cakes
Carrie’s Wedding Cake
Monday, June 1st, 2009 | cakes | 2 Comments
I learned several things from this cake, many of them technicalities of cake, and several more general things, such as:
- Everything will take longer than you think.
- Cake is hard work, but it does make you popular.
- Try not to break your dishwasher’s faucet coupler before a large baking project.
- 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)
Birthday Cake
Friday, January 23rd, 2009 | cakes | No Comments
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.)
Chalk it up to 50 years of Twinkies
Sunday, January 11th, 2009 | cakes | No Comments
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.
First Fondant!
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | cakes | No Comments
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.
