#4 My Book

Well, I've completed another cake. This weeks goal was learning how to make roses. So, the plan was to make the classic book cake adorned with roses. It's one of those cakes that you see at every old school bakery.

Since this was not a layered cake I went back to chocolate and started looking for a recipe. I found one of those almost from scratch recipes where you use a box mix and add pudding and chocolate chips to it. I have discovered that the icing I've been making for the classes doesn't agree with me so, I've got to have a great cake since I can't eat the icing.

I made a double batch because I wanted to make sure I had a nice thick cake. Once I had the cake baked, I put the crumb coat on and into the freezer it went. Since I had some extra batter, I made some cupcakes for the kids to decorate. They mixed their favorite icing colors and had a blast using my decorating tips to decorate their own cupcakes. For dessert we got to eat the girls cupcakes and I discovered one problem. I didn't think they were that great and after last weeks orange layered cake, this just would not do. Now, I had to figure out what to do with the cake I had made and believe it or not, it kept up that night. In the morning I had the solution, I bought a can of chocolate fudge frosting, put it on the cake and delivered it to Emmy's preschool, the kids loved it!

If at first you don't succeed, try-try again! So, I quickly made a new cake, this time I made it from scratch. It was a pretty easy recipe and contained 1 cup of coffee which really came together to make moist cake. This week I also substituted the vanilla extract in the cake and icing with almond extract. It smelled great! One note here, this was a very expensivve cake because I broke a gear in my mixer making the large batch of icing and it cost $150 to fix it, YIKES!

Once in class, I set up my station ready to begin the carving. Sorry to say, I forgot my camera so, I was not able to take any pictures of the work. Getting started I first had to carve a "v" in the center of the cake about 2" wide and then angle both sides of the cake to get the book effect. I applied a new crumb coat to the newly carved areas and the cake was taken to the fridge to set up a bit. Now, I had to choose my colors. This week I decided anything except pink and purple, so I made coral (I mixed pink and orange and it was really pretty) for my roses and yellow for the trim.

With my icing colors ready and my instructor brought the cake back and I started by piping on the stems and then made the roses. I found them surprisingly easy, a glob of icing in the center of the flower nail and then arches of icing as I rotated the nail. Pretty cool! I set them on the cake and used the leaf tip to make leaves around the roses and on the stems. The next step was the boarder around the cake. This time I used a star tip and made large connecting tear drops. It went pretty fast. Now to finish the cake, I had to write something and keeping my girls in mind I decided it would be "Once upon a time". To finish it all off I had a large tip that makes a ribbon for the book mark. For this I striped the bag. This means I took my decorating bag and created stripes on the sides of the bag so when squeezed through the tip it made a striped effect. Done!!

Promptly at 6:30, my door bell rang and the neighborhood tasters were here. We cut the cake and everyone loved it, but then again who doesn't love cake! This has been great for my ego!;-)
Next week a garden of cupcakes! Yum.......