Moses' Bake and Learn (then eat!) gallery 4

My first real wedding cake
One of my co-workers get marry on first day of Fall. I offered them to do their wedding cake long time ago to gain some experience. About 6 weeks before the wedding, they finally have a theme and idea about the cake they want. After a few emails and a consultation session, I got a firm requirement for the cake:

• Three tiers round cake: 14" base, 10" middle and 6" cake top tier.
• Two 12" round cake for serving in case there isn't enough cake.
• No fondant, just vanilla butter cream.
• Chiffon sponge cake with Vanilla custard pastry butter cream.
• Dual color: rusty/copper orange and white.
• Cake will be outdoor in a park, estimated temperature is high 60F or low 70F.

The bride handed me a book with a picture of the kind of cake they want: dual color cake with vine/scroll around the cake.

Prototype cake

Description: I made a taste testing cake for the couple before the actual event.

Elegant!

Description: It's a very similar decoration to the original picture the bride gave me, except mine is c-scroll instead of s-scroll.

Not enough to cover up

Description: The scroll is not enough to cover the dividing line between the orange and the white.

It's not orange

Description: The color band is not rusty enough, and it's not a very fall color.

My work space - Wedding day eve

Description: I wouldn't accept the challenge if I don't have the proper work space. I moved into my house 4 months ago, the Kitchen size and its island is one of the attractive features of the house. I would say the island is like a twin size bed size.

Prep the space.

Description: To make clean up easy and avoid cake crump roll onto my new hardwood floor, a big table cloth comes to rescue. when I'm done, just gather it up, go to the back yard, fluff a couple times and throw it into the washing machine

The sponge!

Description: The sponge cakes need to be baked and cool before slice into layers. The top two are 14", the middle two are 12", the bottom two are two 8", and the left two are 6". I had two more 12" to bake when I take this photo.

The cake pan is 3" tall. The standard wedding cake is 4" tall. Unless I can bake a perfect 3" tall cake, slice into three slices of perfect 1" tall slice and make up 1" of filling and icing, I have no choice but to bake two batch for each size. The extra crump is my dinner and lunch....

Giant pancake!

Description: They look like giant pancake stack! The cakes have good browning. The 14" tier is higher than the rest, I was tired.

So many cakes

Description: Finding place to store the cake was challeging. The big cakes don't fit into my cake container, so I had to stick them into oven and fridge, while the small cakes were stored in my cake container to prevent dry out.

Oh... so pretty - Wedding day morning

Description: The fist coat of icing (white) was applied until 2 a.m. On wedding day morning, I continue to scrap part of the white icing and patch with the copper color icing.

The scallop band

Description: When making the prototype cake, the vine/scroll decoration couldn't completely cover the dividing line between the white and orange, therefore I had to go with the scallop band so the vine can be piped along the curve.

Putting together - cake front

Description: The detail decoration was done on set because they're tiny, if they get smear by the cake box during transport, it's hard to touch up, not to mention the icing was supersoft. This is the final front side of the cake.

Small flowers and branch

Description: Small flowers, leave and branch crawl along the side of the cake.

Nice earthy branch

Description: Making a scallop shape dividing line between the two color takes more work but it pay off. The color saperation is cleaner.

Puffy border

Description: I was going to use regular shell border to connect the tier, but when the cake is put together, the gap between the tiers were too big, so I had to use a bigger tip to pipe some big puffy border.

Something is wrong

Description: Did the top tier get squeezed?

Cake table setting

Description: Lights under the table fabric was a nice touch.

Original cake front

Description: This is the original cake front. You can see the color band flow much better from tier to tier, from lower left to right then up. Unfortunately the wooden dowels were not cut very straight so the top tier lean to the right a bit. I was way too tired to pay attention to that kind of detail.

Since it's a buttercream base cake, it's impossible to remote the top tier to correct the wooden dowels without causing smear to the lower tier.

Professional photo

Description: The photo of the cake taken by pro using higher end camera.

Happy bride and groom

Description: The cake match the gown really well, which I never seen.

