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Top tier cake base
Description: 5" top tier cake that is covered with thin layer of icing.
Bottom tier cake base
Description: 9" bottome tier cake covered with thin layer of icing.
Tier proportion.
Description: Side by side comparison of cake size difference.
Icing thickness
Description: Icing is thicker than crump coat to smooth out cake and allow fondant to stick. It's not too thick so that the cake is not too sweet.
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Fondant covered base cake
Description: Fondant covered base cake with cutout flowers. It's my first time to put fondant on a round cake, hence the seam is kind of obvious.
Fondant covered top cake
Description: Cake top covered with fondant, same design as the bottom but with less cutout flowers.
Ready for class!
Description: The cakes are covered with fondant and are ready to bring to class in the evening.
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Ready cake top
Description: Roses were put together in class while ruffles were finished at home since we ran out of time in class.Cake board is 8" while the cake is baked in a 5" pan. I thought after putting the icing and fondant, the cake would be just right for the board. The icing is thin and I rolled the fondant very thin, hence I ended up with more cake board space then I need.
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Ready cake base
Description: Roses were put together in class, and the rest were finished at home. The ruffle is a bit challenging, but I manage to get some more consistent looking ruffles.
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Roses patch
Description: Trying to make roses lay on top each other naturally could be challenging, but I think I did a pretty good job.
Putting together
Description: The extra cake board space is a bit distracting. The benefit of having extra board space is so that I can transfer and move the cake easily without touching the ruffle border..
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Completed cake
Description: Different angle view of the completed cake.
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Completed cake
Description: The thickness of the cake base could be higher. Overall, the proportion between top and base seems to be good.
Shadow casting
Description: Shadow cast from top tier enhanced the different shade of roses.
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Roses shade
Description: Center roses have deeper pink not only because of the actually color on the flower, but also because of the shadow.
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How it all started
Description: Roses start with dried tear drop shape fondant rose center on toothpicks.
Doesn't look a lot
Description: It doesn't look like there is a lot.
But's it's quite a lot
Description: It's actually quite a lot when you actually work on it.
Need bigger box
Description: Finish roses take up more space, hence I have to grab any box I can use since I don't have any styroform. FedEx saved the day!
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Shade of roses
Description: The class finale cake require different shade of pink roses.
Sepals
Description: The green sepals reminded me of Incredible Hulk....very green!
Roses tray 1
Description: Every rose looks different from the other.
Roese tray 2
Description: Looking at the roses from different angles, some look nice, some look okay.
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Roses tray 3
Description: Porpotion of sepal and rose seems to be just right.
Roses tray 4
Description: Rosebuds are lined up at the side.
Roses tray 5
Description: See if you can tell which are the early practice roses.
Rosebuds
Description: Rosebuds seem to turn out well.
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Sepal problem
Description: Thrid days working for the same tray of roses. I was sick and tired of rolling out fondant and cutting them, hence the sepal want rolled to perfectly thin sheet.
Medium roses
Description: Medium roses could be difficult to be made to look natural because of not enough padals to fan out.
Medium rose closeup
Description: Pedal ruffles could use some improvement.
Medium roses closeup 2
Description: Because of the pedal suggeted folding order, medium rose might not have balance symmetry.
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Large roses
Description: Large roses look more beautiful.
More pedals, hide mistakes
Description: With more pedals, they distract the viewer and hide some less perfect area.
Cabbage or rose?
Description: Without good ruffle at the edge of pedal, they could look like cabbage.
Ruffle ruffle ruffle!
Description: After 20 roses, I was at the point of just roll, cut, stick fold and hang. I wasn't paying attention to a lot of the ruffle. BTW, I need to hang the roses upside down for a while in order to keep their shape.
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Basic shape
Description: Three different basic shape pan s were used - Heart, Round, and Flutted
Browning problem
Description: Because of the mini size, the cake can't stay in oven for too long, hence there is no browning on top.
Varieties experiment
Description: Cheese cake sugar is substituted with Splenda, hence the texture is not fine. A layer of strawberry jelly is spread on top crust to try different quick flavoring.
Cake looks like rubber
Description: I used cheap store brand cream cheese instead of the industry standard (Philadelphia)... shame shame shame... Overbake results a layer of rubbery crust.
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Pattern drawing
Description: Since marble attempt failed due to very small cake size, pattern drawing was attempted.
Doesn't look like cheesecake
Description: Somehow the pattern make everything look like a small torte instead of cheesecake.
Pattern consistency
Description: The pattern seems pretty consistent.
Scaring
Description: Cheesecake top is scarred if toothpick is drawn too deep.
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Where is the heart?
