Advanced Royal Icing Class

This past weekend I took another Nicholas Lodge class-- Advanced Royal Icing Techniques. :)  I decided to treat myself since my birthday is on Friday.

The class covered figure piping (which I hadn't really tried before), as well as color flow techniques, pressure piping, string work with and without bridges, and some Lambeth style borders.   In the above picture, the doves were piped on waxed paper separately, and the ribbon side design was transferred onto the cake and created using a color flow approach.


Here is an example of figure piping-- this cupid was all piped with royal icing tips 1 and 2:

As a contrast, the cupid on the right side of this picture was cut out of gum paste and then over-piped with a little royal icing for added detail.

Here's some stringwork with a piped bridge and lace points, with an embroidery side design.

And here are some pressure piped letters painted silver and then attached to the cake:

We did one more dummy cake in class featuring a color flow swan and some Lambeth style borders:

The swan has some 'real' feathers in there for added detail. :)


I was a little rushed at the end of class so you can see that my scroll under the scroll border started floating down as I went along.... but I like the top border.

The class was great fun and definitely inspired me to work more with royal icing... and to reopen my Lambeth book and try a few things. :)

Meanwhile, I'm going to be teaching my first sugar class in March!!  I'll be teaching gum paste stilettos March 5-6 at International Sugar Art Collection's Studio B in Norcross, GA.  Details will be posted soon at www.nicholaslodge.com.

So in the meantime, I've been refining my shoe techniques and preparing course notes-- I'm really excited for the class and really want it to go well!

That's all for now.  Hopefully I'll still have enough time to make a snazzy birthday cake this weekend... :)

Holiday Poinsettia Cake

Holiday Poinsettia Cake 

Photography by Prem Midha

Yesterday I entered my second cake competition.  This was the Patty Cakes Holiday Cake Affair in Decatur, GA.  My first competition was also a Patty Cakes show in September: This Cake :)

This time I was much more calm and prepared.  Okay, I don't know about calm, but definitely more prepared! 

Ivory Gum Paste Poinsettia

 

While the ideas for this cake definitely evolved in my head over the last couple of months, I ended up solidifying my design by making a few sketches and picking my favorite.  

The first things I made were the poinsettias and the little holly royal icing lace points encircling base of the top tier:

(Aren't Prem's pictures awesome?)

Anyway, I based the little 1" lace points on an Earlene Moore pattern which I modified to meet the holly/ holiday theme.  

As for the gum paste poinsettias (which you can see in my previous post)-- well, when I realized they were just over 8" in diameter, I figured I'd better make over-sized cake tiers so that they didn't swallow the cake whole. 

That means I baked 12 cakes (15 if you count the batch I screwed up) to make 5.5" tall tiers (standard height is generally 4").  My flavors this time were chocolate cake with dark chocolate peppermint ganache and butter cake with rum syrup and eggnog filling.  Now, normally I'm a chocolate person, like seriously.  When eating a non-chocolate cake I often find myself thinking 'this is good except that it's not chocolate.'  The exception was that butter cake with the eggnog filling.   These were some tall cakes!

Remember, I do all this at home: read, one oven and a fridge that was still full of Thanksgiving leftovers 3 days ago... ;) 

Anyway, I'll tell you more about the details on the cake and then I'll tell you more about the competition...

I covered the cake in red Satin Ice fondant.  It wasn't terribly cooperative.  Normally I have very little trouble with white Satin Ice, but the red coloring dries out the fondant and my apartment was pretty cold and dry when i was trying to roll it out.  I couldn't get it as thin as I normally do, but I ultimately prevailed.

All of the details were either fondant, gum paste or royal icing.  That round ornament is royal icing. :)  The pearls were all fondant.  Oh by the way, do you love that ribbon around the board as much as I do? 

 

The snowflakes were gum paste, and the fabric/ ribbon swags were a fondant and gum paste blend. 

