Confectionary Arts/Special Occasion Cakes Wrap Up
This two week block was focused on cake decor on layer cakes. We generally made chiffon or sponge cakes and Italian Meringue buttercream every couple of days, but the focus was on what goes on top of a cake (especially since, unfortunately, neither the icing nor the cake tasted too good). We learned about marzipan, pastilliage, royal icing, and chocolate decor; and we also made buttercream wedding cakes.
I can appreciate what many do with the blank canvas of a perfectly iced cake, but I realized that I am not that type. I sort of like the challenge of, say, making a cherry pie look beautiful based on how its formed and how it falls into place. Cakes are too much of a free for all for me. Unless I have someone or something very specific in mind to decorate, I have hard time thinking of an interesting design; and it bothers me to do something ordinary. Plus, icing layer upon layer of these cakes wore me down after a while. As I mentioned before, I had issues with food coloring, so mine are a little more, um, muted than they should be. But, it was still an interesting adventure into a new field.
We learned about different marzipan borders to go around the cake. I thought that I’d try to use the shape of the twisted rope design to imagine a recipient for the cake…. It was pretty nautical, so I made the rope very long, and wrapped the border from the bottom of the cake, up the side, and coiled on top so that it would be fit for a captain.
Plaques are good, quick ways to personalize a cake without worrying about icing mistakes too much; you pipe the message before placing it on the cake. The aged effect was by toasting the sides of the plaque with a torch.
Reverse shells are on the top border.
This day was chocolate decor day. We tempered dark chocolate with the seeding method. The trick that makes all of these decors possible is to spread the chocolate evenly to the correct thickness before manipulating it; I’d say, maybe 1/16″, maybe a little thicker. They’re all spread to the same thickness, so once that’s mastered, they’re pretty easy. We worked on marble surfaces.
The cigarettes are made by spreading the chocolate into about a 5 inch wide band in front of you, and trimming the sides so that it’s a long rectangle. When it loses its gloss and sets a little, you scrape the chocolate diagonally from about an inch from the end of the band so that it curls into a cigarette shape. If it doesn’t curl, it hasn’t set enough yet, has set too much, or wasn’t tempered properly. The striped cigarette was made by spreading white chocolate, running through it was an icing comb, spreading dark chocolate on top, and then proceeding as normal. Mine never really curled on its own, but I was able to roll them up…
The squares and curved triangles are made by spreading the chocolate on acetate sheets (and transfer sheets, which have patterned colored cocoa butter on them). When they set a little, they’re trimmed and cut into shapes with a small spatula. When they’re no longer tacky, the squares are covered with parchment paper and weighed down with a fiberglass square so that they don’t curl up. The curved triangles are covered with parchment paper, and then rolled diagonally around a PVC pipe and chilled. To unmold them, you have to take out the pipe, and hold the remains vertically, and shake up and down to get the parchment off. Then the acetate is unrolled and the triangles break off onto the table… which is kind of scary to see — though the triangles themselves rarely break into smaller pieces.
I spent most of this day trying to figure out ways of doing my wedding cake that I’d make the next day, so this cake was very much an afterthought. As I was trying to figure out what to do with it with a few minutes left in class, someone offered extra green icing in a leaf tipped bag, so I took it. I don’t think the border that I made with it quite works… but that’s good to know. I didn’t even have enough time to make a full marzipan rose, so that’s supposed to be a rosebud.
The bear was made of out flood work. Flood work is sort of like tracing a coloring book picture, and it’s usually does with either royal icing or chocolate. We put an acetate sheet over a picture, and traced over the outline with dark or white chocolate (all semper for flood, so it doesn’t need tempering). Then, we filled in the color withe white chocolate colored with oil or powder coloring (water-based colorings seize up the chocolate). I think that this turned out okay, but I regret that the bear’s tummy isn’t a different color than the rest of it. You can also see where it broke, but you can “re-attach” the pieces by laying the closely together on the cake.
This cake also had a flood work design, and the natural food coloring colored border. I’d probably re-arrange the design a little if I were to do it again, and darken the flood work coloring and make the outline color black rather than white.
And this was my final piping homework. I think I’ve come a long way… Just goes to show that weeks upon weeks of doing piping homework does yield a bit of progress.