Description: The patter broke the symmetry of the heart shape.
Ranover cake?
Description: Thick pattern look like tire track mark!
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Completed cake
Story:
I received the request
in less than 24 hours, luckily I have some of the stock royal icing
flowers I made from my previous cake decoration class. Thank god royal
icing flower last forever.
Although the request is just for one cup cake, since I'm going to use
a small box of cake mix, I decided to make extra just for practice. The
cakes were baked in heart shape silicone muffin pan, they turned out
pretty well. Icing the small cakes was the challenge, using pointy offset
icing spatula was the trick.
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Simple decoration
Description: Since the surface of the cup cakes are not very big, a rose on top with some leaves pretty much cover the cake top. The side however were initally decorated with star patterns and border. It was plain since the whole cake is white. I happen to make extra color flow royal icing pieces, and they come in handy! The pink hearts make big different!
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Cake toward center
Description: The cakes were put on the board, then decorate. Since there is liminted space for me to point my piping bag, simple stars outline was the only way to decorate the side of cake that point toward center.
Cake toward outside
Description: The side of the cake that face outside of the board allow me to have more freedom to decorate.
A bite here, a bite there
Description: The cake is very small, so there is no filling since the icing is already sweet enought!
Icing licking good
Description: I wonder what happen if I use peanut butter to ice the cake instead of butter icing....he he...
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Watch the video
(1.2 Mb)
(Flash player is required)
Full plate of cake
Description: I think my friends ate the other two cakes.
Something is missing -- candles and knife!
Description: Jasper looked so happy!
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Finished cake - bow side
Description: First fondant cake, the theme is a wrapped gift box. Fondant is made from scratch using marshmallow fondant recipe, it was a sticky experience.
Finished cake - flower patch side
Description: Using simple cut out fondant pattern to fill up the blank spots
Ribbon bow
Description: The fondant has a glossy finish, which I think is the characteristic of a fresh marshmallow fondant.
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Cake side
Description: Dotted butter cream ising is use the fill the bottom and cover the seam of the fondant and cake board.
3D Flower cut out
Description: Cut out shape does make the cake very 3D.
Ribbon strips
Description: Twisted strips are use as curl strips were too soft and doesn't hold the curl shape.
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Ladyfingers Tray 1
Description: First tray did't have well consistent shape beucase I'm still trying to get use to pipe the batter in correct spacing and size.
Tray 1 closeup
Description: Not familiar with the correct color and lost track of time, I pulled tray 1 out a bit early.
Ladyfingers Tray 2
Description: Second try seems to have better shape. Tray 3 and 4 photos were not taken because they fall flat since the batter has lots its volume.
Tray 2 close up
Description: Tray 2 has better browning and shape after learning from Tray 1.
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Cooling ladyfingers
Description: Ladyfingers are cool on rack to prevent sticking, and speed up the crust harden process.
Some even shape
Description: Out of many fingers, there are quite a few nice fingers, those would be use for decoration.
Tiramisu un molded 1
Description: The tiramisu seems to have thick filling, but those are just the extra that filled to the edge of the pan, covered part of the sponge.
Tiramisu un molded 2
Description: To keep cost down, chocolate chiffon layers are used. Top of chiffon cake is nice and smooth.
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Tiramisu un molded 3
Description: Coffee and liquor syrup drizzled on the cake, hence showing some darker wet spot
Tiramisu un molded 4
Description: Cheese filling seems to be smooth.
Tiramisu un molded 5
Description: The cake is thick! The cake should be solid enough to be cut by a knife.
Completed Tiramisu 1
Description: Tiramisu top is iced with coffee flavored whipped cream.
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Completed Tiramisu 2
Description: Apparently the whip cream is not stiff enough, so the swirls soften and lost their shape after piping on cake.
Completed Tiramisu 3
Description: The top icing is not thick enough, hence some sponge cake shows after running the comb.
Completed Tiramisu 4
Description: From other view, the comb seems to have done a pretty good job.
Completed Tiramisu 5
Description: The side of the cake is layer with more lady fingers.
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Completed Tiramisu 6
Description: The cake top could be improved. Since it need to be wait to set, dusting cocoa power might not be a good idea. Perhaps shaved chocolate?
Completed Tiramisu 7
Description: The side lady fingers seems to look similar size. The trick is to pick the similar size fingers to lay to each other.
Completed Tiramisu 8
Description: Side ladyfingers are brushed with sugar syrup. The recipe didn't mention this, but I thought it would wet the fingers to make cutting easy, instead is gives the fingers some shine.
- Whipped cream with stabilizer is still not a good icing for decoration. This time I have avoided over beating cream to prevent large air holes from show, instead, under beat whipped cream makes icing runny hence lost its shape.
