Display Cakes Week 7

Display Cakes Week 7: Two-tiered mini-wedding cakes

We learned about dowelling this week. The dowels are inserted in the bottom tier of the cake, to provide support for the upper tier, so the bottom one won't take the full weight of the upper ones (i.e. won't get crushed under their weight. I've seen it happen. It's sad).
Dowelling involves cutting the dowels into several pieces to a certain length. The dowels should be just below the fondant, so the top tier will sit snugly on the bottom. Otherwise the top tier will look like it's "hovering".

Chef Instructor cutting the dowels with a serrated edge knife. He warned us to be really careful when cutting them; years ago, he cut himself while cutting the dowels at a pastry shop he worked at. The blade went halfway through his index finger and his thumb. After he got it sewed up at the ER, he went back to work and finished his shift. What a trooper.
After stacking and crumb-coating both the 6" and the 8" rounds, I dowelled the 8". It poked through ever so slightly above the buttercream. Meh. It should still be OK. I put the cake in the fridge to let it set overnight. Until the end of class, all of us made gum paste decorations. I wanted mine to be sakura (i.e. Japanese cherry blossoms) themed, so I cut out a bunch of cherry blossoms, and left them out to dry.

The next day, I carefully eased the 6" cake onto the 8"...and it seemed to "hover" a little. But I used the gum paste flowers I made yesterday to hide the gap.
Chef required us to put fondant drapes on the cakes. I used fondants in three different shades of pink and rolled them out to create the tie-dye look. The drape itself turned out very pretty. But when I tried to drape it on, the edges started cracking :( To top it off, the drape nearly slid off the cake completely. I held it down until the fondant got hard enough to hold its shape. The buttercream frosting got messed up a bit, but it looked OK otherwise.
I finished decorating with the rest of the flowers.

The top view

In all its glory. I'm happy with the way the drape turned out. I'll be using this tie-dye technique every now and then.

Epilogue
...But of course, we had to get rid of our cakes from the previous week, the fondant groom's cake.

(Cue the Final Fantasy Battle music) It's my chef's knife against his. Who will win the battle???

Well, this was certainly a rare opportunity to slaughter this hard-to-defeat enemy character. And he was indeed, formidable, even in cake form. The fondant covering had hardened into a surprisingly tough armor--my first swing with the chef's knife left a only a shallow cut, so I had to stab it repeatedly.

Display Cakes Week 6

Display Cakes Week 6: Fondant Groom's Cake!

We made our groom's cake today, except instead of buttercream, we used fondant to decorate our cakes with. Chef instructor also showed us how to airbrush colors onto our cakes.

For my groom's cake, I decided to make a Tonberry. A Tonberry is considered to be one of the most annoying, if not extremely dangerous, enemy character in the Final Fantasy series. He looks like little green lizard with a fish tail, carrying a lantern and a chef's knife. In the game, he slowly walks towards the player's party, and when close enough, he uses his signature Chef's Knife attack, which causes massive damage or instant death. He wears a brown monk's robe with a hood.
I used two 6"round cakes to build this guy.

During the building process. It's slowly coming together. Once assembled, I made his chef's knife out of fondant, and his lantern out of brown fondant and a tiny battery-operated lighting.

There he is, all assembled. I turned his lantern on, and hooked it to his hand with a piece of wire. I had to use a skewer to stabilize his knife.

I'm glad he turned out awesome! Incidentally, his lantern stayed lit for 4~5 days, at least according to my friend who saw it later in the week.

And there's another thing I noticed about Tonberry while constructing him. He is basically a fish with four limbs. That's right...he's a Darwin fish!

My sister's visit!!

My sister's family came to visit us for a week at the end of October. Her baby's (my niece) first birthday isn't til the end of November, but we decided to celebrate it anyway, so I could make her a special birthday cake (me being a culinary student and all...). I kind of got into an argument with my sister over this... I offered to make a simple cake with soft pancakes and baby yogurt frosting, that even the baby can eat...but she insisted that her baby not eat the cake. I felt bad for my niece...I mean, it's her first birthday and she can't eat her cake? Why make a cake at all? But I relented and decided to make a cake for my niece.

So what cake to make? There was a stash of frozen strawberries and a 6" round genoise in the freezer. How about a strawberry mousse cake? With white chocolate glaze?? That'll be a nice, pink and white cake! I wanted to try making a dome-shaped cake, using a mixing bowl. I tempered white chocolate into disks--the process which, again, had trouble with. I seem to have the worst luck with white chocolate. So it took me a good while before they (finally) set into nice disks. I prepared the strawberry mousse, poured it into the bowl lined with plastic, inserted the white chocolate disks, and set the genoise in...except the genoise was a little too thick and I had to press it down a little more than I wanted (pressing down too much can squeeze/deflate the mousse). In the freezer it went...

The next day, I took out the cake and unmolded it. The cake came out nice and domed. I prepared the white chocolate ganache glaze, and poured it over the cake. It seemed to glaze the cake pretty well...until I noticed that the glaze was not setting. It kept dribbling down until there was a barely-there translucent coating on the mousse. Eventually, the glaze just slid off. I was confused... The glaze was at the right temperature (not too warm, not too cold) so it shouldn't be doing that. I re-glazed the cake several times before I finally decided to add more white chocolate to the glaze to see if that'll help make it set. It kind of worked, but alas, the glaze slid off again. I hid the ugly bald patches with buttercream frosting, and it turned out fairly decent, although definitely not my best.