Facts about the cake :

• The cake is enough to provide 193 servings (including the cake top for the couple to freeze)
• Market lowest price for this project would be $ 675.50
• I only charge cost + gratitute for first time experience, and warn the couple that if I screw up, they get what they pay for.
• About 5 gallon of icing were made, which consist of one 5lb tub of Crisco, 2.5 block (not stick) of butter, and 20 lb of powder sugar!
• Only about 10 cups of icing left when the cake was delivered.
• I haven't break the record of using 100 eggs for the whole project.
• Total time spent = 2 days (with short nap in between and cleaning while wait for the cake to bake)
• Took 3 Advils, 1 every half day to get rid of the headache from lack of sleep.

Baked cake

Description: The cake was out of the oven and refigerated overnight to set. The top is very brown, probably because of the banana, which make sense becase banana bread is that brown as well.

Unmolded cake

Description: Using a cheesecake pan makes unmold super easy, and it keeps the cake round. No more spring form pan!

Perfect flat

Description: The cake is perfectly flat, no dome or shinkage.

Dense texture

Description: Judging from the side of the cake, you can tell the cake is dense. I expect a whiter cake, but the mashed banana aparently changed color, like get oxidize or something.

Cheesy idea

Description: It's a pecan crust banana cheesecake. Yellow resemble the banana color, and pecan... well it's pecan.

Simple shell border

Description: The base of the cake need to be decorated to cover the seam, so classic shell border is what I did, plain and simple.

Let's serve it up

Description: It's not very delicate, but the center seem to be a bit moist. I don't think the center is cook to a very solid state, therefore it torn a little bit.

Good texture

Description: No lumpy creamcheese bits, no big air pocket, dense and smooth, it's a success. The pecan need some sheen though, a sugar spiced pecan would be good.

Oh... lonely cake

Description: The plate looks blank, no sauce, no garnish. Hmm... something I need to work on. It's not a pastry chef's quality presentation.

Cake top base layer 1

Description: The cake top consist of a cake mix cake (I can't bake two different flavor cake in one day without taking time off from work!)

Cake top base layer 2

Description: The cake mix is Golden Butter flavor cake, which is quite dense due to the use of soften butter instead of vegetable oil.

Cake top filling

Description: The cake frost with pre-made milk chocolate froasting for center filling.

Stacked cake top

Description: Second piece of cake go on top, completed the 8" cake top.

Cake top assembled

Description: The second piece of cake is not straight side, probably is because it's over baked, and I didn't rotate the cake during baking.

Cake base 1

Description: The cake base is white cake made from scratch. It's not completely white like Angel Food cake because the recipe calls for butter, which make it yellow!

Cake base 2

Description: The big 12" cake base is filed with cherry puree jam that's made from scratch the night before. So the cake base is completely from scratch.

Putting together

Description: I had to put the cake together at work since it's not easy to transport cake during rush office hour, not to mention a long walk from the parking lot to office.

Cover up job

Description: Instead of using border, I used grass tip to pip grass along the cake to cover the gab. The blue cake top resemble the pond, while the chocolate fondant coverd base is the land around the pond.

Fondant job

Description: The fondant job is quite good and smooth. The blue fondant is left over from the beach cake. Now you know why I choose this theme!

Piped Grass

Description:The grass piping is surprisingly easy and give very good result.

Completed cake

Description: The cake is very simple since I only have 1 night and 1 morning to complete it.

Cake top filled with water

Description: Again, I have left over water effect gel from the beach cake, so why waste it!

Simming ducks

Description: Random position of the ducks make a quite natural pond with floating rubber ducks.

Silly/confused duck

Description: Somehow this duck look confused yet silly.

Quiet duck

Description: One of the ducks just side next to the bush, so quiet.

Rubber duck - fondant ball

Description: The rubber duck start with lemon color fondant. I have left over fondant with this color so I decided to use them all to make more ducks.

Rubber duck - body portioned

Description: Balls of fondant rolled out aside for body.

Rubber duck - head portioned

Description: Smaller balls of fondant folled out for head.

Rubber duck - shaped body

Description: Each of the body ball is then shape into a mango or jalapeno shape.

