City-Inspired Wedding Cake

 This cake has been a pet project of mine for a while now.  My friend Mandi had requested I do her wedding cake back in the spring, and I had so much fun designing this cake for her occasion.  I worked on the gum paste components on the side over the last month, and needless to say, I didn't sleep much the couple days before her event.  It was totally worth it to see this design come together.

Let's go way back to the design.

Mandi was great to work with-- she gave me photos of her dress, the bridesmaids' dresses, a color swatch, save the date, centerpieces, etc.  She told me she was doing a city theme and was thinking of maybe using the king and queen buildings that are iconic on GA 400 as inspiration.

To give the cake an architectural look, I mixed square and round cake tiers and got the idea of adding a topper to look a little like the queen building.  My goal was to fuse architecture with feminine flair, so I thought of building a gum paste peony and bud into the the topper.

As you can imagine, getting those gum paste 'straps' to stand up like that required all of my cunning.  And I had to put the peony in before adding the second strap...

Another idea I had in my head was inspired by an old cake decorating magazine where I saw someone build a filigree tier out of pastillage for a cake show.  I thought, why not do it for a real cake, in gum paste instead of pastillage, and add some building profiles to add to the city theme.  The artist in me thought to put more gum paste flowers inside the mesh and the engineer in me thought... how about a light source so that when the sun sets the whole filigree is illuminated...

It is hard to see the light in broad daylight, but you can see it catching one of the rose petals (it is mounted to the top of a clear cake plate).   If I can get pictures of the cake from the reception after night fall, I will share them with you.  The bride told me the light worked! :)

Here are the gum paste roses and leaves that went inside the filigree tier.  I just clustered 3 roses and some leaves while I was setting up so no styrofoam was required.

The piping on the two round tiers was inspired by the details on the bride's wedding dress.  It is was hand piped with royal icing and then hand painted in silver luster.  The silver detail on the top tier around the topper was done the same way.

Sorry for the backlight (though the scenery is amazing!).  This venue is on a 14th floor downtown near the aquarium here in Atlanta.   You can imagine the view is gorgeous day and night.

The silver beads were done with gray 50/50 paste (half fondant, half gum paste) using a pearl mold and then painted silver to match the piping.

The squares on the bottom tier are actually an underlay-- I made fondant squares a day or so in advance and let them dry.  I adhered them to the bottom tier before putting on the fondant and then carefully smoothed to reveal the design using both my hands and some tools to enhance the details.

Here is a view from the back (with less back light):

And one more from the front!

Delivery to the 14th floor presented its own set of challenges.  It took a long walk and 2 different (slow) elevators to get all the bits and pieces up to the venue.  The bottom half consisted of a custom wooden board, plus the square and round cakes which together probably weighed 60 lbs.  I could not have done it without the help of the boyfriend, Craig, who assisted with heavy lifting, sandwich delivery, and general moral support.  If you decorate cakes then you know-- it's not over till you actually deliver it and get it set up.

I really enjoyed seeing this cake come together and pushing myself to try new techniques.  Thanks for looking and happy caking!

How to Cover a Cake in Ganache

 Some bakers actually 'ice' their cakes with chocolate ganache in lieu of buttercream.

Why?

Well, aside from tasting like chocolate truffle filling, ganache can have much more structural integrity than buttercream.  It is easier to get sharp corners and smoothness by using a hot knife, has no air bubbles, and best of all... WON'T BULGE!!! :)  That's right, ganache can withstand the added weight of fondant much better than most buttercreams.

I got the idea from this book:

Planet Cake

Planet Cake isn't one of the books I use all the time, but has some nice clean, simple ideas, as well as ganache recipes and instructions for covering a cake in ganache.  

So I made an 8" round chocolate cake which I filled with chocolate mousse.  I'll post about chocolate mousse another time after I actually figure out how it's supposed to work. :)  It tasted good though!  

Since the cake was already stocked with dark chocolate a plenty, I made a white chocolate ganache to cover the cake. 

I started with 1.5 lbs of white chocolate, and added 8 oz of cream.  I melted everything in the microwave, stirring every minute or so.  After letting it stand (covered) for 5 mins, I whisked the ganache and let it set up over night.  Before spreading it on the cake, I microwaved it again for about 15-20 seconds.

