PhD Proposal Cake

Pardon my pink roses, I have lot of them kicking around after that huge black and white wedding cake that I made for my last competition... 

Anyway, today I gave my PhD proposal presentation.  For those of you unfamiliar, this is where you present your current results and research plan to your PhD committee, and they get to have some input as to what you will do for your dissertation.  Any time you present (your masters thesis, proposal, dissertation), it is customary to have food for your audience and your committee.  Naturally, I wanted to bring a cake.

I decided to try the pumpkin cake with burnt orange silk meringue cream from Rose's Heavenly Cakes.  Rose also wrote The Cake Bible, both of which are very popular recipe sources.  Her recipes are known for being delicious if sometimes a little complicated, requiring many steps and some hard to find ingredients.  I followed her pumpkin cake recipe exactly; fortunately I managed to find Walnut Oil at a local organic food store.

Rose's Pumpkin Cake

Instead of following Rose's recipe for the burnt orange silk meringue buttercream, I made my own version.  Her recipe requires 3 distinct steps and seemed like a lot of work.  So I made a more basic italian meringue base, then added heavy cream, orange concentrate, orange zest, and grand marnier.  This icing turned out awesome.  The down side-- it didn't crust.  It would be hard to work with as a decorator.

After icing the cake smooth, I topped it with some of my left over gum past flowers for a quick touch of class. :) 

Rose describes this cake as 'the best non-chocolate cake'.  Many people seemed to agree with this; the cake was delicious and I really loved the buttercream.  Still, for me, there's something about chocolate cake; nothing else seems to quite measure up.

My proposal went very well-- as well as I could have hoped for.  And most of the cake got eaten.  :)

As a reward, I am spending the weekend in another gum paste class with Nic Lodge.  I'll have some new holiday flowers and foliage to show you on Sunday!

Have a great weekend.

A Fun Fondant Experiment

One of my favorite cake shows right now is WE TV's Amazing Wedding Cakes.  On that show, my favorite cake shop is Christopher Garren's.  They are so precise all the time and come up with really original designs.  I never see anything sloppy from them, ever. 

Anyway, one thing that they do that I rarely see elsewhere is wrapping the sides of the cake in fondant separately from the top, sometimes allowing for the fondant to protrude over the top edge of the cake. I decided to try this technique tonight on a 6" dummy that I had around because I may use it in my next competition (December 5!).  :)

I covered the top of the cake with a black circle of fondant, and wrapped the sides with a piece of white that I had carefully cut to size-- if you haven't guessed by now, I LOVE black and white. 

After trimming the seam, I put in the fridge to set up a little more.

While it was in there, I made a makeshift cake board for it by sticking together 2 8" cake circles, which I had to cut out by hand since I only have 6" and 12" right now...  I covered the board with black fondant and put a crystal ribbon around the outside.

I liked the simplicity of this cake (and it was getting late) so I finished it off with one of my leftover gum paste roses from the last competition.

That's all for now!  My PhD proposal is this week, so I'm trying a new pumpkin cake recipe for that-- it's customary to bring food for all proposals and thesis presentations.  I firmly believe in sweetening up the committee with delicious baked goods.

As a reward, next weekend I'm taking a 2 day Nicholas Lodge class called gum paste for the holidays. 

After that, I'll be gearing up for the PattyCakes Holiday Cake Affair on December 5! :)  Though I may squeeze a few other little projects in there, now that my proposal is nearly complete.  Have a great week!

Gum Paste Flowers Galore!

I was really fortunate to be able to take the Ultimate Gum Paste Flower Class from Nicholas Lodge for the past 5 days.  The class was AWESOME.

First of all, I'm really lucky because I happen to live about 12 mins away from the International Sugar Art Collection (ISAC) where Nicholas has a beautiful gallery of supplies and equipment and a state of the art classroom.  The wonderful thing is you don't have to bring anything to class with you-- they have all the equipment you need in the classroom.   They even supply lunch and hot cookies in the afternoon.  I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  :)

Anyway, the classes are really well organized and over the 5 days we made: the rose, stargazer lily, lisianthus, stephanotis, hydrangea, sweet pea, daisy, gerbera daisy, calla lily, cymbidium orchid, cattelya orchid, dendrobium orchid, gardenia, as well as buds and leaves, variegated ivy, bird's foot ivy, eucalyptus, and ferns.

The top picture is obviously the gum paste stargazer lily, with a bud and a few lily leaves.  Here it is again:

Just to clarify, the petals, bud, and leaves, as well as the anther in the center are all gum paste.  Everything in this little arrangement is wired and taped together with floral tape.  The stamens for this flower are paper.  The color is all done with petal dust and then the flower is steamed to set the color.  The leaves are also dusted and then sprayed with an edible lacquer for some sheen.  So while this flower is 'edible', it's really intended for decorative use. 

Here's the other stuff I made.

Gum Paste Rose and rose bud with leaves:

I freaking love this rose.  And I think the leaves are super realistic.  See the little thorn peeking out from behind the rose?  Also gum paste.

Gum Paste Lily of the Valley

 

Bird's Foot Ivy:

The ivy was painted with diluted gel and then the vein accents were painted on, and the whole thing was lacquered.

Variegated Ivy:

My calla lily, from the top:

Side view:

My Gardenia Spray:

Pearled Stephanotis:  (Yes, the pearls are edible.)

My daisy spray:

Gum Paste Cymbidium Orchid:

My Cattelya Orchid:

Eucalyptus and 2 fern fronds:

My Lisianthus Spray-- I love this color.  I had never heard of this flower before.

My carnation/ bud:

My dendrobium orchid spray:

Hydrangea:  I fell in love with these little guys.

Sweet Pea Spray:

And finally, the Gerbera Daisy:

Aren't gum paste flowers amazing?

Me and Chef Nicholas Lodge:

I learned so much in class and had such an amazing time.  Sad to go back to grad student life tomorrow and that proposal I haven't written yet... 

Hope you enjoy the flowers! :)

You'll probably see some of these again when I do my show cake for the September 12 Pattycakes Competition...