Display Cakes Weeks 1 & 2

New quarter started! I'm taking Display Cakes and a Capstone course. The Capstone is a course designed to guide the students through the process of starting a restaurant/food establishment from the very beginning til the end. This starts out with coming up with our own concept, menu, business plan, etc. It is quite daunting and overwhelming....but since most of the action goes on in my Display Cakes class, I'll be posting mainly on that class.

Week 1 was all about production. We baked the cakes and made the simple and Swiss buttercream that we'll be using for the rest of the quarter. Of course, we'll have to do some production along the way to replenish our supplies.

Sheet cake batter, ready to go in the oven.

The Swiss buttercream involves whipping the egg whites over a hot water bath to 140F to dissolve the sugar. I had to use a whisk the length of my arm to whip the 4 lbs. of egg whites in the bowl....

Egg whites whipping in the commercial size mixer. Once they cool down, we start adding butter and shortening and whip it to a buttery, smooth deliciousness.

Softened butter and shortening, ready to go into the mixer. Hope that's enough butter!

We started decorating cakes on Week 2. We learned various piping techniques: basketweave, shells, pearls, and rosettes. But there was some prep work to do.

We applied a 'crumb coat' on our cakes. It's a very thin layer of simple buttercream, but this keeps the cake moist and seals in any loose crumbs that can make the cake look 'dirty'.

Once the crumb coat is done, the cake is frosted with a generous amount of Swiss buttercream. Swiss buttercream is used for the final layer since it tastes way better than simple buttercream. We smoothed the surface of the cake and put them in the fridge to allow the cream to set. We can then start decorating the cake. Let the fun begin....