Cake Decorating with Marina Sousa

This weekend I was lucky enough to be able to take a class with the incredible Marina Sousa. Marina is from California and is the owner of Just Cake in Capitola. She has been on tons of Food Network challenges, (winning many) and was a finalist on Last Cake Standing. (Personally, I thought she SHOULD HAVE WON! …and I thought that even BEFORE I met her.) James Roselle (also of Food Network fame) was there as well and he was teaching a different class on flower making (which I was not able to take). Wow, are his flowers gorgeous!

To be honest, my hands were so messy for most of the weekend, I didn’t bother taking pictures. But hopefully I will be able to replicate some of the techniques in the future… and WITH a camera. First, James and Marina gave a demonstration with Isomalt. Isomalt is a low calorie sugar-like substance that is used to make beautiful jewel-like crystals for cake decorating. To use it you heat the isomalt with some water over high heat, stirring constantly with a wooden or silicone spoon. As it heats up, you can continue to add more isomalt until you have the amount you will need. Continue heating and it will start to turn clear and bubble. Continue to heat it until it reaches temperature of 340F. (Use Caution- it is very HOT and you don’t want to burn yourself.)  You can then pour it into a pyrex measuring cup so you can work with it. Let the bubbles settle for a second and then you can pour it into molds. (Be sure to use molds that are suitable for isomalt) Should you wish to color the isomalt, you should do so after it comes to temperate, but before you pour it into the molds. Additionally, you should use a water-based color. When you pour it into a silicone bead string mold, if done correctly, the isomalt will drop down into the the mold. That is how you know you did it right- when it drops down. After it cools, you can cover it with disco dust for a Blinged-out effect.

After the isomalt demo, we made petals from a mixture of fondant and gum paste. We used a veiner from James Roselles’s line that he produces with NY Cake. I have to be honest, the Parrot Tulip Veiner was amazing! It wasn’t the list of supplies we needed, but I wish it was, because it was great and now I want one! All you needed to do was cut out a circle with a basic cookie cutter, put it in the veiner, sandwich it together, peel it out and leave it to dry (James gave us plastic egg carton-type things… they looked like something you would use for deviled eggs). We used a large flower cutter, to cut out the basic shape of a larger flower, and then veined the petals. Then I left it overnight to dry in a bowl, so it would have a curved shaped. When it was dry I then interspersed different color petals, to form a larger fuller flower. To finish the flower, I took a cooled isomalt jewel, dunked it in disco dust and stuck it in the center, affixing it with royal icing to act as edible glue.

Flower close-up

For the bottom layer I incorporated an embossed pattern. I covered the cake in fondant. Then, while it was still fresh, I took a textured rolling pin (rolling pin with a pattern on it) and rolled it around the side of the cake. I had to be sure to match up the seams on the pattern when rolling. To offset the pattern, I dry dusted pearl dust on the cake using an old unused blush brush.  (Thanks James for showing me how to do this and making it look good.)

For the middle layer, instead of covering the section with fondant, I cut a large ribbon or rectangle and wrapped the fondant around. I then used a ruler to imprint lines and painted the sections, alternating colors, using pink and grey (moondust) color. I then wrapped darker pink petals (again, from the fabulous veiner) around the base of the layer.

For the top layer, I needed a design that would allow me to carry the top cake separately. I just wanted to include something that carried the pinks and silver-grey colors throughout. I just rolled out some more pink fondant and cut large and small circles out of the fondant. In the small circles, I imprinted the centers with dragees (edible silver balls) and then affixed them to the centers with royal icing. I then took the larger circles and made a boarder around the base of the top layer with them. Inside, I affixed the smaller pink circles with large dragees in them. Then I took additional pink circles, with smaller dragees, and affixed them above the larger circles, in an alternating pattern.

To finish the cake, I took more pink fondant and molded them into smaller pearls. I them wrapped those around the base of the entire structure and affixed them with royal icing. After that all that was left to do was step back and take a picture… of yeah, and eat!