After covering the cake, I smoothed it out using a hot spatula.

 

 I'm trying to rig a level or levels to my bench scraper so that I can get perfectly vertical sides... yes, I'm that OCD.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Anyway, I let the ganache set up in the fridge for a bit and then covered the cake in fondant. 

By the way, my fondant rolling pin is a 2 ft length of PVC pipe.

What follows is called tip 1, tip 1.5, and a small leaf tip, some black royal icing, and no plan. :)

 

In the future, I should probably come up with a plan, but it was fun to just practice some piping.

Oh and the cake?  Delicious.  :)

Elegant Square Cake

At Georgia Tech, we're mostly engineers, and there aren't too many women around.  So, in the Mechanical Engineering department, we have a graduate women group to help us meet the other women in the department, and we do a lot of social events and seminars and lunches. :)

Last week, we brought in a female Ph.D. from Sandia to give a talk and meet and mingle with students and faculty at Georgia Tech.  After her talk, we had an informal lunch where the other women grad students could ask questions.  Long intro, but I was asked to bring a cake for the lunch.

To spice things up a bit, I made my first square cake!  The cake was a yellow cake with a ganache filling.  The ganache was garnished with fresh, sugared strawberries.  The outside was covered in standard vanilla buttercream, then I covered the cake in fondant.

I am happy to say that my fondant rolling skills are getting much better-- I actually covered this cake in one shot and in a reasonable amount of time!  No wrist cramps from rolling!  I guess my PVC pipe rolling pin is working out. :)

I cut out a light gold ribbon (Tech's colors are white and gold), and added the gold bow.  I used some tissue to help the bow hold its shape while drying.  Then, I piped a white swirling pattern over the rest of the cake.

The bow, up close, while drying.

The pattern ended up being a little smaller and more intricate than I was planning, so it took a little longer, but overall, this cake went very smoothly.  Oh, and the taste got rave reviews, so that makes me happy.  I'm paranoid about my cakes tasting bad or being dry. 

On an unrelated note, I start Wilton Course 3 this week-- yay!  First class is on Thursday.

Also, for the summer, I'm considering applying to be a home based business, so that I could legitimately take on some cake orders on the side... Still figuring out what all is entailed, though.  Every state/ county is different. 

Have a great week, everyone!

Doctoral Thesis Cake!

So, as you may already know, I am a graduate student at Georgia Tech.  This week, one of my dear friends in my lab defended her Ph.D. dissertation.  This event seemed to call for an awesome cake, don't you think?

This cake has several different components.  A couple weeks ago, I started working on the modeling chocolate figure of Stephanie. :)

I modeled Stephanie completely out of white chocolate modeling chocolate-- you can find the recipe in Modeling Chocolate Roses.  I did NOT color the modeling chocolate itself-- rather, I modeled everything in white and painted it later using petal/ luster dusts dissolved in lemon extract.

You can see I modeled Stephanie in a skirt with a wide base (with some skewer supports), and made her boots separately.   Modeling chocolate gets softer as you work with it, so you don't want to do anything structurally delicate until the chocolate has had a chance to firm up.  I attached Stephanie to her boots using some toothpicks, once the chocolate was set up.

The next major component of the cake was a projector, complete with an LED that would light up.  I bought the components at Radio Shack and wired up a large LED.  Then I built a modeling chocolate projector around the LED.  

The battery pack is hidden under that little box lid, which I subsequently covered in fondant and propped up on a miniature Reeses to make it a table.  The projector was also modeled in white, and then painted silver.

To go with the projector, I needed a screen.

I made the screen out of fondant over cardboard, and wrote my message using edible food color pens.  I supported the screen with skewers wrapped in fondant, and anchored using some extra modeling chocolate on the fondant-covered board.

Yes, I even had the light oriented to shine on the screen.

Now, all this cake needs is a cake!

I baked a 9x13 Funfetti cake (per Stephanie's request) and I trimmed it to size and torted it.  It was filled with vanilla buttercream and covered in the same.  Then, I covered the cake with fondant to create a thesis.

