The Week in Cakes: Part 1
Nov. 14th, 2013 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetThe last quarter of the semester started on Monday, and with it the Advanced Cake Decorating class. I'm finding the class a lot more bearable than Basic Cake Decorating. Part of this may be because we're being given set themes in advance - very far in advance, even! - and can therefore plan out what we want to do with them. Part of this may be because we are encouraged to be creative with our designs. Part of this may be because I've been finishing my icing jobs with enough time for cleanup - or at least before many of my other classmates.
Part of this is definitely because I no longer have to bake a cake every other day to bring in, and then either give away or bring home to eat. I got very sick of cake in Basic Cake Decorating, let me tell you.
The cakes featured below, while on themes given by the teacher, are all of my own design and done freehand.
Day One's theme was "A fall garden party". The teacher provided us with three small cakes each - about six inches (15cm) in diameter, probably less - and the instructions and ingredients to make marzipan and a glaze. The marzipan recipe was enough for three people, so one third of the class elected to mix the marzipan, and the resulting mixture was divided accordingly.
"Fall garden party" made me think of my dad's gardening efforts, and how he always liked to show off his produce. A design idea gelled quickly. I asked if there was any reason I would not be allowed to stack my three cakes, and was assured there was not.
I stacked my cakes up with a thin layer of buttercream frosting between them to stick them together. I carved a bit off the top cake to shape the stack better, and then coated the outside with another thin layer of buttercream. Next I rolled out my marzipan in as wide a circle as I could manage and applied it to the outside of my cake as evenly as possible, trimming off the extra. With some juggling, I added indentations along the outside with a metal spatula. Using the extra marzipan, I cut out a leaf, rolled a tiny vine, and formed a thick stem, also adding indented lines to the latter.
I mixed up some glaze and divided it between three containers: green for the stem/vine/leaf, orange for the pumpkin itself, and no-colored on reserve. I added a bit of maple flavoring to the orange glaze as well. Then, I poured the orange glaze over the pumpkin-form and the green glaze over the leaf-, vine-, and stem-forms, making sure to get all sides of the stem; I cleaned my supplies while waiting for the glaze to set. When I deemed it ready, I placed the stem carefully on top, the leaf carefully on the side and as close to the stem as I could, and the vine connecting the two. The leaf wanted to slide down the side of the pumpkin, so I anchored it in place with a pair of toothpicks inserted at an angle under its deeper branchy-bits. By the time I had to put the cake on display, it had set up beautifully, and I removed the toothpicks free of worry. This is how it turned out:
[Image descriptions, left to right: A small cake resembling a pumpkin, seen from several angles; the last one has a slice taken out]
Of course, I had to have a picture where you could actually tell it was cake. Where's the fun, otherwise? ;)
I also decided that I like working with marzipan much better than working with fondant. Too bad so many people have tree-nut allergies.
Day two's theme was "What's really out there?" I repeated a theme I'd used in my crochet before and made an actual dragon with the constellation Draco on its pelt; it's blowing galaxies into existence the same way that some dragons breathe fire. The constellation doesn't exactly come out in the right shape, but whatever; the dragon's not in the right position for that.
[Image descriptions: Constellation-dragon on one side of cake "breathes galaxies" onto the other; two angles]
Thinking about it now, I probably would've gone with something Katamari Damacy, but it turned out reasonably well, I think.
Day three's theme was "Under the sea." I had a difficult time not bursting into song :P
Most of my classmates had switched to fondant by this point, either entirely or in part. I don't care for fondant, though, and found it a horrible chore to make last semester the one day we did, so I stuck with icing. I used some of the leftover "really dark" icing from yesterday's space cake as a water-background for the cake as a whole. On the sides I piped in the giant tube worms found at deep sea vents for a sort of border. On top I made a giant squid in red and an angler fish in green.
Before putting the angler fish down, I added a small puddle of leftover non-colored (white) glaze about where I thought its lure would go. To the middle of that I added the tiniest drop I could manage of yellow coloring, and spread it out as delicately as I could with a plastic spoon. I piped the angler fish itself on over and beside it. The result was a spot of "light" made by the angler fish.
