Daisy Wedding Cake

Hi all! The wedding was this past weekend, a fourth of July wedding - we had a lovely time even with the unbelievably hot, hot weather. The cake turned out just great and yes, it survived the transport, and no, it did not melt! Who could ask for more? I couldn't have done it without D's help and JJ's good behaviour - love to you both!

The finished cake:

TA DA! You are looking at over 10 lbs of fondant, another 10 lbs of granulated sugar, and overall one hugely heavy cake! We decided to do it in two parts and finish the assembly at the reception, so that it would fit in our fridge and also be liftable by one person.

The lovely bride and groom cutting the cake:

I will be absolutely honest. It was wonderful seeing Kate and Jim pose for the cake cutting photos. But the cake cutting afterward? AIEEEEE!! I nearly had a panic attack. It was rather painful to watch. I think there's a reason that pastry chefs don't go to the weddings they bake for. I was warned that it would take a lot of willpower to relinquish control at the cutting. Generally I was quite good and stayed away, but truthfully I did wander over a few times to supervise. Anyhow, it all tasted delicious though, and the bride and groom loved the cake. What's more important than that?

Here are a few more photos of the whole process. I'm not going to offer you a schedule for making the cake like last time, because it occurred over so many weeks that I lost track of how much time I spent doing things. With JJ at home, I would just work on the daisies whenever she took a nap, or whenever D was able to watch her.

The baking was completed over two days, well-wrapped and then frozen. The icings and fillings were completed the next day, the splitting, filling and crumb-coating the fourth day, and the fondant and flowers were done the night before the wedding.

A few notes:

• Cake recipes from Confetti Cakes by Elisa Strauss
• Icing recipes from Toba Garrett for swiss meringue buttercream and chocolate buttercream
• Lemon curd recipe from How to Bake by Nick Malgieri
• Satin Ice fondant
• Cake supplies from Global Sugar Art

This was probably the cutest part of the wedding:

There were so many children at this wedding, all ages. The wedding cake provided an endless source of entertainment and whenever I looked over, there were a few kids hovering about it. They would go up to have a look, get their photo taken beside it, smell it, and eye it longingly. They would pick up the daisies on the table, turn it over in their fingers, then gingerly put them back down. They were very, very excited for dinner to be done. So cute!

Field of Daisies

Five hundred daisies lined up on my dining room table, in need of cheery yellow centres:

Some royal icing in the appropriate sunny yellow:

Happy daisies! I certainly hope there's enough for the wedding cake. I have about 50 backups in case of breakage.

Doesn't this kind of look like wallpaper?

The wedding count down begins! Tomorrow: tinting 10 lbs of fondant.

Wedding Cake Testing and Tasting

Can you believe I am actually blogging as promised?! That's because Daddy and JJ are playing downstairs while I upload photos and write! Must be quick here. Here are the results from Friday's wedding cake test run. This is a cake I'm making for a friend's wedding in July, and we had the tasting on Friday afternoon. I did a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and lemon curd, and chocolate cake with chocolate ganache. Both flavours turned out great, and we decided to use chocolate buttercream instead of ganache for a lighter textured cake.

Kate was deciding between two styles, both Martha Stewart designs, for her Fourth of July wedding. She loved the berry basket cake, which would look great as a whole but would be potentially disastrous when cut into (can you imagine putting a knife through all that fruit? I'm picturing berries rolling everywhere and bleeding juices). The daisy cake, on the other hand, would cut much better, and looks pretty and fresh. And more wedding-y, if you ask me. That's what we're going with. But I did mock-ups in both.

Some minor disasters didn't stop me from making my deadline, although I did have to recruit help from Daddy after my buttercream decided to curdle. Daddy made the accompanying strawberry sauce, which was delicious, fresh, and a lovely bright red.

Let's have a look at my handiwork:

There are about 55 daisies on this little 6" cake! I'll have to make hundreds and hundreds for the real thing, but at least I have 3 weeks to get the decorations done. I usually do two layers of petals for daisies, but with this many flowers on the cake, luckily it's unnecessary. (second of all, it would be the end of me to make hundreds of double daisies. I would have to cut out a THOUSAND to get the number I needed). Daisy-making will commence this week.

The actual top tier will be an inch taller and more densely covered in daisies like the photo. We might even make a 4-tier cake depending on the total number of guests, but it's possible we stick with 3-tiers and just do a few smaller cakes on the side.

Here's the basket cake, which did look beautiful. The weave is done with a leaf tip, which I thought was a nice innovation. It didn't look as stuffy and old-fashioned as a traditional basket weave, and it also didn't matter if my lines weren't piped perfectly. Unfortunately, this was a mess to cut if we didn't scoop the berries off first, which I doubt the banquet servers would be willing to do on a 130-person cake. Pretty though, eh?