Thanks again to Marina and James for their knowledge and help this weekend. They really are masters of their craft and it is amazing to see their own creations.

Marina and Me

 

 

 

Fondant Cake with Cornelli Lace

Fondant cake w yellow free-form Cornelli Lace royal icing

Today was a day of extras. I had an extra cake and was looking for something easy but interesting to do with it. I also have extra royal icing lying around. (It keeps for ages, so store your extra in an airtight container) I had seen cakes decorated with this free-form pattern before. Apparently, it is called Cornelli Lace, which I didn’t realize, and it is not supposed to touch. (ops, didn’t realize that on a few strings) You may have seen it on wedding cakes, with a white-on-white pattern used to mimic the lace of the wedding gown. I just thought it would be a quick and easy way to be decorative. I simply took my already made yellow royal icing and number 3 tip (You can use a #1 tip for thinner, more delicate lines), put it into a piping bag and just made a free-form  pattern design. I debated leaving the top plain white fondant, but I was having so much fun with the free-form royal icing, I decided to pipe the top as well as the sides. Just a simple, easy way to use your extras for good decorative use!

Cake with Red & White Flowers

Cake with Red & White Flowers

This is a cake I made recently.

True red, I mean really RED red, is hard to achieve when tinting icing, so to get the color I used AmeriColor Christmas Red. It really helped obtain a RED color, rather than a variation of pink.

It was also quite warm in my kitchen when I was trying to decorate the cake. You need stiff icing to create flowers, and warm kitchens do not help; they act to melt and wilt the flowers. One thing I did was put the frosting in the fridge for about 10 min or so to chill and harden it a bit before trying to make the roses. Once I made each individual rose, I put it on a cookie sheet and popped it into the freezer until I was ready to put them onto the cake. This helped keep their shape ensuring they did not melt in my overheated kitchen. (My favorite video that teaches you how to make a buttercream rose is from The Cake Eccentric.)

Just a few tips to help with the decorating.

Retirement Cake

Retirement Cake: Life's A Beach When You're Retired

This year, after over 30 years of teaching, my mom decided to retire.

And I decided to surprise her with a Retirement Cake! (My Most Ambitious Cake to Date!)

Now, when I was younger I used to think of retirees as old people with gray hair who lived in Florida and played golf. My mom is none of those things.  She doesn’t play golf, cards or tennis, and she doesn’t particularly like Florida. She likes to travel, drink wine, cook dinner parties, make jewelry, not the typical “old people” things.

So I wanted to make a cake that would suit her personality and incorporate things she likes to do. Because what is the point of making a specialty cake if you can’t make it special for the person you are giving it to?!

My mom likes swimming and is a former lifeguard and swim instructor. So I thought I could do a beach or pool themed cake. Since she enjoys reading, traveling and drinking wine, I wanted to incorporate those elements as well. The concept would be a person lying in the sun, near a beach or pool, with a bottle of wine and surrounded by books. To incorporate the travel concept I would include  travel books.

I started out with just the idea of a red and white striped towel, a classic beach pattern. Since the last time I tried to dye fondant red I looked like I had committed murder, I decided to BUY red fondant. I had also never tried to make a person or figure out of fondant, so to save some additional exasperation, I bought the “Wilton: Rolled Fondant Natural Colors Multi-pack.”  This helpful package comes with pre-colored pink flesh colored fondant as well as light and dark of brown and black. (and I knew it would save time and aggravation).

The first thing I did was create a base for the towel out of white fondant. Just a white rectangle. Then I rolled out the red and white fondant and, using my ribbon cutter, cut strips of each color. You could also use a pizza cutter or any cutting tool, but since I had the ribbon cutter and it makes keeps the lines consistent, I just used it. I then adhered the strips to the towel base, alternating the colors. And cut off the ends with a pizza cutter. Now, I am making this sound easier then it was. The red fondant bled color if I used too much liquid adherent. And then it cracked- for no reason. So I found myself pulling up some strips and using new ones, just to make it look decent.