- Work fast when making ladyfingers, egg foam based batter go flat in a blink of eye!
- The cake should be focused on taste, not much about decoration. I think using butter cream for decoration would ruin the taste of the cake since it might over power to cover the taste of the cheese and coffee.
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Finished cake
Description: Since I over stock on heavy whipping cream, I decided to make something more like a European type cake from my sister's recipe.
It took me 3 times to get the chiffon/sponge cake right because of the mistake of using MagicStrip, it ruined my cake because the cake needs to cling to the side of the pan to rise.
By the time I finish putting the cake together, I was late to work so I have only about 10 minutes to think of the decoration design. Using just a star tip with the help of some maraschino cherries and a cake comb, this cake is as simple as it gets especially I don't have a large enough cake board, or enough time to mix different color or change decoration tips. The agar agar layer on top added some bright color. The unique cheese and fruit cocktail mousse filling in the center make this cake unordinary that it's sort of difficult to decide a design since most of my cake decoration lessons are gearing toward American cakes.
Lesson of the project:
- Whipped cream with stabilizer doesn't give perfect smooth surface (you can see the air hole at the icing)
- Dry cherries with paper tower before putting on cake, they bleed!
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Finished cake
Description: This is by far the biggest cake I have made. It's quite time consuming because I only have one half sphere pan. The cake requires one complete sphere, with the bottom trim flat so the cake can sit still.
Original instruction ask for a 6" ball but my pot is big, so I went with the 8" Zuccotto pan, which has hollow center. The hollow center makes the cake less stable hence the bottom sphere get squashed a bit because of the weight on top.
By the time I finish the cake, I probably developed the basic skill of acupuncture because each thorn is indiviaully inserted using poke-then-thumb-push method.
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Better round view
Description: Certain side of the cake looks rounder simply because that side didn't collapse much, and were touch up with the icing.
Cactus flower
Description: The royal icing flower seem to be a bit small.
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Thorns
Description: The thorns were pipe Individually using royal icing. Once dried, they're still brittle to handle. I had a half sheet full of throwns. The instruction calls for 300 of then, but I swear I made more than that and still run out of thorns.
Soil
Description: I was going to use graham craker for the soil, but I was lucky enough to find chocolate waffles at the grocery store.The look more chunky and suitable. I would say the graham cracker might be too sandy for this project
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Completed cake front
Description: Overall, the cake look very tall.
Completed cake left
Description: Spacing of decorations seems just right.
Completed cake right
Description: A little flowers here and there does make the cake looks better.
Side flower bush
Description: Color flow bird on the right edge.
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Lower flower bush
Description: The Daisy blend well with the white icing cake.
Left flower bush
Description: Colorful flowers combination.
Front flower bush view
Description: The chrysanthemum doesn't blend in very well.
Side flower bush view
Description: This side has too much yellow.
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Overall flower bush view
Description: Victorian rose is soften the flower bush.
Basketweave
Description: Basketweave needs lots of effort.
Cake top view
Description: Overall, the cake is a bit high, but not too bad.
Cake overal front view
Description: The tall cake does make the basketweave looks like a consistent pattern.
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Flower assortments 1
Description: The early stage of the class is learning different types of flowers.
Flower assortments 2
Description: Flowers are made with royal icing so they dry hard and can be stored for pretty much forever.
Bigger flowers
Description: Bigger flowers are more consistent to shape and could get better result.
Daisy
Description: Daisy is the easiest flowers to make.
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Victorian roses
Description: Victorian roses have more curvy petals.
Smaller flowers
Description: Smaller flowers require more detail work, such as shaping and create consistent curves.
Pansy 1
Description: Laying the center petal is tricky as the height and size has to be just right.
Pansy 2
Description: Darker yellow seems to work better with the purple.
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Daffodil
Description: Daffodil require pinching at the edge of the petal. dual color center looks better.
Apple Blossom 1
Description: Apple blossom would be one of those that you want to stock up as they are just the right size and can blend into many other types of decoration.
Apple Blossom 2
Description: Purple apple blossom looks good as well.
Violet leaves
Description: The green color on the violet leaves faded when it's dried.
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Chrysanthemum
Description: It's hard to make chrysanthemum looks consistent since there are so many petals!
Violet and primrose
Description: My my favorite set of flowers, but they're good to use for filling in empty space.
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Completed cake
Description: Finished in class cake. The cake is more cylinder shape instead of dome like the previous cake.
Completed cake 2
Description: Top view of the finished cake.
Rose bouquet
Description: Dropping individual roses onto the bouquet base is a challenge.