I'm a little nervous about having the responsibility of making someone's wedding cake, but I'm sure it will be fine. Let's just hope it isn't the hottest day of the year that day, and that everything goes smoothly with the transportation. My fridge is going to be filled with nothing but cake that weekend, so Daddy and I are going to have to be creative about what to eat for dinners!

Baby Shower Daisy Cake

Last Friday, D and I went to our first co-ed baby shower, and I brought along this cake for the parents-to-be (congrats C&J!). I was really quite excited to make this cake and test drive my in-development decorating skills. Actually, it's the first all-buttercream cake that I've done since I started interning, and I was hoping that I absorbed some of the techniques I watched my pastry chef use every day.


Let me tell you about the cake first - it's a lemon layer cake, with lemon curd and coconut cream filling. MMmmm. I used the vanilla cake recipe from Confetti cakes (replaced 1/4 cup of milk with lemon juice, and reduced sugar by 1/2 cup), and the coconut filling was made from swiss meringue buttercream whipped with shredded coconut and extract.

I'm sure there are many tricks to get buttercream really smooth, but the trick I learned was using a credit card instead of a spatula. It's nice and small, fitting easily into your hand, and your arm doesn't get really tired holding the spatula at a weird angle. Now, it's another thing to know how to actually use the credit card! You have to have your cake centred on the wheel, and you need to be careful about not scraping too much icing off as it turns. The goal is to smooth, not carve an edge on the cake. To make a clean edge around the top, drag the card toward the centre of the cake, which will take off the excess bits. If there is still some lumpiness and uneveness in your covering job, you can either spray the cake with water and run the card over the cake again, or, you can dip a spatula in hot hot water and slowly smooth around.

A Spooky Wedding Cake

Last Friday the 13th we were invited to a 13th anniversary party in historic Allentown, and I was asked to make a special cake for the occasion....spooky themed, of course!

And it turned into an surprise wedding. Which means that really, I made a wedding cake! It was a hectic week considering I was traveling back and forth to NYC for my class every day and coming home to work on the cake, but I'm so happy I did it. It was a ton of fun to construct, and the couple who asked me are just super nice and I didn't want to say no. It helped that I had sketched a design to follow. I chose 10", 8" and 6" cake sizes, each with about 1.5" layers inside to get the most height possible. I ordered my first bucket of Satin Ice fondant, which is what my boss uses and actually tastes pretty good, along with a whole bunch of other nifty decorating supplies.

So, according to all the online guides I could find, this amount of cake was supposed to serve about 75 people. The hosts were expecting up to 100 guests, so I made another 2 dozen cupcakes, an idea which I have to credit to Cake Journal - too cute! The faces and eyes were cut from fondant, and the mouths were drawn on with food colour marker...also my first time using such a tool. It worked just like a regular marker, which made it feel a bit weird to be using..

Remember these little guys? I had a whole slew of little characters I wanted to add to the cake, which I started making early on in the week...you can store them covered with plastic wrap and use them when you're ready. Who knew my gumpaste flower cutters would come in so handy...I made the spider legs with a daisy cutter and added two little black balls, and made the bat wings using an orchid cutter, slightly reshaped. My favourites though, are still the pumpkins.

If you want to hear all the details, keep reading and I'll give you the whole cake schedule.

How to Make Your Own Spooky Cake for 75 People on a Friday:
(...when you can't do any decorating on the Friday...if you can, you can push the schedule forward by a day)

Sunday:
1) Up to a week before, make all your decorations out of fondant so they have plenty of time to dry and you can see how they turn out. Make extras in case anything breaks. I made about 4 skulls, 4 pumpkins, 2 ghosts, 4 bats, and 2 tombstones.

Anything upright should be cut from a thicker layer of fondant. Attach fondant pieces by moistening slightly with water and a brush. You can use a toothpick for the details, like poking eyes, or making ridges in the pumpkins.

Tuesday:
2) Three to four days before, you can bake all your cakes, remove them carefully from the pans, wait until completely cool, and wrap really well in plastic wrap before putting them in the freezer. Not fridge! You will have suspended them in animation and they will taste fantastic. , with a nice fine, dense texture that will be easy to work with. Choose a recipe that works for wedding cakes, such as a pound cake. I used the chocolate and vanilla recipes from the Confetti Cakes book, and turned the vanilla one into a lemon cake (yeah, I know. I never get tired of this flavour...it's just so good). Oh and the cupcakes were Red Velvet.

3) Prepare your simple syrup to brush the cakes with. Equal parts sugar and water, bring to a boil and remove from heat.