The last thing to go on the cake were the squid's tentacles (not to be confused with its arms; the tentacles are the ones with the wide graspy bits at the end). The space between it and the angler fish was just too bare prior to that, but I knew I still needed to add the tentacles in, so that issue resolved itself nicely. If you count, you can find all eight arms in addition to the two tentacles.
[Image descriptions: Dark blue cake with red-and-white giant tube worms on the side, and a reg giant squid and green angler fish on top]
This is probably my favorite of the cakes so far, with the pumpkin coming in at a close second. Thinking about it now, I might have made the angler fish a different color - the green isn't really echoed anywhere and kinda sticks out - but that's my only real self-criticism. I managed a very smooth background for working with icing instead of fondant or marzipan (that is, with something I spread instead of roll), the colors (with the possible exception of the green) were a great contrast with my classmates' lighter blues and generally more "cheerfully" themed cakes, and I just love deep sea critters in general. I would totally make this design again.
Day four was "Behind the bars at the zoo". What I came up with was a quartet of animals playing cards in the zoo's off-hours. I picked the animals with careful consideration: The rhino might've been because Mom used to collect rhinos, and it also meant I eliminated hippos and elephants from the pool, not wanting so many gray animals. I went with a cheetah instead of a lion because lions just seemed so cliche to me. I picked a flamingo because bird! and pink!, and rounded the collection out with a polar bear.
Our teacher has us round up our cakes by the end of class and share our favorite thing about ours. Mine was how you knew that yellow one with the spots was going to lose the card game, because cheetahs never prosper ;) It was pretty terrible, I must admit, but I spent the entire class period after deciding to include the cheetah looking forward to telling that exact joke, so.
[Image description: A cheetah, a rhino, a polar bear, and a flamingo sit around a big rock, playing cards; around the outside edge of the cake is a brick wall]
And that's all for this week. First theme for next week is "Iowa: More Than Just Corn And Beans." I have half a mind to make a decoration celebrating the future birthplace of James T. Kirk. I'll probably go with the school logo, though.
Part of this is definitely because I no longer have to bake a cake every other day to bring in, and then either give away or bring home to eat. I got very sick of cake in Basic Cake Decorating, let me tell you.
The cakes featured below, while on themes given by the teacher, are all of my own design and done freehand.
Day One's theme was "A fall garden party". The teacher provided us with three small cakes each - about six inches (15cm) in diameter, probably less - and the instructions and ingredients to make marzipan and a glaze. The marzipan recipe was enough for three people, so one third of the class elected to mix the marzipan, and the resulting mixture was divided accordingly.
"Fall garden party" made me think of my dad's gardening efforts, and how he always liked to show off his produce. A design idea gelled quickly. I asked if there was any reason I would not be allowed to stack my three cakes, and was assured there was not.
I stacked my cakes up with a thin layer of buttercream frosting between them to stick them together. I carved a bit off the top cake to shape the stack better, and then coated the outside with another thin layer of buttercream. Next I rolled out my marzipan in as wide a circle as I could manage and applied it to the outside of my cake as evenly as possible, trimming off the extra. With some juggling, I added indentations along the outside with a metal spatula. Using the extra marzipan, I cut out a leaf, rolled a tiny vine, and formed a thick stem, also adding indented lines to the latter.
I mixed up some glaze and divided it between three containers: green for the stem/vine/leaf, orange for the pumpkin itself, and no-colored on reserve. I added a bit of maple flavoring to the orange glaze as well. Then, I poured the orange glaze over the pumpkin-form and the green glaze over the leaf-, vine-, and stem-forms, making sure to get all sides of the stem; I cleaned my supplies while waiting for the glaze to set. When I deemed it ready, I placed the stem carefully on top, the leaf carefully on the side and as close to the stem as I could, and the vine connecting the two. The leaf wanted to slide down the side of the pumpkin, so I anchored it in place with a pair of toothpicks inserted at an angle under its deeper branchy-bits. By the time I had to put the cake on display, it had set up beautifully, and I removed the toothpicks free of worry. This is how it turned out:
[Image descriptions, left to right: A small cake resembling a pumpkin, seen from several angles; the last one has a slice taken out]
Of course, I had to have a picture where you could actually tell it was cake. Where's the fun, otherwise? ;)
I also decided that I like working with marzipan much better than working with fondant. Too bad so many people have tree-nut allergies.
