New Direction

I have completed the 8 weeks of decorating classes at Kake Kreations and have decided to continue with this new "Hobby". I love this new creative outlet I've discovered and I have decided to take some more "professional" type classes. Lets see where this take me. Well it seems to Encino!

My new class is with John at Cake Crumbs in Encino. John and his wife Susan make amazing cakes, like the ones you see in magazines. Really, their cakes have been in Brides Magazine, Modern Bride, etc... When I stumbled onto their website and discovered teach classes, I was very excited!

My first class with them will be Baking 101. I firmly believe that no matter how beautiful a cake is, it's what's on the inside that counts. Because, as much as I will Ooh and Awe over a beautiful cake I want to eat a piece! In my past classes I was would bring in a cake from home and learn different decorating techniques. If you've read my other posts you know I would spend a lot of time looking over recipes to find something interesting that didn't come from a box. For the most part they were really good, but I want to know how to bake a great cake!

The morning of class I arrive with great anticipation, I meet John and there is one other newbie in the class with me. We are given a few pages of recipes, a white cake, butter-cream, royal icing, fondant, etc.... This will be a two day course learning the fundamentals of baking and assembling a 3 layer cake. John gives us some basic knowledge of how the bakery works and we begin baking the cake. This recipe is one you fold a meringue into, now if I had found this in one of my previous searches at home, I would have been a bit intimidated and found something a little easier. So, this is great way to challenge my basic baking skills! With John's guidance it's not as difficult as I thought and we put the cakes in the oven, ready to move on.


Next the butter-cream, now this is one of the most important things to learn I think, how to make a great butter-cream. When I started taking classes, the hobby shop had me make bright white icing (you know the stuff on grocery store cakes), it's great for decorating with it has a firm consistency for holding it's shape. The kids love to eat it, but me, no thanks, yuck! So, I quickly found a recipe for butter-cream that I thought tasted better and it actually has some butter in it! It was a little more difficult to work with because it would soften with the heat of my hand, but, at least I could eat it. Now, I was about to learn how to make REAL butter-cream. Again, if I had seen this recipe online, I would have been scared out of my mind. But, with John's guidance, no worries! Well, just one problem, OMG!! how do I not lick every finger clean! This butter-cream has taken me to places I did not know I could go. It's like eating pure satiny sweet butter,Pure SIN!


I assemble the layers of my cake with the butter-cream getting it nice and level, into the fridge it goes to set until tomorrow when I turn it into art! We finish the class doing some fondant work. First, I learn how to make it, sans the Marshmallows. Looks easy again, but then everything seems easier when you have a pro helping you! Once the ingredients are combined the hard works begins. You have to kneed it just like bread, I actually got a bit of a workout, and every bit helps especially when in the end you get to eat cake. I make some little flowers that will dry overnight and the fondant goes in a bag for a rest, I need one too!


One really cool detail I learned from John was in making the base for the cake. Instead of just placing the cake on a cardboard circle, we use foam core board with a ribbon around the edge and then cover it in fondant. Little touches like this really can make the finished cake special!


Day 2, finishing the cake. The morning starts with royal icing, It's like a sugar glue. It will hold your cake to the board, the flowers on the cake and it's also used for piping decorations on the fondant itself. It dries really hard and quickly so you have to work pretty quick with it. The first thing we do is whip up a batch, now I had done this at home before. But, the great thing about learning with an instructor is the little details you pick up. Recipes will give you the info and it's pretty much up to you to get it right. But, when you have someone show you it really helps clarify things. Once the royal icing is done I pipe in little centers for my flowers, then set them aside to harden.