4) Make lemon curd, and save the egg whites for use in tomorrow's buttercream.

Wednesday:
5) Remove your cakes from the freezer; leave wrapped until ready to use.

6) Prepare your icing...I made the swiss meringue buttercream recipe I learned in class, which made about 2.5 quarts. Half was turned into chocolate buttercream by adding cooled, whipped chocolate ganache (chopped chocolate melted into heated heavy cream) and the rest was saved for the lemon cake and cupcakes.

7) Unwrap your cakes, trim them nice and even, brush on the syrup, and do the filling and crumb coating. I decided to pipe the entire filling, but didn't think I needed to spread it flat, and when the cake was cut you could still see all the tubes of icing...not a big deal. Also, when you're using a filling like lemon curd, pipe a dam around the perimeter of the cake to prevent it from leaking out:

Stick everything in the fridge overnight, covered in some plastic wrap:

8) Now, even though you're tired, you should really tint your fondant for the next day, because this is TIME-CONSUMING! It took D and I about 30 minutes to tint all the purple by hand. The mixer didn't seem like it could handle kneading the fondant, which is too bad. We tinted about 4 lbs of fondant total which was more than enough. Don't forget to make black, too. About 1/2 pound should be fine.

Thursday
9) Cover your cake board. I bought a 1/4" masonite board which is pretty sturdy. For a bigger cake, you'd probably want to get a 1/2" thick one. Wrap it with cake-decorator's foil or florist's foil, or if you don't have either, just use wrapping paper like I did. With the cake cardboard under the bottom layer and all the fondant, it shouldn't get too greasy.

10)Pull out your cakes, and then knead the purple fondant to warm it up. Cover all the cakes with fondant. With a serrated knife, trim the cardboard base flush with the cake. To make the swirls, roll out small pieces of black fondant and taper the tips. Wet a small brush with water, and paint a swirl directly on the cake. Don't use too much water, or else the black will run everywhere! Carefully follow the water swirl with the black fondant and press gently to adhere.

I think I've written about stripes before in another tutorial:

11) Dowel your cake. I'm not going to explain it here because there are hundreds of tutorials on the internet. I like using a stake through the whole thing to give it more support. Assemble the tiers 2 and 3.

12) Make a small batch of royal icing. Pipe your spiderweb design on the second tier, and pipe some more webs onto some parchment to dry. They break easily, so pipe more than you actually need. Now, attach two skewers to the back of the moon and 13 sign with royal. It'll dry hard as rock by the next day. Next, tint the remaining royal icing purple and pipe the borders.


13) Oops, I forgot about the word plaque...that's just a circle of fondant and food colour pen. Make sure it's still pliable and adhere to the cake with a little water.

Friday Party Day:

14) Stick on the piped spiderwebs with a dot of royal icing, because they're not going to travel well in a box. Pack all the rest of your cute little decorations in a paper-towel padded tupperware, and bring a pastry bag of royal icing along with a small round tip and the tip you used for the borders.

15) Once you get to the party, insert the moon and 13 sign and glue on all the decos with royal. Pipe your last border, and you're done! Try your best not to drop the cake now :)

The cake dissected...

Cake Decorating I: the Rest of the Week

My course is done! The last class was on Friday, and my finished cake made it home on the bus with minimal bumps and bruises. So, I had meant to write up the course as 5 posts over 5 days, but sometimes things just don't work out that way. But, at least I remembered to take pictures, so here it is. I'm going to give it to you all at once - Cake Decorating Level I Day 2-5 with Toba Garrett.


Day Two:
We started off with making a decorator's buttercream icing, which contains a small portion of solid hi-ratio vegetable shortening to give the icing more structure and stability. A lot of people poopoo the idea of adding shortening to their icing, claiming all sorts of 'ew! that's disgusting, it's fake' and whatnot...but they have probably never had to produce a cake that must be stable enough to withstand very warm weather or make decorations that require more structure. Pure buttercream icing on a hot day? You'll get a melting, drooping cake in no time.

Tastewise, if you use only a small quantity, and if you can get a hi-ratio shortening (apparently Crisco leaves a greasy taste on your palate), your buttercream will still taste great. Remember, you're adding flavourings too. This type of icing is great for small cakes and cupcakes where your want the extra sweetness - children's birthday cakes, etc.

We spent the day practicing learning and practicing basic borders and decorations that should be in every decorator's repertoire: the reverse shell border, ropes, fleur de lys, rosebuds, half-open rose, and garlands.

I was the worst at these...they were surprisingly hard to do

Day 3:
Again, the day started with making another icing: Decorator's buttercream for roses, a stiff consistency icing used to make decorations that require more structure.

The teacher's roses...