Rubber duck - beak portioned

Description: Very small balls of red fondant were rolled out for the beak.

Rubber duck - head

Description: The red balls were shaped, and attached to the head.

Rubber duck - body and head 1

Description: The heads are then attached to the mango body. At this point the ducks look quite good already, especially from a distant.

Rubber duck - with wings

Description: Wings are added to the duck, this create an illustion of fat duck, which make the cute!

March of the rubber duckies!

Description: The ducks were then completed with two dot of black color.

Not all ducks are the same

Description: Position of head direction, size of beak and space of eye actually give these duck different expression.

Leave me alone duck

Description: This is just a head tilt up swimming straight serious duck.

Big beak silly duck

Description: With two very round eyes, bigger forehead and wider beak, it just looks silly straight at you!

Amused by the swimming ducks

Description: Reaction of some of my co-workers when they first saw the cake.

Happy mother to be

Description: Potrait of mom with her cake.

Cake top view

Description: Top view of the cake. You probably can tell I don't have enough ducks to go around the cake.

Ducks everywhere

Description: There are ducks everywhere at the front of the cake.

Duck resting

Description: While other ducks are swimming in the pond, a few ducks were resting on the mud area.

Busy water pond

Description: The water looks wavy!

Moving water

Description: The ripple in the water creates motion. Dark blue part of the water dreate depths.

Character modeling 1

Description: I'm picking up some sulpey technique in modeling. It come in handy when modeling fondant.

Character modeling 2

Description: The cake top is quite small, hence the character needs to be small, which is quite challenging to make.

A container full of what?

Description: Are these some sort of leave? Well, they are tree branches.

Hmm....

Description: Chocolate fondant stuck on a foam bowl. It's going to be transform into a tree trunk.

Ta Dah!

Description: It's a palm tree trunk!

Get down to business.

Description: Once the tree brunches are stuck on the trunk, we have palm trees! I made four so the extra are use for backup. The brunches are very fragile.

Not bad!

Description: The palm tree looks quite cute, short and fat.

Cake top

Description:The cake top is 8" covered with aqua blue fondant. I'm using half butter half crisco for the buttercream, which is a softer and smoother butter ream then regular just crisco based buttercream. The cream is giving me a bit problem as I smooth the fondant, they get push very easily.

Cake base

Description: 12" cake base with wooden dowel stuck in center. The sides were decorated with coral to begin with.

Coral

Description: The coral looks okay from a distance. I didn't have the right small ball tool to make the dent. The challenge of this part is making the coral stick to the side of the cake. I'm not sure if I want to use uncook egg white on the cake, so I stuck with just water.

Cake side 1

Description: One of the advantages of fondant covered cake is: you can paint on it! I painted the seaweet to fill the space a little bit.

Cake side 2

Description: Instead of some sort of border to cover the gab between the cake and the board, brown sugar is used as sand, follow by some commercially made sugar seashells and fish.

Finished cake top

Description: The cake top doesn't have a whole lot of room for decoration.

Sea water

Description: The sea water portion look darker in photo.

There go the trees.

Description: The palm tree and the human is a bit not in proportion. I can't make the head smaller, and I can't make the tree lager! I probably should have make one BIG tree instead of 2 small one.

Cute message

Description: It's a playful event, so the cake spell out "I-heart-U" like a sand drawing, the groom would be the "I" portion.

Silly groom

Description: With the hair piped on, the head looks like a normal guy now.

Sand drawing message

Description: It's quite hard to draw on brown sugar. If the area to be drawn is bigger it probably would help.

Finished cake 1

Description: The finished cake! It's kind of hard to part with the cake without seeing the reaction from the people who are going to eat the cake. However, I'm glad it goes down to the bride's memory book and I hope she enjoys it.

Finished cake 2

Description: Overall the cake looks good, not the cleanest cake. In my opinion, it's not a competition quality cake.

Contructing the cake 1

Description: Let's start with a layer of fudge cake, top with REAL chocolate express butter cream, not those made with Crisco.

Constructing the cake 2

Description: The fudge cake is quite thick.