So, the competition.  I did a lot more things right this time.  First, I finished my cake at about 1:30 AM and managed to get a full night's sleep. In the morning, I had time to eat breakfast and get packed before Prem came to take pictures.  I had a full entourage of friends with me, and we packed some wraps so that I'd have something to eat after I set up.  AND my friend with an SUV was able to drive the cake over.  Score.

I had the whole cake set up at home for pictures and it traveled perfectly.  All I had to do was un-box it, orient it, and check it when I got there.  No repairs or additional set up was required. *phew*  So I set up and ate some lunch.

For the record, as soon as I start to walk in, I get nervous.  I'm far too nervous to check out the competition when I first walk  in.  Everything is very intimidating.  This time, since I had eaten and slept (and we had chairs to sit by our cakes-- last time I stood almost the entire time), I was in much better spirits.  My competitors on either side of me were wonderful and I had a great time socializing with them and talking cakes.   Here's a picture I took after I'd set up at my table:

Not leaning this time! :)

So, in this competition they judge on originality, neatness, and taste (supposedly).  The unfortunate thing is there's no published rubric or score sheet, nor do you receive such a sheet after being judged.

After 4 hours, I was more than ready to hear the results.  My heart was jumping out of my chest.  Unfortunately, I did not place, even though a couple of the judges told me I was 'really close.' 

While most cake decorating competitions are not scored on taste and have a more obvious scoring rubric, I think it's important to remember the Earlene Moore school of thought on competition: Never enter a competition expecting to win.  I was proud of my entry and saw some great cakes and learned some stuff in the process, so that's great. 

Another 'different' thing about this competition is that after the results are announced, you cut slices of your cake for your public.  For the record, it's really hard not to doubt yourself when a kid tastes your cake and makes a face.  I guess this particular kid had tried some of the chocolate with peppermint and didn't like mint!  Eeesh.  People's cake tastes can be widely different-- all my friends loved my cake and you should have seen how fast that cake was disappearing at school today.  Clearly it wasn't grimace-worthy or people wouldn't have been flooding my lab to get a piece.  Still, these situations do come up and sometimes it's hard not to make a face back! :) 

Finally, I'd like to thank all my friends who came out and supported me yesterday.  You guys are the best!

Maybe I didn't place because I was the only contestant not wearing a chef's coat... it's just not my style! :)

Thanks for looking and let me know if you have any questions about my cake or the competition!  Hope you all have a great week. :)

Defying Gravity-- Royal Icing Style...

Fortunately, this cake is a dummy (i.e. it has styrofoam innards) so I don't have to cut it!  The styrofoam is coated in buttercream then covered in black fondant.  All of the decorations are piped royal icing, except for the little ribbon/ bow going around the bottom of the cake, which are white fondant.  The flowers/ leaves are actually suspended over the cake using royal icing strings... a true feat of engineering. :)

There are a lot of different elements on this cake, and I drew a lot of inspiration from Earlene Moore, Nicholas Lodge, and Melanie Judge.

Let's start with the rings, since I did those first.

1.) Make royal icing.  This starts with 2 tbsp of pasteurized egg whites, and a lot of swearing at them until they start forming peaks.  Note:  royal icing with real egg whites is easier to work with and stronger, so if you're doing anything that needs to be free standing like string work or lace points, I'd recommend it.

2.) Make a rectangular pattern and pipe the lattice-- QUICKLY!  I  used tip 2 because the tip 1 strings dried too quickly.

3.)  Gingerly wrap your ring around your ginger.  You think I'm kidding:

Your spice rack is full of identical diameters!  :)

4.) Let dry overnight, and carefully slide of the rings.

Let's move on to the flowers on the top of the cake.  I made them using a kind of brushed embroidery technique (though I tried to cover the whole space pretty well) and then let them harden on parchment.

Then, I couldn't just place them on the cake; that would be boring and pro-gravity.  So I used the floating collar technique to suspend the flowers at different heights and the leaves at different angles.

