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/

Another Birthday Cake!

We just celebrated Olga's birthday and I made a cake, I know not very suprising! But, I thought I share just the same.

Olga has been a big part of our family for the last 5 years. She started as a babysitter for Lili and quickly became part of the family. You see, just about all of our family lives out of state. My mom is in Florida and Joe's mom is in New Mexico. So, Olga has kinda been a surrogate Grandma for the girls, they love her very much!

Lili and Emmy picked a pink marble cake recipe out of one of my cook books and we went with that. I then used some of the fondant I had made and some royal icing flowers from my class. I know I have not talked about them yet, that's because they were part of the cake I just finished. Next entry.

Here are a few pictures, Happy Birthday Olga!!! We Love you,

My first cake for a friend!

I decided to put my new skill to the test and I made my friend Nancy a cake for her 40th birthday. Nancy is the younger sister of Stacy, one of my best friends from high School.

It was pretty easy, she had one request, CHOCOLATE!

I used a from scratch recipe and used a trick I've learned, coffee in the batter makes chocolate cake taste better. Very moist not overly sweet. I filled it with a caramel cream and for the icing, I added about a cup of cocoa powder to my yummy butter-cream recipe.


Happy Birthday Nancy!
Nancy said : Thank you again Debby! So nice of you to make me a birthday cake! A delicious chocolate one too!! Glad you were able to come down to celebrate with us!!
Stacy said: It was so good, I had two pieces for breakfast before I left! I should have figured out a way to bring the rest home with me!
My pleasure.....

Class 6, The next level!

I have left the world of icing and crossed over to the wonder of Fondant! Not the boxed kind but, my own home made marshmallow kind, so good I don't even need to put it on a cake;-)

This was the week I've been waiting for, Fondant! That firm sweet envelope of sugar that wraps up a cake. Hey, you can even put a bow on it. For this weeks post I'm going to share the making of the fondant and the cake inside. I've got lots of pictures, so enjoy!

First the fondant, I scoured the internet and landed upon You Tube. Here, I found dozens of videos on how to make my own marshmallow fondant. I decided to do this because I love the stuff and Joe does not. I've heard that the pre-made boxed kind doesn't taste very good. So, just to hedge my bet and in the future make more of the yummy stuff, I wanted to get the best tasting fondant I could. I watched many videos and they all had pretty much the same info. I went with the one that had a little Crisco in it (to prevent dry fondant) and was made in the mixer (to prevent turning my kitchen into a complete disaster).

Here is a great hint I learned, if you wrap the top of the mixer with plastic wrap you don't have a cloud of powered sugar cover your kitchen!


On to the cake, I struggle with this one each week. I love great cake and I want to delight my neighbors with variety! This week I decided to make a strawberry cake and found a recipe that used a box mix but, instead of water you put in fruit nectar, I chose Strawberry Banana! By the way, I get the recipes I use from www.cakecentral.com. It's a great site and it's a place where you can talk cake. There I found a pudding filling recipe too, I decided banana!

Now on to the part I've been waiting for, ta da......decorating with Fondant! I have to say, I'm addicted to any TV that includes cake decorating. I really love the monster cake shows, how big can they go? The majority of these cake artists use fondant to cover the larger than life cakes, yes, cakes over 5' tall and then some. That's pretty much how tall I am too! I think a lot of my fascination with this has to do with my love off architecture and sugar. It's been a lot of fun making these cakes and eating them, the only problem is, I'm going to have to start another blog on how to lose weight after eating too much cake!

Oh, back to the process. I arrived at the cake shop and set up my work space. I am using a Wilton mat that has circles in 1" increments. This way I can roll out the fondant and know it will be large enough to cover the entire cake. Since I made a 9" cake that is about 4" tall (x2) I need at least a 17" circle of fondant to cover it. I roll out my fondant and then drape it over the cake careful not to stretch it and then smooth. Once it's on the cake (the crumb coat under the fondant acts like glue to keep it in place) I cut off the excess around the bottom. Then, I move on to the decorations. This week I'm using pink, purple and green (for Lili & Emmy, of course). I've decided purple ribbons & stars and pink polka dots & roses. Then some green leaves and pink & green rope around the bottom to finish it off. Making the decorations is easy, once you have blended your colors into the fondant you simply roll it out very thin and use a pizza cutter for cutting straight lines and cookie cutters for the shapes. A little water on the back will act like glue to join the two pieces of fondant. For the roses, I make a little cone and then wrap it in circles, around and around to get the look of a rose. That's it, easy peasy!


Well, almost. I had a little problem with the final shape of the cake. I may have had a little to much butter-cream under the fondant and it seemed to slump a little. But, I am just learning! Then, this week our tasting party was difficult to arrange. Lili had an open house at school and it would be to late for everyone. So, we put it off a night and cut the cake as a family. The girls and I loved it, Joe still not in love with fondant (it's to sweet for him). I had a headache and went to bed early when the neighbors came over for their slice. I was told they liked it! All in all a successful first fondant cake. Not 5' tall......... yet! ;-)

#5, Roses, Sunflowers and Daises, Oh My!

It's blooming cupcakes! I just finished my flower cupcake class and learned how to make some really beautiful cupcakes. I've seen others making these pretty cupcakes in the class and was really looking forward to my turn.

I started taking these classes to learn some great decorating techniques. But, it's evolved a bit because, I really take my time at home researching new and yummy recipes for the cake. This week I found a crazy recipe and went with it. The batter contained coke and marshmallows, yes that's what I said, coke and marshmallows! The batter is made up of 2 parts, the first part is coke, butter, oil, cocoa powder and marshmallows and the second part is flour, sugar, vanilla, eggs and buttermilk. I used Coke Zero to save a few calories ;-) I took a risk on these and they were amazing, light, super moist and not overly sweet. I know I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, but, at the tasting, people were licking the inside of the cupcake liners!


This week I brought 2 dozen cupcakes and my icing to class. Okay, 23 I ate one, but, I had to make sure they tasted good! Instead of using the "bright white" icing they want me to use, I made a butter cream icing. I really like great icing and just can't eat that bright white stuff! My icing was really great and light but, because it actually had butter in it, it was a little harder to work with. It was softer than the other kind but, totally worth it. I got to class and started mixing the icing colors. I was hoping to keep the icing firm for decorating and had it in the fridge before class. This just made it really hard to blend the colors in, I had a bruise in the center of my had from stirring. Then by the time I put it in the bags it was soft, Oh well, I tried!


The techniques to make the flowers were pretty easy, but takes a while because of all the petals. I made Roses, Sunflowers, Daises, Mums, Hydrangeas, and a few fantasy flowers. I made four colors to start yellow (some brown for the centers) for the sunflowers, purple for the fantasy flowers and two tones of pink for the mums. As I went along and made other flowers I added little bits of color for the two tone effect, the purple and blue for the Hydrangeas with the little yellow centers were my favorite. Once they were all made, they really looked pretty!


The class was over and I was very proud of my work. It is so much fun being able to do something that is fun and just for me and then I get to share my work with my family and friends. At 6:30 right on schedule everyone came by and got to pick their favorite flower! I thought the cupcake and new icing was amazing, and so did everyone else!

#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.......