For the wine bottle, I dyed a small amount of fondant green. Then I rolled it and shaped it into the form of a wine bottle. I left it to dry before adding other details. Later, after it was dry, I took a combination of white fondant and gum paste and rolled that out. I then cut it into a small rectangle that fit onto the wine bottle and adhered it with edible glue (combination water and gum arabic). Then, after THAT dried, I took edible markers and drew on the bottle’s label- featuring scribbles for writing and the faint image of hills.

The books were really easy, and the most fun. I just took white fondant, gum paste- whatever I had around- and shaped it into a rectangle. I then rolled out colored fondant to at least twice the width of the square and put the white square on top of it. I trimmed it to size and wrapped the color fondant around the white square, leaving the top, bottom and one side of the white fondant exposed. I took a toothpick and pressed lightly on one side to create the look of a book spine. I then used the toothpick to create lines on the white part to look like pages. Later when the books had dried, I used edible markers to write down book titles on the tops and spines. (I put titles like “Travel in France”, “Beaches of the World”, and “Just for Fun”.)

For the figure, I started by making a sunhat, just by shaping light brown fondant. I then took light blue fondant and shaped a top, and brown fondant to shape the pants. I added the appendages using the pre-colored flesh colored fondant and gum paste. (50/50 mix) The gum paste made it more pliable and let it set-up quicker. I made simple shoes using the black fondant and put them directly on the legs. For the head, I decided I would rather use an illusion then create an actual person’s head. So I shaped the outline of a head and used a round cutter jut to press in a semicircle for the mouth. For the hair I took some brown fondant and some yellow and mixed them together briefly, just so it would retain both colors, to look like highlights, rather than have just one color. I then used a toothpick to create some texture in the hair, by roughing in lines. Last I put the hat on top of the person’s head, as if they were blocking the sun.

For the cake, I made a basic two-layer yellow cake and filled it with chocolate butter cream frosting. Then I frosted the entire cake with vanilla butter cream frosting. (I actually ended up making four cakes, just so I could put them together to form a larger cake.)

To make a beach-themed cake you need two basic elements- Sand and Ocean.  For the sand, I took Nila wafers and put them in the food processor. Then I took the crumbs and just pressed them onto the frosted cake. (I know some people use crushed graham crackers but I think Nila wafers make lighter looking sand, plus my mom likes Nila wafers for nostalgic reasons.

closer view of the Nila wafer "sand", figure and books

For the ocean a started with the white frosting and created the line for foam. The I took some more white frosting and put some blue coloring. I didn’t mix it thoroughly so it still had some lighter and darker blue in it. Then I frosted that on the rest of the cake in wave-like patterns.

close up view of the "frosting ocean"

I added the elements on top of the cake. Then the last thing I did was create a 2 signs for the Cake out of gum paste (because it dries faster) and wrote on them with edible marker.  What could be a more appropriate saying for than, “Life’s A Beach When You’re Retired”

My mom LOVED the cake, as did everyone at the party. And what a great way to help her celebrate her long deserved retirement in a very personal way.

NYC Cake

NYC Skyline Cake

Recently a friend of mine moved to New York City from abroad. He just hosted a party at his Upper East Side apartment to launch summer and let us all enjoy his balcony. His one request for me…. Can you make a cake?

So what kind of cake do you make to celebrate this occasion? A NEW YORK CAKE- of course!!!

First I had to decide on what kind of cake. I know one of his good friends loves Red Velvet, so I decided to try another red velvet cake. Since I wasn’t sold on Martha Stewart’s recipe, I decided to call my brother for his recommendation. (He really is the best baker I know) He suggested I try the recipe from Baked, a fantastic bakeshop in Red Hook, Brooklyn (check them out: bakednyc.com) The recipe (listed below) came out thicker and more like a batter than the Martha Stewart recipe. It looked better and I figured I was on the right track. It also tasted a bit more chocolaty, always a good thing.

