Three Cakes...One Night

Last weekend I took on three different cake requests. Now I say requests because I really only ask friends for the cost of ingredients when I make cakes for them. I really don't mind and the work gives me a chance to build a portfolio and gain experience. Here is what I did Friday night.

Pixar Cars themed cake based off of a photo one of my friends found here. I didn't cover the layers in fondant so I had to come up with a border for the top tier. I decided to make the checkered race flag pattern out of fondant. I also finished this cake at 1am Saturday morning and the "4" on top was the last thing I added. Notice anything wrong about that 4??? Yeah....I feel like a total idiot sometimes. In my defense I was ubber tired. This cake and the second cake below were for a friends twins birthday. The son wanted the cars cake and the daughter wanted the princess cake. 

This is the princess cake I made. For this I used a cup to shape the tiara...which is made out of fondant. I need to get better at constructing these because it didn't survive the car ride from my house to her house. But she managed to fix it at least!

A zebra cake I made for one of the managers at The Velvet Cactus. I honestly can't remember if this was for a baby shower or engagement party or what....but this is what she requested and I'm very happy with how this turned out. 

A few things I've been up to....

I haven't had a lot of time to really post anything, but it doesn't mean that I haven't been busy in the kitchen. Here are a few photos of cakes I've created both for my wedding....(yes I got married in February!!!) and for other people. 

A cake for a co-workers baby shower. White Velvet Butter with Vanilla Buttercream and Fondant Butterflies. 

A close up of the butterflies...

Our wedding cake: White Velvet Almond with Almond Buttercream and Black Cherry Filling

Super Hero Inspired Cake for a co-workers son's 3rd birthday. The bottom layers are almond and the top is chocolate. The Hulk hand I shaped using Rice Krispie treats. 

This weekend I've been commissioned to make a 3-tiered zebra inspired cake, a 2 tiered Princess cake and a 2 tiered Pixar Cars themed cake. I've never made 3 cakes at once so this will be an adventure!!

Marbled Rye Bread

 It seems I haven't posted a recipe in FOREVER and the last few posts are all about cake. SO, I thought I'd change things up a bit and post something a little less sweet but no less labor intensive. 

I haven't made bread in awhile and thought I'd revisit Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. So far, I've made the Anadama Bread, Greek Celebration bread, Cinnamon Rolls, Cinnamon Bagels, Portuguese Sweet Bread (all of which I've posted about) and the Lavash Crackers and Kaiser Rolls which I have conveniently NOT posted about. Those last two didn't quite turn out very well...even worse than the Portuguese Sweet Bread. 

I like Rye bread. Actually I found out a few years ago that I loved it. So I thought this would be a good recipe to start with. Surprisingly I found it quite easy. Maybe this experience was just a fluke, but I'd like to think that it was my mad baking skills that created these two delicious loaves of marbled rye. 

Before I started I read the little introduction that Peter gives before the recipe and learned a thing or two about Rye flour. The most important being that you shouldn't over work the dough because rye has a chemical that prevents gluten development and results in a tough bread. In other words, short kneading time. And since I've found this recipe posted all over the web, you can find it here.  

The first step was to mix both doughs separately. I won't bore you with those obvious photos. But here is what each one looked like for me. I used cocoa powder instead of caramel coloring for the darker loaf because I didn't have any. So I made do with what I had on hand. 

 

Next I put each one in it's own separate bowl and let them rise. 

Then it was time to shape the loaves. I whizzed through this without taking good pictures. But you can get the general idea from Pinch My Salt for good photos on how to do this. I divided my dough into 4 equal parts. Then rolled them out and stacked 2 white with 2 dark in an alternating fashion for the "swirl" and rolled everything up for 1 loaf. Then repeated this with the remaining 4 pieces of dough for the second loaf.

Then let them proof until about doubled in size.

See how big they got??

Then I baked them at 350 for about 45min. I didn't get as much oven spring as some people, but they still turned out soft and delicious. I was very proud of myself.

