I Learn to Get Along with Cake

The Gum Paste Cake.  The cake that made me turn the corner.  Gum Paste is another sugar dough that is made with a ton of 10x (powdered sugar), egg whites and tylose ( a drying/hardening agent) with shortening kneaded in.  It is used to make flowers and other decorations.  It can be colored and formed into various shapes and then dries quite hard.  We made gumpaste flowers for about 3 days - roses, daisies, calla lilies, small supporting flowers, buds and leaves.  They take awhile to make, put together, dry and shade with petal dust, so it is a lengthy process.  Making flowers is so much fun.  It can seem tedious, but I really enjoyed it.  This was the first stacked cake we made, so I thought it was a pretty big deal!  I was a bit nervous putting all the dowels in, but it worked out pretty good.

Each tier was layered with buttercream and covered with white fondant.  Here is a photo of my flowers not put together and the partially finished cake.  About 1/3 of the cake was covered with a royal icing Cornelli lace pattern that was edged with these tiny royal icing filigrees.  The disc on top is pastillage and is the base for an abtract pastillage cake topper.  We were able to choose our own color scheme and flower design.  The seams between the tiers and base were covered with royal icing bead work.  This is my flower arrangement put together.

I also covered the remaining 2/3 of the bottom tier with bead and extension work.  Extension work is this series of crazy thin royal icing "strings" stretched between two points.  We made curved pastillage pieces to secure the strings to.  Talk about carpel tunnel.  Very tedious, very fun.  All this detail work is right up my alley.  I was very happy with the finished product, especially because this was the first major cake.  I am glad that I no longer see cake as the enemy and am happy to have a new found passion in my world of pastry.

Coming up:  Sculpted Cake, Speed Drills, Haunted Houses and The Wedding Cake!  I hope I survive it all to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!

-The Queen of Tarts-

Cake...The Enemy?

So, 6 weeks of cake seems pretty daunting.  As previously discussed, cake is generally not my friend.  I can't cut straight to save my life - I'm pretty sure I failed cutting in kindergarten.  I always end up having to "fix" my layers it is frustrating.  I was not looking forward to cake.  At all.  I started out with a pit in my stomach.  The first few cakes lived up to my expectations.  I still got A's on them, but only with a lot of blood, sweat and tears.  It is always so difficult to look past the flaws.
The very first cake was a group project and we made a traditional Croquembouche ("crunch in the mouth").  It is quite a production.  The base is made of nougatine which is caramelized sugar with sliced almonds that is rolled out and formed into the shapes needed.  The dents de loupe (teeth of the wolf) are also made from nougatine and were supposed to scare people away from eating the cream puffs before they were served.  We made about a million cream puffs filled with vanilla pastry cream and glued them together in a cone shape on the elaborate base with caramel.  The final product is decorated with royal icing bead and string work as well as Magyfleurs.  Magyfleurs is the name for the colored sugar decoration as well as the tools used to make them.
It was fun but I probably will never make this again unless I have to


The second cake wasn't too bad - just a simple chiffon and buttercream birthday cake.  We had to use at least 2 kinds of flowers, vines, buds, tendrils, basket weave masking and shell border with Happy Birthday (Name) written on top.  I wanted a very simple French green and white cake.  It turned out ok - at least my layers were good.  We piped a practice top onto a wrapped cake board to talk about placement, etc...with Chef Earl and it, of course, turned out better than the real thing.  Oh well.  Not loving cake at this point.

Next we made a cake that no one likes or understands.  The poured fondant cake.  It is made with a very plain white cake filled and masked with sickeningly sweet apricot jam and covered with a thin layer of marzipan.  Talk about sugar overload.  To top it all off, fondant is poured all over the cake to glaze it.  We decorated with 3 marzipan roses and leaves, torched marzipan designs to mask the sides, a tempered chocolate double pass border and Happy Anniversary. I was pleased with my roses, side designs and my double pass border but my Happy Anniversary was a little wonky.

My least favorite cake, which many of my classmates loved, was the Cocoa Painting cake.  I did enjoy making the devil's food cake but the cocoa painting was just not my forte.  The cake was devil's food cake filled and masked with chocolate ganache - pretty tasty.  It was covered in chocolate fondant with crimped edges and a fondant swag around the sides.  We had to pick a theme for the cake and paint, with cocoa powder colored cocoa butter (say that 5 times fast) on a pastillage (sugar dough) plaque that we made.  We had to used various shades of brown and scrape off some to have shades of white as well.  Really not loving cake.  The plaque and stand are made of pastillage.
Yes, that is Darth Vader and those are light sabers on the cake.  I never claimed to be an artist.  Obviously The Force was not with me.  I think he kind of looks like Lego Darth.

Stay tuned for Speed Drills and and new relationship with cake.

Until then, ciao.
QoT