I printed out her picture from the months leading up to her first birthday and taped it onto a wire for cake decoration. The cake tasted good...but again, not my best.

Then we visited a raw food restaurant here in Salt Lake. My sister and her hubby are health food nut, and wanted to try this place.

Raw food is a type of cuisine that requires all foods to be "cooked" or processed below 118F. This method prevents nutrients from leaching out, which occurs during cooking. The food is literally alive and full of nutrients.
We got two combos and a dessert.

Sweet Basil Salad and Lebanese Wrap. The filling in the wrap was very flavorful, with creamy tahini dressing adding body to the otherwise bland veggies.

Seaweed Salad and Falafel bowl. The seaweed was a mound of nori with tamari dressing. The whole meal was very flavorful and vibrant...and surprisingly filling. We were getting pretty full by the end of the meal...and yet not heavy at all.

For dessert, we had the Cereal Bowl with Hemp Chai. It had goji berries, shredded coconut, granola and seeds. The freshly grated cinnamon added a nice kick.

Would I come back here? Probably. I would love to come here once a week...the only drawback is that it's pretty pricey. But it's worth every penny considering the quality of the ingredients and the herbs/spices in the dishes.

Display Cakes Week 5

This week, we worked with fondant. We make ours from scratch--it costs much less to make it than buy it. Incidentally, a pound of fondant is about $20-ish.

We filled the cakes with buttercream and applied the crumb coat (the usual procedure) and put the cakes in the fridge to let it set.

Chef did a demo on how to roll out the fondant, covering the cake, then stretching the cornersto make nice edges.

The excess is trimmed off with a pizza cutter.

We mixed tylose into the fondant to make a gum paste, which can be shaped into flowers and figurines for decoration. I shaped mine into a flower and an origami crane. Now it was time to cover my cake...

....phew. It took me three tries. The first time, I didn't have enough fondant to cover the cake, so I had to pull it off. Second time, I didn't roll it out thin enough. The third time, it turned out I had just barely enough to cover the cake. By this time, the buttercream was starting to soften/melt, so the cake ended up with rounded edges instead of nice, clean corners. But I still managed to cover the thing. That was frustrating...

Then we practiced stencilling on the fondant. Any stencil can be used here. We put the stencil up against the cake, applied a thin layer of colored royal icing, and peeled the stencil off. I did a pink polka-dot put fondant ribbons to make a gift box.

Afterward, I donated this to the Food Bank. There was no way my family could've eaten this 20-lb. cake.

Display Cakes Week 4

For Week 4, we made our Groom's cake using buttercream frosting. Groom's cake is a 3D carved cake that can be shaped into anything. Some people made a dinosaur, others made a puppy, another person made an X-Box controller. I decided to make a mini-version of Osaka Castle.

I used two quarter sheet cakes. Osaka Castle is five-stories high, but I had to down-size it to three. The cake, unable to support itself, would've fallen over otherwise. I began by stacking the cakes, then carving down the roof.

Work in progress. The scraps were used to create the winged parts of the roof. Once carved, the cake was frosted with the crumb coat.

Once coated, we put the cakes in the fridge to set the frosting. The next day, we took it out to finish decorating with Swiss buttercream. Mine was pretty labor intensive, since this castle has a lot of intricate designs and decorative work done on it. It was mentally tiring to pay full attention and stay focused on the cake for three hours. But I did it!

Osaka Castle cake! I think it would've looked better if I piped each of the roof tiles instead of drawing it with a skewer, but still not bad for my first attempt.

Close-up of the "fish". These "fish" adorning the rooftops of castles in Japan are actually killer whales. Mine looks like...a catfish.
Anyway, that was Week 4. We start working with fondant starting Week 5.

Display Cakes Weeks 3

For Week 3 of Display Cakes, we made an ice cream cake. We got to make our own ice cream. We divided into three groups, and each got to make a different flavor. One group made mango, another made pistachio, and my group made coconut. These ice cream cakes consisted of two stacked quarter sheet cakes (so a total of half sheet) with the ice cream sandwiched inbetween. I filled mine with half mango, half coconut. Once filled, the cakes had to quickly placed in the freezer. The ice cream started melting as soon as the top cake layer was placed on top of it. Once in the freezer, we practiced scroll work using simple buttercream.

Or in my case, Japanese....

Once frozen, we applied the crumb coat to the cake, and placed them back in the freezer. The next day, we took them out to do the final Swiss buttercream icing. Chef showed us the proper way to frost them...which should be done quickly, so the ice cream won't melt too much.

Chef also showed us several piping techniques.

Finished decorating! I couldn't take too many pictures while decorating--I was in a hurry to get it done before the ice cream melted. It was a workout getting this cake into my car--it weighed as much as a huge watermelon, so probably around 15~20 lbs.

I served it to our guests during Bible study. While the ice cream part turned out good, the cake wasn't as good. It tasted like an average commercial cake mix, far inferior to the made-from-scratch chiffon cakes that I'm used to. And as you can see from the photo, there was a very generous amount of buttercream smeared all over. Even with the seven of us, there was quite a bit of cake left. I scraped off the buttercream to use it later to frost cupcakes. We ate the ice cream part, and tossed the remaining cake into compost. Eating cakes like these made all of us appreciate the taste and the quality of my cakes...