I used white strips on three sides, and textured them to look like pages using a ruler/ roller wheel.

Then, I covered the spine and front cover with black fondant, that I actually textured using cheesecloth to make it look like an old text book.

It is hard to photograph the texture, but it was pretty effective in person, I think.

After covering, I painted the spine with gold luster dust in lemon extract to look like an old book:

On the cover I put (part of) her thesis title, and her name again.

To finish the cake, I attached the thesis to the cake board, and trimmed the bottom edges with black fondant.

To top it all off, the cake tasted really good (buttercream with real butter and real vanilla is definite winner).  And I think her thesis committee was pretty amused (yes, I brought it to her presentation).

I think the cake says it all-- Congratulations, Stephanie! 

Fondant, Filigree, and a Rose

Yesterday, I took a beginning fondant course at the Cake Art Party Store.

To start off, we learned the basics of covering a fondant 'cake,' but for learning purposes, we used an 8" styrofoam dummy tier.

We coated the dummies with a thin layer of buttercream, then carefully applied the rolled fondant.  In class, we used Pettinice fondant, which was quite a bit softer than the Satin Ice I had worked with previously.  I don't think it tastes as good, but at least it was easy to knead. 

We rolled out the fondant on large pieces of upholstery plastic with a little shortening to prevent sticking.  This way, we didn't have to roll the fondant back on to our rolling pins; we could simply apply the fondant directly from the upholstery plastic and gently peel it away.

After we got our cakes covered, we worked with some stiffened fondant to create the roses and leaves on the top of the cake.

To stiffen our fondant, we kneaded in a little bit of Tylose powder.  This makes the fondant a little more like gumpaste; in fact, stiffened fondant can also be created by mixing one part fondant to one part gumpaste. 

After the roses, our instructor demonstrated different molds.  The course included a few plastic molds, but she also had some silicon molds to demo.  Also with stiffened fondant, you can simply press the fondant into a mold dusted with either cornstarch or luster dust, and then gently remove the fondant.  We applied the molded pieces to the cake by simply brushing the application surface with a little water to make the fondant sticky.  This is how I made the fleur-de-lis on the sides of the cake, as well as the filigree molds on the top.

I finished my cake with pearls that I rolled out of fondant and rolled in luster dust.  There is a piped string border with royal icing, but everything else on the cake is just fondant.

 

 Too bad this cake can't be eaten...

Happy Valentine's Cake

What did I do with my snowy days down here in Atlanta?  Made a cake, of course!

The inspiration for this cake is definitely Margaret Braun.  I'm sure I've mentioned her before-- she's the 'daintier' of the two female judges on TLC's Ultimate Cake-Off and is a world renowned cake artist and author of Cakewalk.  In one of the older Ultimate Cake-Off episodes, they bring in a cake that Margaret piped and ask the competitors to pipe a similar cake in only 15 minutes.  My goal in making this cake was to create something similar (from what I could remember).  Of course, I took longer than 15 minutes. :)

Starting with the cake itself, I decided to try a red velvet cake.  I used a recipe from Rose's Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of The Cake Bible.  The first notable characteristic of this recipe was that it called for 1 BOTTLE of red food coloring...  There was no mistaking its color.

Another interesting characteristic of this recipe was that it was supposed to make either a 9" heart or a 9x2" round.  ONE 9x2" round.  However, when I was making this recipe I tried to weigh my dry ingredients.  However, all I own is a cheap, non-digital, grocery store brand scale, which I now realize tends to underestimate.  As a result, I think I ended up with a little more batter than the ever-so-meticulous Rose...

Have I mentioned that I am actually not nearly as big a fan of the actual baking as I am of decorating?  I like cooking-- it's much less precise and more forgiving.  In particular, I like to cook by feel-- no recipe.  Baking is so scientific.  I guess I should prefer that approach since I'm an engineer, but I guess I'm more interested in the artistry of decorating.  I do enough technical stuff...  That said, I want to make sure my cakes are delicious, so I do the whole baking thing. ;)

Anyway, I ran the numbers and decided that 1 9x2" round was roughly equivalent to 2 6x2" rounds.  Now that I'm actually paying attention to the numbers, I guess the 2 6" pans less volume than the 1 9" round...  Anyway, I chose to use 2 6" rounds and didn't bother to use any less batter than what I had prepared, since the pans only seemed to be a little less than 2/3 full.  However, the batter rose quite a bit.  Nothing overflowed, thankfully, but I think I need to err on the side of caution when filling my pans.

