakeCentral.com and other internet bits, and off of Mike McCarey's 3D car tutorial DVD.  It was extremely hard to research when I didn't even know what those thingies were called (those "thingies" turned out to be "flanges").  It's good that this prototype happened early on; there's plenty of time for improvement.

I want the body to be in at least 2 parts: top and bottom.  Things will be so much easier if I can deal with half of him at a time.  The idea is that later on in the process he will be glued together.

Initially I hot-glued couplers on to foam core and fit them over the PVC.  After one night the couplers popped right off and I was left with a saggy waist.

Wilton icing is all kinds of gross to the nose and tongue, but it's actually really nice to spread.  I bought a 4.5 lb bucket with a 50% coupon at Michaels.

 I did not make the entire cake; there's not enough time or resources at the moment to push this prototype much farther.

Notes:

• buy more flanges
• buy a 1/2" thin pipe to help core cake to be put on structure
• get thicker base wood
• get thin wood to go in the middle
• re-design how PVC fits together
• bake twice as much cake
• make twice as much Rice Krispie treats
• let chill after crumb coating, then do another layer of buttercream to help smooth him out
• use a mixture of fondant and modeling chocolate instead of just fondant
• decorate the board around the flanges so his feet can be flush ... somehow
• his head needs to be Rice Krispie treats as a base

I left half of his torso covered in fondant and modeling chocolate.  I'm going to let him sit on my kitchen table for a few days to see how long he can hold up.

Come to the Dark Side ...

... We Have Cookies

Star Wars cookie cutters from Williams-Sonoma.

Gingerbread.

Modeling Chocolate.

Bake or bake not; there is no try.

Fondant Practice

Fondant Practice

2011 is going to be a big year for me in cakes.  The Austin Cake Show and Competition is coming up fast (http://thattakesthecake.org), and I'm crazy enough to enter 4 categories.  I'll be doing the cake and favors for my girlfriend's baby shower.  I've been asked to do the wedding and groom's cake for my brother-in-law and his beautiful fiance.  There's little room for error on these momentous occasion cakes!  While on Christmas vacation I got a leg up on working with fondant again.

Damming and filling.

Can't forget to crumb-coat!

Still practicing getting buttercream on straight.

My fondant is from Toba Garrett's recipe.  I initially noticed that that fondant was very soft, but took no action to correct it.  Shame on me!  I really should have taken the time to add more powdered sugar and get to a better consistency.  Trying to cover this cake with such a loose fondant resulted in rips and tears.  I am definitely not happy with how this came out.  I also greatly underestimated the necessity for straight buttercream underneath.  The sides of my round cake where not perpendicular to the table surface.  This resulted in crooked sides, quite noticeable once the fondant was on.  Tsk, tsk.  Bad caker!

I needed to practice wrapping the cake with a fondant band.  Here is a textured roller that I bought at my local cake supply store.  It was fairly easy to use and made a very pretty crepe fabric look.

I need more practice cutting ribbons cleanly and evenly.

I busted out the lusterdust to make it pop.

So I was pretty dejected after this cake.  I thought it was going to be so easy to cover a cake with fondant and it turned out harder than I remembered.  Here's cake #2.

This time I tried out a new icing recipe from Toba Garrett: French Vanilla buttercream.  It was pretty tasty, but I think next time I'd like to tweak it a little.  I'd like to double the flour so it can thicken up more, then I could cut down the butter (5 sticks is pretty hefty).

Works great as icing and filling!

Dirty icing!

I paid closer attention to my sides this time.

I made sure to thicken up my fondant with some powdered sugar before trying to cover this cake.  It worked much much better this time around.  Unfortunately I didn't have enough fondant to properly cover all the surfaces easily.  Here's what happened to one side.  Fortunately I was able to smooth it out with my fingers and also a wad of extra fondant.

Before ...

After ... You'd never know!

Let's bust out the tappits!

I've never used my FMM funky letter tappits before.  It didn't go well.  The fondant was too soft and got stuck inside the cutter.  I was being stubborn and refused to mix in any tylose.  In the end, I impressed most of the lettering and then cut out the fondant with my Exacto knife.

What??  I somehow got a repeat letter strip ... and am missing the one I needed!

It took a while to figure out how to attach these letters to the cake.  I tried brushing on piping gel, but the letters were so delicate to handle, it became a nightmare.  Fortunately the cake began to sweat.  The condensation was enough for me to press the letter down and make it stick.

Luster dust + Everclear!

Shiny letters ... sweaty fondant ...

It's been a while since I've been with a cake several hours after decorating it.  If I take a cake to work, it disappears in minutes.  This time my husband's family and I enjoyed it on New Year's Eve and then again at a barbecue on New Year's Day.  I was able to witness how well it held up.  The fondant did sweat, but then it all evaporates.  As long as you don't touch it while it comes to room temperature, it'll be just fine.  It looked nice on the inside, it wasn't hard to cut ... the cake was a little dry.  I think I'm going to move away from the doctored recipe I've been using.  I must have that "box-mix palette" that scratch bakers hate!

I was much happier with my work on this cake.  I got to try out a lot of new things and practice again on my basics.  I'm looking forward to doing more and more!

Happy New Year!  Wish me luck!