Roses close up
Description: The roses' shape are fine, but could be bigger.
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Side decoration
Description: Simple starts and shell were use for the side of the cake.
Starts close up
Description: Correct icing consistency make piping uniform stars easy.
Leaves close up
Description: The icing consistency for the leaves is a bit thin, therefore they don't stand up well.
Completed cake 3
Description: The bouquet ribbon is not very good and flat, but looks fine from a distant.
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Completed cake
Description: Finished in class cake.
Cake rose section
Description: During the cake decorating class, we learn to make a complete rose. The darker pink rose is the instructor's flower. It's denser and look more solid then the rest.
Cake swirl flower section
Description: Swirl flowers are the easiest to make.
Cake clown characters
Description: Clown positions can create a difference expression to the cake. In this case, the climbing clown give a cute/playful touch to the cake, instead of boring portrait figure cake.
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Close up clown 1
Description: Balance of body and head size is important.
Close up clown 2
Description: One of the challenges is the feet and glove.
Roses close up
Description: Icing consistency and piping pressure is the key to make smooth edge pedals. Very stiff icing could end up with crack edge, resulting more carnation like flower instead of rose.
Swirl close up
Description: Swirl flowers are simple, but is useful to fill up some boring part of the cake.
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Cake Pie Base
Description: Browning of the cake pie base is not as even as I want. Probably because it from a Silicone pan.
Cake Pie Base shallow area
Description: The shallow area would allow topping to hold in place.
Cake Pie Base edge
Description: The side of the base is not too bad that you can still see the fluted shape.
Sliced banana topping
Description: The pie looks good enough to eat.
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Sliced banana layering
Description: Spacing of sliced banana is critical to make sure the topping is not too high.
Sliced banana arrangement
Description: Similar size sliced banana should be placed together with the bigger slices lay at the bottom.
Sliced banana arrangement 2
Description: Sometimes you just don't feel like spending more time to go back and fix some shifted slices.
Sliced banana arrangement 3
Description: Put smaller sliced banana pieces toward center created a smaller petal looking pattern.
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Completed pie without glaze
Description: The pie without glaze looks good, but could be dry and not sweet en ought.
Dulce de Leche glaze
Description: Major mistake not to sift the glaze!
Glaze over flow
Description: Dulce de Leche get runny once it's at room temperature, therefore it start to ooze to the bottom and over flow to the side.
Finished pie
Description: Lesson learned - put the glaze on the cake, then put the sliced banana on the glaze. You would end up with beautiful fresh fruit looking cake pie instead of caramel splashed unidentifiable stuff on cake base....
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Star spritz cookies
Description: One of the challenges of making spritz cookies is handling the cookie gun/press.
Star spritz cookies arrangement
Description: Nicely arranged cookie should promote even cooking, instead of create hotspot on certain part of the baking sheet.
Star spritz cookies close up
Description: It takes a couple tries to create consistent press. The trick is correct doug softness, height of cookie press and speed of pulling cookie gun away.
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Flower spritz cookies
Description: The use of silicone mat (sil-pat) make clean up easy as there is no need of tearing and disposing parchment paper, but its slippery surface could make cookie hard to detach from the cookie gun.
Flower spritz cookies arrangement
Description: Again, arrange cookie to maximize cooking area so you don't end up using many baking sheets.
Flower spritz cookies close up
Description: Different cookie patter would require different ways of handing the cookie pressing technique. In this case, flower need to be flat and wide instead of thick like the star pattern.
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Pau Batch 1 warm
Description: Pau retain its white spongy look when it's warm off the steam rack. The pau is white because of the use of Hong Kong/Red Rose flour, instead of bread flour.
Pau Batch 1 cold
Description: Once the pau is cold, its color changed a bit, while the texture have become denser, but still soft.
Pau Batch 2
Description: It's hard to get all pau perfectly round.
Close up view
Description: The pau has a layer of shiny finish skin, if peeled, will expose the soft texture bread like sponge under it.
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Even wrapping
Description: A good pau should have even layer, not with very thick skin that make the pau taste more like white bread, or with too much red bean paste filling that over sweet the pau.
Plating experiment
Description: Texture of red bean paste filling should be correct to give it a firm look, and yet be able to cleanly slice through by a knife.
Better plating presentation
Description: Complete presentation. I wish I have some bamboo steamer basket, it would make the presentation more oriental.
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Description: Boring view of the pies.
Plate full of pies 2
Description: Better angle photo.
Plate full of pies 3
Description: Not quite right photograph angle.
Close up view
Description: Close up look of the pie to showcase its dense sandwich cake with cloud like marshmallow cream filling.