Step one, cover the cake with fondant. It's time to wake up the fondant, I take it out of the baggie and kneed, kneed, kneed, rest, again, agh! Okay, roll, roll, roll, agh! Now, a trainer would not consider this a workout, but, as a woman who will get to eat this cake, I do! Once my fondant circle is the right size, I place it on the cake and smooth. Except for the small patches that look like elephant skin (this happens when the fondant is a little dry and has little cracks, something I hope I'll get better at avoiding with more practice!) I think it looks great. But no worries, John has a trick for making it look perfect! Once the fondant is smooth and trimmed, I get to paint it! It's a really cool technique, you mix dry food pigment with vodka or in this case lemon extract. Now that my cake has gone from white to orange, I will finish it by using royal icing and covering it in squiggles called cornelli lace, the "elephant skin" appearance is virtually undetectable. I finish the cake by adding my flowers, and have created my first "professional" cake!


Wow, what an experience! I can't wait to take another class. But for now, I must go home and practice without John's guidance, I hope I remember everything!


P.S.- YUM!


I'll let you know how it goes, to see some of John & Susan's amazing cakes checkout their website
http://www.cakecrumbs.com/

week 7 & 8, my basket cake

This cake was the culmination of two weeks work. In week 7 I learned how to make royal icing flowers and week 8 was about decorating the cake to put them on.

I started the flowers by making the royal icing, it's pretty easy, 3 ingredients, powered sugar (in the world of baking called 10x) meringue powder and water. You mix this until you have a thick paste like toothpaste. The key is keeping it from drying out which ultimately is the idea but, not before you've created the flowers. These actually taste okay, but, then again why wouldn't they, they are pretty much pure sugar! Once in the class, the first ting I did in getting ready to make these little flowers was to cut little squares of wax paper to use as the base for the flowers. I mixed 4 colors of Icing and stared making flowers. I learned how to make daffodils, Pansy's, Lilly's, Daisy's and a few fantasy flowers. Fantasy flowers as my instructor calls them are made up flowers that look pretty. My flowers turned out okay, not as refined as the professionals make but, heck, I'm just learning and everyone has gotta start somewhere!

Week 8 was about the cake. This week again started with trying to find a great recipe. I decided to do chocolate with a twist, Orange. I used orange juice in the batter, it was kind of cool the way it was Incorporated, I heated up a cup of orange juice and then mixed my cocoa powder into it, it made a chocolate orange kind of syrup. That was then added to the batter and Ta-da, a Chocolate Orange cake. For the filling I found a recipe that used pudding, cool whip and orange extract, when combined it was like eating a dreamsicle, a personal childhood favorite! One of the things I now do, when making all my cakes that makes it easier to get them out of the pans and helps with handling, is to line the bottom of my pans with parchment paper before I grease and flour the pans.

Now, it's class time and time to assemble the cake. I came to class with the cake pre-frosted, green on the top and brown on the sides. Instead of coloring the buttercream brown, I made a chocolate buttercream. Once in the class, I start piping on white vertical lines that define the basket weave. Then I add the chocolate buttercream using a basket weave tip. Over the line, skip to the next line and over again, then alternate these down the cake and when you've gone around and around, it looks like a basket! It's an easy technique but my piping could have been tighter, it's a good thing the base frosting under it was also chocolate to camouflage this a bit. Once that was finished I learned two new borders for the top and bottom of the cake. That was pretty much it, next I get to add the flowers.

I had my flowers ready to go, one thing I learned about these royal icing flowers is that you can make bunches and they last a really long time. But, you have to store them in a box that can have air circulation, like a shoe box. If you put them is a plastic type box moisture can build up and break down the flowers. This part of the decorating was fun, oh, except for one thing. I made some Lilly's and used a form, kinda like a funnel shape lined with little tin foil squares. When I made them I put some Crisco on to keep the flowers from sticking, but, when I went to put them on the cake, I learned I had not used enough Crisco and broke most of them trying to get them off the foil. Oh well, lesson learned!

This cake completed my 8 week session at a cake shop called Kake Kreations. It's a great store with everything you need to make your cakes. Mary was my instructor and she was great! I loved making the cakes with them and have been so inspired, I've decided to kick it up a notch and take a professional baking course at a local bakery that makes the most amazing cakes! More about them on the next post, keep in touch!!!!

Thanks Mary!!

http://www.kakekreations.com/