Somehow in one loaf my "swirls" look sort of like a pinwheel, but one was swirled and I like that each loaf is different...artistic in it's own way. I stuck one loaf in the freezer and have been munching on the other. I think there will be Turkey Reubans in our future, naturally. 

Yellow Submarine Cake

After making the Dr. Seuss Cake for my friend's baby shower, my ex-boss asked me if I'd be willing to make a yellow submarine cake for his granddaughter. Her birthday would be in December and he would send me a picture of what he wanted it to look like. Well, I googled "yellow submarine cakes" and found some pretty good examples of what I had in mind. I thought, how hard could it be? Bake the cake, cut it to the shape of a submarine, cover it in fondant and quickly pipe on the decorations....because there really isn't that much piping involved. 

I was happy about the prospect of a "quick and easy" cake. But once again I planned things to where if I screwed up on the cake....there'd be no time to fix it. Here was my schedule....Dec. 15th through the 20th I would be in the Chicago area visiting family I hadn't seen in 3 1/2 years. My flight on the 20th was scheduled to land at 4:40pm so my plan was to go home, unpack, eat a quick dinner and then go grocery shopping for ingredients......then bake it. The 21st I'd have to go into the lab during the day, then to Michaels to buy a cake box and fondant, then home to decorate to be completed for a Dec. 22nd delivery date. 

Well, let's just say I started decorating yesterday at 4pm (thankfully I left work early!). I took about a 2hr break for dinner and relaxing in front of the TV and finally finished the cake at 12:05am! So for future reference:

1.) Maybe this isn't the best hobby for a perfectionist. Do you know how many times it took me to draw out a submarine shape I was happy with before cutting the cake??

2.) It really does take a long time to color and knead fondant. The professionals don't lie!

3.) It also takes a long time to portion out, color icing, and set up tips and bags for the decorations. Especially when you're using a red that just won't get the shade you need it, no matter how much gel coloring you use (same goes for the black!). 

First, I filled the cake with vanilla buttercream. Then I cut it to the shape I wanted it. I used scraps to form the very tail end and the very top part...as you can tell from the photo. 

Then I applied the crumb coat (see photo below). After letting the buttercream sit and crust, I used a Viva paper towel to smooth any imperfections....because there were a lot of them!

Then I kneaded and colored the fondant, rolled it out and covered the cake.

I'm not sure if this was the proper way to do this, but I used 2 separate pieces of fondant for the white and yellow parts of the cake, then hid the seam by piping red icing. I cut out circles of fondant for the portholes, shaped the red rudder (is that what that little thing is?) out of fondant, and piped the rest of the decorations on using various sized tips.

If anyone has suggestions or tips on technique I would love to hear them!

Wilton Cake Decorating Basics 1

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had signed up for a Wilton cake decorating class at Michaels. I wanted to take the 3rd class which is all about fondant and gumpaste flowers but they don't let you take that class without first taking the basics course. I wasn't complaining and figured the basics course would just help to improve my current skills and help with any rustiness from not really baking/decorating in awhile. 

Turns out though, that I learned quite a bit from this course. I learned how to give icing that "fondant" look. Who knew that a Viva paper towel could be so significant?!?! I also learned a few more piping techniques that will only augment my decorating. AND I made a new friend that kept the class entertaining. 

As far as techniques go, I learned how to make drop flowers (see the top tier of the Dr. Seuss cake below for my yellow drop flowers), a pom pom flower (which is ugly in my opinion and I will never use these on a cake), shaggy mum flowers (also hideous), and ribbon roses. Now, here's my new enemy.....the ribbon rose. I can't make them. I can pipe the classic and famous Wilton rose, but I can't make a ribbon rose. I guess I'll just have to keep practicing those evil flowers. 

So the point of this whole post is to document the cake that I decorated for our last class. I was unaware that we were decorating to win a $25 Michael's gift card at the time and didn't really have an idea for the design when I showed up for class. So I winged it, and piped my design without the use of a pattern or stencil. I was very happy with the way it turned out. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough for me and I got a lot of compliments from my fellow classmates. 

And no, my cake didn't win. But that's ok. Because my new friend won with a pink breast cancer awareness cake that was pretty damn good too! :)