Constructing the cake 3

Description: Another layer of fudge cake is put on top of the express butter cream, then top with ganache. Since the ganache is flowy, acetate is used to create a ring.

Constructing the cake 4

Description: The ganache seems to be quite bubbly. I'm not sure how that affect the look of the cake when cut.

Constructing the cake 5

Description: Once the ganache set a bit, it's top with another layer of fudge cake, follow by the expresso butter cream.

Constructing the cake 6

Description: The ganache overflow to the side a bit. The cake doesn't fit tight to the acetate.

Constructing the cake 7

Description: Last layer of fudge cake. So, by now, it's:

• fudge cake
• expresso buttercream
• fudge cake
• ganach
• fudge cake
• expresso buttercream
• fudgecake

Hiew!......

Let's cover the giant!

Description: The cake isdovered by remaining expresso buttercream. Due to the softeness of butter, it's very hard to smooth out. The butter cream is French type buttercream, I didn't fold the meringue and butter mixture enought hence the cream look kind of grainy.

Let's finish the icing

Description: There isn't a whole lot of left over icing, and their consistency is not good for complex or detail piping, hence I just pipe different variation of shells just to see how it turn out.

Cover the base

Description: The base need to be covered by some sort of piped icing. Since I have master the consistent shell border, it's time to try other design.

Side of cake

Description: The side of the cake was comb. As you can see, I still need to practice on comb technique. The white icing patter are made up. Probably inspired by Lembeth technique but don't know how to do the proper Lembeth method since it's almost a lost technique.

Chocolate filigree

Description: Using royal icing filigree require long drying time and not very tasty, why not try chocolate?

The filigrees were place on the cake top with an elevated side to create a fanning feel. The center is left for candles.

The finished cake!

Description: The finished cake is very tall, consider all the layers of stuff go in it.

Chinese BBQ Pork filling

Description: Chinese BBQ is red in color. It's sweet like honey instead of the American smoky BBQ.

Wrapped buns

Description: The filling is wrap with a piece of dough.

Proof

Description: The buns are proof for about 10 minutes

Steamed and cool

Description: The buns came out very yellow. I suspect it's the baking powder that cause the yellow color.

Seams of buns

Description: The seams of the buns is not crack open, which is the characteristic of traditional BBQ pork bun. This dough recipe is not a keeper!

Bun plating

Description: Simple plating to show the inside of the bun.

Different plating experiment

Description: Different plating experiment to show of more side of the filling.

Bun closeup deconstruction

Description: Overall, the filling is good, with just the right amount so it doesn't get too juicy. The bun does have pretty good texture, just not the right color.

Cake class project - group effort multitier wedding cake

Monster cake

Description: My assignment for the class was to bake a 14" cake. It covered my turntable!

Even browning

Description: The cake seems to have good and even browning despite its size.

Torting

Description: My torting skill is rusty, but this assignment gave me a chance to practice. With the help of toothpicks, it became managable. The cake was sliced into 1" layers.

Cake Skin

Description: This is a sponge cake, and the cake top tends to have a layer of skin.

Cake construction

Description: My cake consist of 3 layer sponge, with raspberry filling in between layer.

Iced cake1

Description: The cake was iced with buttercream.

Iced cake2

Description: I'm still having challenges with buttercream, the cake surface is fine, but the side has bumps!

Saterlite cake

Description: Some other students in the class were responsible for satelite cakes. Their buttercream covered cake is smooth.

Teacher's cake

Description: The teacher's buttercream cake is as smooth as fondant covered cake!

Cake stand

Description: Cake stand construction was started with a base and some big pillars.

Empty water foutain

Description: Before the cake is put on the pillar, the water fountain machine is put in place.

Water fountain

Description: Water was pour into the water fountain and turned on.

Watered color

Description: Different color can be added to the water.

Water fountain off

Description: When the fountain is off, the blue color appear to be darker, probably because there is no light under the fountain.

Here go the big layer

Description: The 14" cake is put on top of the pillar.

More to go up

Description: A 10" cake will be sat on top of the 14" cake. Before that, the 10" is prep to be ready for the 6" cake top that go on it.