No mistaking what color this velvet is...

To stack the cakes, I trimmed off the tops that mushroomed over the pans, and then torted them with a cake leveler.

I filled the layers with chocolate ganache, using plain buttercream as a barrier.

 

Mmmmm.... Ganache...

After stacking all four layers, I iced the outside of the cake with another Rose recipe: Dreamy White Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing.

 

This icing recipe is drastically different from what I've really worked with in the past (though it's very tasty).  Because it has a high concentration of chocolate, it dried VERY hard in the fridge.  It actually cracked in spots.  Before I covered this cake in fondant, I went over it and filled in the cracks and re-smoothed with a very very thin layer of buttercream.

Covering with fondant was again a challenge.  This time, as a new challenge, I colored the fondant that peachy-pink color.  I used the dough hook on my kitchen aid to knead the fondant and knead in the color.  This helped soften the fondant significantly, but did create some air bubbles.

I had an easier time rolling, but had a rough time with cracking and tearing.  It took me two attempts to get the cake covered, and because of the cake's aspect ratio, it was very hard to smooth.  Imagine a tablecloth: the wrinkles have to go somewhere.  I started smoothing sideways, and this was a mistake, because I ended up with wrinkles that had nowhere to go.  Ultimately, I made some compromises and got it covered, but it had obvious imperfections.  Fortunately, I'm taking a beginning fondant class in early march and can hopefully pick up some pointers.  I think I need to elevate the cake, but I was afraid of making this cake topple off of something that wasn't designed to support a small diameter cake.  

Then comes the fun part-- royal icing piping. 

I started with the only detail I really remembered from the Ultimate Cake Off cake-- the swags.  These swags are described in Margaret's book, too.

It's interesting to read the literature of different cake artists-- they all have their own signature repertoire and idiosyncrasies... and things they feel strongly about.  For example, Margaret Braun says in her book that airbrushes are for T-shirts and vans, and that cakes ought to be painted.  Sylvia Weinstock seems to think that fondant is the most vile stuff on the planet and she'd never serve it to her guests, so she won't use it on her cakes.

Anyway, back to Margaret's piping.  She is known for her piping skills, but as I look through the cakes in Cakewalk, it's clear that she has a reasonable sized repertoire of things she uses over and over again, and does very well.  But you don't see her doing a little bit of everything, like you see on more of the cake shows.  That said, I think what she does is very effective, so I want to learn to emulate some of those signature moves.

Margaret does these royal icing pearls.  Well, my royal icing was too stiff to make mine look like hers, so I settled for old-fashioned dots.  Since my icing was stiff, I had to push down the little points with my fingertip.

Here I'm piping the strings.  You see that you hold the tip away from the cake and let gravity form the string.  You control the pressure and duration to control the length of the string, and you attach it on the other side.   You can also see one of the marred areas of fondant in this picture.

Finishing the string.

The completed cake-- pre-painting.

Everything on the cake was piped with royal icing using various sizes of round tips.  The only exception is the bottom border, which was made from white fondant, twisted into a rope (also an idea from Braun's book).

To finish the cake, I took another page out of Braun's book (so to speak) and hand painted all the piping with a pearl paint, which is made from pearl dust and vodka.  

Fortunately, the pearl color on white is pretty forgiving if you miss a little spot.  A lot of the detailing in Braun's work is painted gold-- that's a lot more obvious.  I'll get there, but I need to find a good gold dust first.

The completed cake.

I think I succeeded in creating a cake with a Margaret Braun flavor, that still has my own personal interpretation.  Obviously with practice, all the techniques will get cleaner and more consistent.  And, ultimately, I'll get my fondant to behave.  I just bought a 2 ft length of PVC pipe that will serve as my new rolling pin....

 

 

It'd make a nice wedding cake top, don't you think?  :)

That's all for now, more royal icing and flowers after my class on Tuesday.