Interesting tidbit about a new law that is being passed. IL Senate Bill 840 allows for “Cottage food operations” (i.e. you can use your home kitchen), with several stipulations, if and only if you are selling goods at a farmers’ market. So if I wanted to sell my cakes at a farmer’s market and got the appropriate paperwork, I could, but I still couldn’t sell them to individuals specifically out of my home. I’d have to have a table at a farmer’s market. Which is pretty much useless to me. Oh well, it’s a step in the right direction.

Article from the News-Gazette
Article from the IL Stewardship Alliance
Senate bill 840

I learned several things from this cake, many of them technicalities of cake, and several more general things, such as:

1. Everything will take longer than you think.
2. Cake is hard work, but it does make you popular.
3. Try not to break your dishwasher’s faucet coupler before a large baking project.
4. The Point of Diminishing Returns is not just a theory.

And, without further ado:

Wedding Cake for Carrie Dahlby and Josh Rasey, 5/30/09
Bottom tier – vanilla sour cream cake w/ vanilla buttercream
Middle tier – chocolate cake w/ vanilla buttercream
Top tier – low sugar chocolate cake w/ low sugar Italian meringue buttercream
Entirely covered in marshmallow fondant with fondant roses and heart decorations

Based on a Sedona Wedding Cakes design

(photo by Jered Perez)

Reduced sugar devil’s food cake with half sugar/half splenda swiss meringue buttercream. Marshmallow fondant used to cover the cake and for pink heart decorations.

This was another commissioned cake for a birthday. Some confusion ensued on when the pickup date was, but everything worked out in the end, and they said it was very tasty. It was a white cake with vanilla buttercream frosting – not too exciting, but it had to feed a crowd of varied palates.

(At some point I will set up a place in my apartment with some decent lighting to take cake photos.)

I saw a recipe on the cakecentral.com forums that was highly touted by many people, and it went like this:

1 package dream whip
1 small package instant pudding
1.5 cups milk

So heck, I gave it a shot. And… it tasted like Cool Whip and pudding mixed together. Nothing more, nothing less. That slightly fake, chemical taste, with a lot of air and sugar. I poured the lot down the sink.

What the hell? People think this is a wonderful taste sensation? Come on! Haven’t these people tried ganache, or Italian buttercream, or anything classic and made with care?

Oh… yeah. They haven’t. They’ve had 50 years of Cool Whip Pies and Twinkies.

I made up my first batch of fondant tonight. I tried out the new Americolor gel colors I got from Cakewalk Chicago, as well (“dark pink” – I don’t think I used quite enough to make it very dark, or they mean “dark” as in “not almost white”).

I made Rhonda’s Ultimate MMF (marshmallow fondant) – recipe found on CakeCentral.com. It’s a great site, but sloooooow. I imagine their bandwidth bills are through the roof. I used my Kitchenaid 6-qt mixer (much love for the stand mixer) with the dough hook, and it kneaded it up like a champ. The only thing I forgot to do in the recipe was to grease the mixing bowl before I poured the marshmallow goo in. At the end of the process, I found out why this part is important.