Intro to Pâtisserie and Baking: Week 1 and 2!

 so, it has been 2 weeks since i started school and I LOVE IT! : ) it is very tiring and time consuming, but is so fun! we didn't waste any time our first week and started baking on our second day. everybody in the class was put into a group of about three and we do all of our baking in class with our group. luckily, i got a great group and all our stuff has turned out pretty good! here are some of the things we've made:

spritz cookies

 

 

 

chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies



 

brownies with chocolate ganache

our second week was much more stressful. i had two exams and one practical all in one day. the exams were pretty easy and the practical was chocolate chip cookies, so it wasn't very hard at all. the only thing that is stressful about it really is that our class is so crowded and table space and bowls are hard to come by...but that's what makes it exciting i guess. anyway, here is the stuff we made this week! : )

 

biscotti

french meringue macaroons

almond macaroons

icebox cookies

biscuits

blueberry pie

apple pie

Two Things.

First, I need to post my last two wedding cakes!!! : )

In August two of my very best friends got married to each other!...and I got to make their wedding cake! : )

the most cake i have ever made! that bottom layer was 14"!!! this thing was HUGE 

all stacked and dirty iced 

froooostin 

DONE! let me tell you, buttercream is the way to go! it is so much easier than fondant and also tastes a lot better!...oh and it looks pretty as well! 

: ) : ) : ) 

This next one i made for my friend Laina in May before I left for Tanzania for the summer!

ready to be decorated! 

...just starting 

so many pearls!!!!!!!!

 

 

each pearl was placed one by one with royal icing...i wish i knew how many i used! 

 i remember i started this at like 9 pm and this picture was taken sometime the next morning...see how it's getting light outside through that window? but don't worry, all nighters aren't boring when you watch the whole 4th season of prison break! : )

DONE! 

at the reception!

 

 

Second, this blog is now not only about cakes but also my adventures in culinary school....cause guess what?!?! I START TOMORROW! Just in case you didn't know, i now live in Boston and am going to Le Cordon Bleu for Patisserie and Baking. So I will keep you updated on any new and exciting things i am learning and creating! : )

...special surprise.

so, i finally have enough confidence in my cake skills to include on this blog the first cake that i ever decorated. i was super excited to make this birthday cake for my boyfriend at the time and so i looked up a recipe for fondant on cake central. well, i ended up finding this recipe that had great reviews (what an absolute joke) and i decided to try it because everyone said it was so easy. the recipe involved marshmallow fluff and a few other ingredients. marshmallow fluff. really? yeah, it didn't work. who came up with that recipe? the fondant over the cake looked decent in the beginning and was smooth but over time it just kept creeping and stretching down the cake. like it was melting. the loops for the bow on the top wouldn't even dry! fondant is supposed to be soft but it has to get kind of hard too or it just doesn't work properly!

one last thing i have to defend myself on...the polka dots and color scheme. oh my heck. i can't really explain myself out of that dotsy gift wrapping, i mean, i guess i just hadn't seen many ideas to spark my cake decorating imagination yet and that was all i could come up with. as far as the colors...i am going to blame those choices on the fact that i only owned the basics in my wilton gel dye kit.

so...after feeling completely embarassed and ashamed by this cake ever since i created it, i am finally going to just post it on here and finally let everybody see it! ha...the funny thing is, in hindsight this cake is a good representation of my relationship with the boy i made it for: it had some good parts but mostly looked like a disaster from the outside and with all the ingredients that were involved it was destined for failure.

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may the future be filled with desirable cakes and even more desirable men! : )

cake catch up!

so...i have been slacking on updating this blog so here are some cakes that i have made since my last post! : )

this one was Heather's birthday cake!...it looked even cooler with the sparklers in it

this is a dummy cake i made at a Carrie's Cake class! it was a cricut class so i learned how to cut out those snowflakes and other things with my new cricut gum paste cutter!

this cake was for my cousin Abby's birthday. she turned two and she is a little princess : )

this was my cousin Jackson and Hunter's birthday cake! we even had some extra fun this year making cake balls : P mmm

and this cake i just did this week for my darlin friend Carissa! she is getting married in June but i will be in Tanzania so i won't be able to make her a wedding cake! : ( so i threw her a bridal shower instead and made her a cake anyway! : )

so while i have been away i have made all these cakes and have learned lots of new techniques by researching online and experimenting! in a few weeks i will be making a cake for Amanda's welcome home/me and Heather's going away party and then a wedding cake for my friend Laina! I will have to take a break from May to August though because i will be gone gone gone to Africa...but when i return home i will be making Manda's wedding cake and then hopefully be heading to Le Cordon Bleu Boston to go to culinary school for baking and pastry! : ) : ) : )

Wedding Cake Numbah 1!