Cake top

Description: The 6" cake top went on top of the cake.

Tall cake!

Description: The pillars add height to the cake.

Satelite cakes

Description: The satelite cakes were linked together with stairs to the main cake.

Completed cake construction

Description: Once the satelite cakes are in place, the cake is ready for decorative elements.

Start from center

Description: Ivy leaves go around the fountain.

More leaves

Description: More leaves go with the satelite cakes.

Work your way up

Description: Since the stairs are white, some leaves were added to them to give them more color.

Flower time

Description: Once the leaves are in place, floweres were added to the leaves patches to create contrast.

Flowers on stair

Description: Flowers were added to the stair as well.

Ornament

Description: The cake that has the main ornament has more colorful flower.

Flower garden

Description: The the flowers are in place, we ended up with a flower garden under the cake with water flowing.

Cake top

Description: The cake top was decorated with flower bouquet.

Leaves on cake (back)

Description: The back of the cake has less flowers.

Leaves on cake (front)

Description: The front of the cake has more flowers.

Hide the machine!

Description: The fountain machine base was covered with thicker bush of leaves and flower to hide the machine base, and wire.

Ornament close up

Description: Since the whole cake is white, we need more colorful flowers for the main section of the cake.

Finished cake (front view)

Description: The cake is tall and wide!

Finished cake (side view)

Description: Side view of the cake.

The crew

Description: The students of the class, with another male student missing.

How's the cake

Description: Torting the cake might make it weaker, but it gives room for more flavor as I can combine different filling for more complex flavor. The torting for this project is quite satisfactory, I just need to get use to the situation of cake crump everywhere!

Intented project

Description: The class project was to create a busket with chocolate as base, and candy clay ropes as busket, the some candy clasy flours go on it. I ran out of candy clay, so I didn't finish it.

Candy clay roses

Description: After working with gumpaste for a while, candy clay roses is a piece of cake. I use the same technique like the sculpey roses and make frill is easy. One condition is I have to work quickly as my warm hand tend to soften the petal too much and cause it to be too limp to hold its shape.

Two Days Potpourri of Posies Gumpaste Class - by Jennifer Dontz of Sugar Delites (http://www.sugardelites.com/)
Jennifer Dontz from Michigan visited Kansas City to conduct a two day gum paste classes. Since I never take gum paste class from a pro, I decided to spend a bit more money and get into the class. Afterall, we don't have many instructor visit town to give classes very often.

Warzone1 (basement as class room)

Description: Right side of the basement.

Warzone2 (basement as class room)

Description: Middle of the basement.

Warzone3 (basement as class room)

Description: Left side of the basement.

Hang those flowers!

Description: Pasta rack is being used to hang flower upside down.

Drying flowers

Description: All sort of stuffs were used to dry flowers.

Use floral foam to keep flowers.

Description: It helps to have a floral foam to keep the petals organize.

So many flowers!

Description: A block of foam is not enough for so many flower!

Jennifer

Description: Jennifer is our instructor of the class.

Colored petal

Description: The petal for Alstromeria is ready to be assembled.

Alstromeria (before final touch up)

Description: Everything is hand made, including the stamen and pollen! The flower is tape together and arrange for final look.

Alstromeria with touch up

Description: Black brush strokes and dots were added to the skinny petal for final touch up.

Leaves get color

Description: The leaves for various flowers were colored and set aside. It's much better than my previoue coloring technique.

Color palette

Description: Believe it or not, all the color show here were used to color leaves only.

Cosmos

Description: A very bright color flower. Stamen is made from scratch too!

Tulip

Description: Tulip with mango color highlight. There is a stament inside that's made from scratch too.

Little flowers for.....

Description: These little flowers look good by themselves.

Hydrangea!

Description: All the small flowers were arranged together to form a hydrangea. Different photos show different side of the spray. I need to work on getting a rounder ball and least gap spray.

Ooo....

Description: These are Jennifer's flowers.

Dendrobium Orchid and Gardenia

Description: My dendrobium orchid didn't survive, so I have to take Jenner's photos.

Dendrobium Orchid (opening)

Description: This is when the orchid just open.