Day two's theme was "What's really out there?" I repeated a theme I'd used in my crochet before and made an actual dragon with the constellation Draco on its pelt; it's blowing galaxies into existence the same way that some dragons breathe fire. The constellation doesn't exactly come out in the right shape, but whatever; the dragon's not in the right position for that.
[Image descriptions: Constellation-dragon on one side of cake "breathes galaxies" onto the other; two angles]
Thinking about it now, I probably would've gone with something Katamari Damacy, but it turned out reasonably well, I think.
Day three's theme was "Under the sea." I had a difficult time not bursting into song :P
Most of my classmates had switched to fondant by this point, either entirely or in part. I don't care for fondant, though, and found it a horrible chore to make last semester the one day we did, so I stuck with icing. I used some of the leftover "really dark" icing from yesterday's space cake as a water-background for the cake as a whole. On the sides I piped in the giant tube worms found at deep sea vents for a sort of border. On top I made a giant squid in red and an angler fish in green.
Before putting the angler fish down, I added a small puddle of leftover non-colored (white) glaze about where I thought its lure would go. To the middle of that I added the tiniest drop I could manage of yellow coloring, and spread it out as delicately as I could with a plastic spoon. I piped the angler fish itself on over and beside it. The result was a spot of "light" made by the angler fish.
The last thing to go on the cake were the squid's tentacles (not to be confused with its arms; the tentacles are the ones with the wide graspy bits at the end). The space between it and the angler fish was just too bare prior to that, but I knew I still needed to add the tentacles in, so that issue resolved itself nicely. If you count, you can find all eight arms in addition to the two tentacles.
[Image descriptions: Dark blue cake with red-and-white giant tube worms on the side, and a reg giant squid and green angler fish on top]
This is probably my favorite of the cakes so far, with the pumpkin coming in at a close second. Thinking about it now, I might have made the angler fish a different color - the green isn't really echoed anywhere and kinda sticks out - but that's my only real self-criticism. I managed a very smooth background for working with icing instead of fondant or marzipan (that is, with something I spread instead of roll), the colors (with the possible exception of the green) were a great contrast with my classmates' lighter blues and generally more "cheerfully" themed cakes, and I just love deep sea critters in general. I would totally make this design again.
Day four was "Behind the bars at the zoo". What I came up with was a quartet of animals playing cards in the zoo's off-hours. I picked the animals with careful consideration: The rhino might've been because Mom used to collect rhinos, and it also meant I eliminated hippos and elephants from the pool, not wanting so many gray animals. I went with a cheetah instead of a lion because lions just seemed so cliche to me. I picked a flamingo because bird! and pink!, and rounded the collection out with a polar bear.
Our teacher has us round up our cakes by the end of class and share our favorite thing about ours. Mine was how you knew that yellow one with the spots was going to lose the card game, because cheetahs never prosper ;) It was pretty terrible, I must admit, but I spent the entire class period after deciding to include the cheetah looking forward to telling that exact joke, so.
[Image description: A cheetah, a rhino, a polar bear, and a flamingo sit around a big rock, playing cards; around the outside edge of the cake is a brick wall]
And that's all for this week. First theme for next week is "Iowa: More Than Just Corn And Beans." I have half a mind to make a decoration celebrating the future birthplace of James T. Kirk. I'll probably go with the school logo, though.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-14 09:19 pm (UTC)Haha, I love the pun in the last one.
A Kirk cake would be so much fun. XD
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Date: 2013-11-14 09:52 pm (UTC)I really couldn't resist ;) We're usually supposed to give meaningful responses about construction and concept and so forth, but I'd been waiting most of the class period and wasn't about to let the opportunity go!
It totally would :3 I'd just need to figure out everything that would need to go on it, because I'm not terribly familiar with Star Trek ^^a Maybe I could just get a picture of the welcome sign at Riverside and add "Future Birthplace of James T. Kirk" as a caption at the bottom...
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