I cut little pieces of foam to hold the pieces the way I wanted, and started piping vertical strings to hold the pieces in place.  This is tricky and requires planning-- you need to be able to get the foam out when you're done, and if you're crazy like me and doing multiple pieces, you have to make sure that one piece doesn't prevent you from piping the strings on another piece.

Once the strings set up, you remove the foam with tweezers or a toothpick, and pipe the remainder of the strings.  During this process, it was hard not to rest my hand on the cake, and I definitely punctured the fondant with my knuckle at least once.

The collar elements I piped carefully by hand and let them dry.  GENTLY remove from parchment.  Really gently.  Especially if you're crazy like me and decide to do free floating cornelli lace.

One final gravity-defying element:  Bridgeless Stringwork.

Yup, those are pins.  Then you carefully drape your strings so they are supported by the pins.

Then, you painstakingly pipe extensions in some kind of line or a pattern:

Let dry overnight, and remove your pins!

See how it's not touching the cake!  See, who needs gravity anyway.  Totally overrated.

For the final touches, I attached all my pieces with a little royal icing, and added the little stitching in the top design to give it more of an embroidered look.  To finish the bottom, I added a thin fondant ribbon and tiny bow, then piped matching little white stitches over the top of it.

I also covered my board in black fondant, and covered the edge with that perfectly coordinating ribbon which I had the brilliant foresight to buy at JoAnn's months ago... :)

The top view is my favorite:

See all the fun you can have with royal icing?!

Now to plan my Threadcakes entry...

Wilton Course 2- Adventures in Royal Icing

Last night was my 3rd (out of 4) class in the Wilton Course 2 series.

In classes 2 and 3, you learn some royal icing flower varieties and make a few in class.  Because royal icing dries hard, you save up the flowers (and make some more at home) and then bring the flowers you've made to the last class where you actually decorate a cake.

In addition to the flowers, we learned to make cake decorations using color flow icing.  The technique is the same as I described in my Buzz Cake (What's all the BUZZ about?).  The only difference is that color flow icing is intended to be shinier and less airy.  This is what I used to make the birds:

I made the birds using yellow and white color flow.  Then, even though it's not really part of the course, I decided to paint the birds using a cranberry luster dust.  I used a food color pen to draw the eyes, and diluted orange gel color to paint the beaks.  Yes, I'm an overachiever. :o)

Last week in class we did the violet, apple blossom, and violet leaf.

Sorry the picture is a little dark-- here you can see the violets and violet leaves.

 

Here are the apple blossoms.

In last night's class, we covered victorian roses, daffodils, primroses, pansies, and dasies-- it was a little hectic.

In this picture, you can see the victorian rose and the pansy:

The victorian rose is made with tip 97, which has some curvature, rather than petal tip 104.  I think I prefer the classic roses...  Regardless, I painted a few of the better ones to give them some extra color/ dimension.

The pansies are made with tip 104 and tip 1 for the little central loop.  Then, being the overachiever that I am, I looked on the internet and painted some realistic patterns on them:

The cylindrical thing they are sitting in is a flower former-- the course two kit comes with a variety of flower formers in a few sizes.  Drying the flowers in or on these gives them some curvature so that they are not totally flat.

Here are the daffodils:

The daffodil petals are made by pinching their ends with your fingers dipped in corn starch.  

Here are some daisies and primroses:

I've since painted some of the primroses too-- those will be a surprise for next week.

So, if you're a fan of The Cake Engineer on Facebook, you might have noticed that I was up late piping flowers after class these past two weeks...

... That's a lot of flowers.

Next week we use the flowers (I won't be using ALL of them...) and the birds, and decorate a small oval basket-weave cake.  So that's what I've been up to!

I'm also taking a beginning fondant class a week from Saturday.  Hoping to pick up some good pointers. :)

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.