Dendrobium Orchid (full)

Description: This is when the orchid is fully opened.

Dendrobium orchid spray

Description: A few orchids offset to each other to form a spray.

Gardenia - drying

Description: My gardenia is drying and form with cotton ball to support petals.

Garnedia spray

Description: The gardenia spray is formed with a few sets of leaves taped together.

My flowers

Description: These are the flowers I made in the two day class. The dendrobium orchid didn't survive so I didn't bother to include it in the photo.

Finished cake

Description: It's a very simple cake. As you can tell, I don't do kid's cake very well. It's quite challenging to add decorative element to a kid's cake especially I'm no where capable of doing any modeling.

Airbrush design

Description: The outline of the design was airbrushed onto the cake using an outline stencil. The color is then fill in using air brush as well.

Color saturation

Description: Because of the detail level of the design, some tiny area didn't get very fine spray. Being not use to the airbrush control, I didn't get consistent spray at the large area.

My cake and I

Description: Just a snapshot of my cake and I during class. The class was conducted in a commercial kitchen.

Rosette and shell border

Description: I used a different buttercream recipe, which has real butter and sugar syrup instead of powder sugar. The consistency of the icing is softer while the butter give it a glossy sheen. This buttercream is easier to pip and take the shape of the piping tip really well, but it doesn't really hold up well in warm temperature because of the butter.

Completed project

Description: For ease of clean up, I practiced string work on a cake pan.

Not again!

Description: I had a rusty start as I'm not use to the consistency of the icing yet. A couple strings break because I didn't pipe at a consistent pressure.

Getting better!

Description: After a few mistakes, it seems to get better, I didn't break any line on this side!

Hmm.....

Description: I'm not sure if I did it right, the line seems to curve, or is it suppose to be that way. I don't have a tilting turntable, so it's a bit challenging to work against gravity.

Lace work

Description: Before I wash the pan, I figure I can use up the icing by practice other element, such as the drop lace.

Not too bad!

Description: The chain lace work isn't that difficult, the challenge is consistently space the string. Once it's dried, it is not that fragile and doesn't break by light wind.

Mexico bun filling

Description: Mexico bun filling is made with margarine, buttermilk powder, powder sugar and raisin. They're quite soft like butter cream.

Wrapped buns

Description: The filling is wrapped with dough.

Rising buns

Description: The buns were left to rise.

Hmmm.... soft

Description: The proof and raise buns are very light and smooth.

Garland Frill Mexico bun topping

Description: The mexico buns have topping made with margarine, powder sugar and egg.

Finished Mexico buns

Description: The buns expand a lot so I can only put 10 buns in a pan.

Good browning

Description: There was just the right amount of browning on the Mexico bun.

Mexico bun cross section

Description: The bun has good consistency and texture, while the filling is not too runny. The bun texture show good gluten development when kneading the dough, I might burn out my KitchenAid soon!

Red Bean Paste buns

Description: The red bean paste buns looks like dinner rolls.

Right color

Description: Again, the bun has right amount of color, tall and round.

Red Bean Paste bun cross section

Description: I over rolled the edge of the dough, so the base came up a bit thin. It still has good texture and height.

A cake?

Description: The Chinese New Year cake is traditionally steam in banana leave covered pan as it's very sticky. I steamed mine in Silicone pan because it's easier to clean and manage.

Cake out of the pan

Description: The cake is let to chill overnight to dry a bit before unmold.

Looks like a flan

Description: The cake might look like a flan or custard, but it's in fact very dense, hard and sticky.

Nice pattern

Description: The cake takes on the pattern at the base of the silicone pan, which eventually will help to portion when cutting into the cake.

Simple way of serving

Description: The cake can be served just by itself, which is quite rubbery. The brown color of the cake is from palm sugar that has been cooked to a golden color syrup.

Common way of serving

Description: To soften the cake, it's common to pan fry the cake with egg like Texas toast. The egg mixture has salt added to contrast the sweetness of the cake. The egg coasting also prevent the cake from sticking to each other.

Softer cake

Description: The pan fried cake is very soft, but not sticky because of the egg and oil coating.