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!!
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