A few weekends ago I made my first wedding cake! My dear friend Lindsay, who I went to high school with, got married! : ) Her wedding was cherry blossom themed, so that is what she wanted her cake to be decorated like. After doing tons of research I found some awesome flower veiners (which are kind of like molds) to use for the blossoms. I started making those a few weeks in advance.

I also did a ton of research to figure out what to make a branch out of! There are tons of cherry blossom cakes online, but most use fondant as the branches and just lay it against the cake. I didn't like the look of that because the branches just look like worms. ha...so I decided I either wanted to do a sculpted branch or just paint one onto the cake. I knew if the branch wasn't edible it would look weird, like if I made it out of floral wire or something. I also didn't think molding chocolate would hold its shape...so my only option was gum paste! So I molded a branch with brown gum paste over top of wire.

...buuuut aparently gum paste takes longer to dry rock hard than I thought it would. And it cracked and broke. I didn't actually feel too bad about it though, because it was kind of ugly and would have been a pain to deal with. After my branch broke I decided I was just going to have to paint the branches.

The wedding was in St. George so I had to prepare everything in advance so that everything would run smoothly once I got down there. Wednesday night I literally was baking cakes from 10 pm to 9 am! I had to bake 5 10" cakes! And I know baking the cakes doesn't sound all that hard...but it is sooooo time consuming. Each cake has to bake for an hour and then it has to cool for an hour or longer before you plop it out of the pan or else it will crumble apart. Now, I only have one pan of each size or else I could bake the cakes one after another and not have to wait for them to cool. Anyway, each batch of red velvet takes 1 1/2 ounces of red dye!...that is a lot. I went through 8 boxes of red food color!

Well, once I had all the cakes baked and the flowers attached to their wires, me, Heather, Hannah, and Brai loaded up my car with all my cake supplies and headed to St. George. We spent the night at Lindsay's aunt's house, where I had to make my two little fondant babies Thursday night so they could settle overnight.

At about 8:30 Friday morning I whipped up some cream cheese frosting and began to stack the cakes!

Now, the design for this first cake is a little different. Lindsay didn't want a 3 tiered cake for the first reception so I decided to do a tall cake. I saw this here: http://hello-naomi.blogspot.com/2011/05/definition-of-ginormous-ji-norms1-adj.html

I will say now before you see any of the pics that my cake did not turn out like I wanted it to AT ALL.....but cake will be cake right? The idea was to have it nice and tall and smooth and perfect with one simple branch crawling up the front. Uuuuum that didn't happen as you will see...

The pic below is the stacked cake before I put the fondant on. The proportions weren't quite what I had planned. I think maybe 10" round cakes were too big and I also could have had one more cake on the top probably.

Well, once the cake was frosted it was time to roll out the fondant and lay it on the cake!

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yeah, didn't quite work the first time.

: (

I covered the cake and the fondant was ripping and sliding and it was the biggest disaster! Seriously, this cake project was going as bad as it possibly could have.

So...it was a good thing that I had made 2 batches of fondant just in case. I smoothed the frosting on the cake again, making sure to put less frosting on the sides, hoping that was why the fondant slipped off. I was so nervous the second time around I was shaking as I rolled out the fondant and covered the cake. This time it didn't rip and tear off the cake, but it did rip and tear. They were fixable though, so me and Heather went at them! We smoothed them the best we could, but there were worse problems than a few cracks...the stupid fondant was sliding downward! Even after I stopped smoothing the cake it kept sliding down. Finally I just had to let it sit there and hope that it would dry enough that it would just stop moving!

So here is my sad sorry excuse for a fondant covered cake...notice you can see every layer underneath because basically all the frosting squoze out the bottom.

So, what was the problem? I still am not sure that I know. My guess is the cream cheese frosting. I have never used it before with fondant and it was too warm and slippery! It isn't as firm as buttercream and didn't stick to the fondant well enough. Also, another problem was probaly the height of the cake. Since it was so tall the weight of the fondant just kept pulling itself down. I know it is possible because I have seen it be done, but I just have yet to figure it out!

So once I got the cake covered, I started painting branches all over the place to try and hide the ripply, cracked cake. After a lot of reassurance and some tears the cake was done!

In the end, my flowers saved the day! They hid the ripples and distracted everyone with their glittery goodness. And the cake actually didn't look all that shabby once we put it on its stand with all the cute decorations. : )

Everyone always asks if I hate to see the cake be cut...NO WAY! It is the absolute best part. Because even if I love the cake, after a million hours of stress and worry, destroying the cake is kind of therapeutic.