We learned to pipe a full blown rose in traditional way, which is much harder than it looks...

Piped roses are certainly 'old school', but when done well, are actually really beautiful! Sadly, buttercream roses have been reduced to a lower status over the past decade - the poor workmanship and horrible colouring seen at supermarket bakeries have made them unpopular and a symbol of tackiness. I'm not sure how often I'll be piping these, but at least now I know how...

In the afternoon, we practice swags, ruffles, bows and basketweave. Truthfully, I'm not a big fan of the bows and basketweave, but I think you can probably find a way to give these decorations a more contemporary look. By now my hands are sore from all the squeezing.

Day 4:
We made marzipan (a mouldable almost paste with corn syrup and other flavourings) and modeling chocolate/chocolate plastic (just dark chocolate and corn syrup!). The chocolate plastic has to age for 24 hours, so we made it for the final day's class.

Tinting and working with marzipan was so much fun!! We made the cutest little fruits and vegetables...all afternoon there was endless gushing over how adorable these things were. Check them out:

Pre-petal dusting

We survived the bus ride home!

They were painted with petal dust to give a more realistic look to them, and the stems were fashioned out of clove studs and stems. Somehow I ended up showing a bunch of strangers at the bus station my marzipan fruit, which drew a little crowd of 'oohs' and 'ahhs'. I felt like a marzipan superstar. My banana was the only thing I didn't finish properly because it required water and gel food colour, which I thought would probably stain all my other little fruits on the way home, so I left it plain. You're actually supposed to paint the ends brown, and add the tiniest amount of green and draw it up the seams with a wet paintbrush. Too cute.


Day 5:
The entire morning was spent learning the chocolate rose, bows, and leaves using our modeling chocolate. Who knew you could knead and mould chocolate like playdoh? It was awesome. If you have any aptitude for making little figurines from clay or playdoh, you'd love making these - and they're edible!

We used this cool silicone mould to make the leaves - so lifelike! Mine are a little dull-looking because my chocolate was rolled too thick, but when done properly they are shiny and amazingly delicate. Toba pays attention to every possible detail - the thinness of the petals and the way they ruffle out, the direction the petals overlap...I felt like I'd never seen a rose after how she described it...something I've seen dozens of times but never really paid close attention to.

Finally, we each got to split, fill and decorate an 8" take to take home - yellow cake with amaretto mocha swiss buttercream. Soooo delicious! Smoothing the icing was so easy with her technique, which involved dipping the spatula in hot water and drying it off - somehow the heat helps to draw all the little bubbles closed and even everything out. It was nearing the end of class and I wanted to catch the early bus home, so I rushed and didn't ice my cake as carefully as everyone else. Still, I think it turned out just fine...and tasty...I'm bringing this to a dinner party tonight!

If you have any interest in cake decorating, this course is worth taking. Toba's enthusiasm and knowledge is just incredible and takes your appreciation for cake artistry to a new level. If there's anything that was really emphasized in the class, it was that your decorations should taste as amazing as they look, which means using the best quality ingrediants you can afford, and not taking short cuts - when you're putting in the time and effort of hand making a cake, you don't want it to be anything like something you could buy from the grocery store. You really do learn a lot, including some great industry tricks that make you feel like you're all that. I can't wait to take Level II and III!

Toba's Cake Decorating Class: Day 1

Guess what today was? Day One of Toba Garrett's Cake Decorating Level 1 at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE)!


Half asleep, I somehow dragged myself out of bed at 5am (along with poor D) and managed to get to the bus stop and throw myself into an empty seat on the 5:45 am run to NYC. A lengthy snooze later, I woke up to the sounds of New Jersey commuters piling into the bus and, forty-five minutes later, we pulled into Port Authority Bus Terminal in the middle of morning rush hour. Since I was there way too early, I had plenty of time to wander my way down to 23rd street and have a coffee.

Here's our classroom, with about 10 students total. I think this class is going to be really great! It's beginner/intermediate, and a good refresher for those who already have some decorating experience. We got our pastry kits, which included a piping bag and a small box of tips. We made swiss meringue buttercream, tinted some green icing, made parchment cones, and practiced piping lines, small and large shells, scroll borders and rosettes. Here is my friend Amy wielding her piping bag:

I really like Toba's teaching style - she is so articulate and well-organized. I am finally understanding proper pressure control with the icing bag, as well as dragging vs. lifting and pulling techniques. I don't think I've ever done a proper star-tip flower, or a shell! Check out our practice samples from today:

Zigzag with shell overlay

Large shells - I started on the left, got better by the time I reached the far right

Tomorrow we're making another type of buttercream icing, and I think we're piping more borders and also practicing writing. I can't wait!