But frankly, even though the recipe was from a NYC bakery, red velvet is generally considered a southern cake, and I wanted to make mine ring of NYC. Plus, it needed to feel masculine since it was for a guy- no pretty flowers or pinks and purples. So I decided to go with a simple line design in a dark, gray color, reminiscent of the general color of New York. I thought of the iconic buildings in the city- The Empire State Building, The Chrysler Building, etc… I decided to do a simple skyline featuring a select few buildings around the edge of the cake. I could then intersperse them with generic buildings and highlight it a bit with some greenery to symbolize parks. They needed to be somewhat recognizable from a basic line drawing, so I selected The Empire State Building, The Chrysler Building, Citi Corp, The Flatiron, Grand Central, and The Arch at Washington Square.

I did a basic sketch to get the overall look and feeling, and then mixed some frosting a dark but muted gray color. Then, with just a basic round tip, I piped the key buildings around the cake. Then the smaller ones and last the bits of green just to have some color. As you can see from the finished product, it is simple, iconic, and masculine.

My friend loved the cake, and I was happy that it tasted even better than my last red velvet! We had great fun at the party divvying up the respective buildings and offering them to various people at the party! Anybody want to eat the Chrysler Building?

Red Velvet Cake (from Baked)
1/4 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons red gel food coloring (see note below)
1/4 cup boiling water
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening, at room temperature
1 2/3 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon fine salt
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat the oven to 325 F.

In a bowl whisk together the cocoa powder, food coloring, and boiling water. Set aside to cool. In the bowl of an electric stand  mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and shortening until smooth. Scrape down the bowl and add the sugar. Beat until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Stir the buttermilk and vanilla into the cooled cocoa mixture. Sift the flour and salt together into another bowl. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture, alternating with the cocoa mixture, to the egg mixture in three separate additions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Beat until combined. In a small dish, combine the vinegar and baking soda and stir until the baking soda dissolves (I love the way it bubbles up). Add to the batter and stir until just combined.

Bake at 325 F about 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of each cake comes out clean.Transfer the cakes to a wire rack and let cool for 20 minutes. Invert the cakes onto the rack, remove the pans, and let cool completely before frosting.

*This recipe yields 3 cakes in 8 inch rounds. I only used 2 cakes from smaller rounds and used the rest of the batter for cupcakes. Additionally, Baked uses a cinnamon frosting whereas I prefer a traditional cream cheese frosting.

Royal Icing: How to totally mess up and then fix Royal Icing (or why you need a stand mixer to make Royal Icing)

So, this is a little story of how to totally mess up and frustrate yourself in the medium that is- Royal Icing.

First of all, what is Royal Icing… Royal Icing is a mixture of powdered sugar, meringue powder or egg whites and water (sometimes lemon juice is added as well). It is commonly used for piping flowers, and is the most-used icing in the Wilton Course 2 classes. If you have ever eaten those hard, sugary flowers (violets, rosebuds, etc…) on top of cupcakes, they were probably made from royal icing. There are other uses for royal icing that I can get into another time, including using it just to cover cookies, but this is really about royal icing for piped flowers.

So with essentially just THREE ingredients in the recipe, one of which was water, I figured how hard could this be to make?! Well, a lot harder than it should be, and a lot more frustrating than I realized. But this is also a little tale of redemption and how I recognized and fixed the disaster that was my first royal icing nightmare.

Royal icing is much more fickle than you would expect. The instructions I received were as follows:

1 lb sifted powdered (confectioners) sugar

3 level tablespoons Meringue Powder (I use Wilton’s Meringue powder available at Michaels or any baking store)

4-6 tablespoons of lukewarm water

mix at low speed

Sounds easy enough, so how did it all end in tears? (ok, not really, but almost)

First you need to sift your powdered sugar- twice! Ok, a bit of a pain, but not too hard to manage. I had done that- check. Add Meringue powder, again simple enough. Now this was the part I was warned about… the water. You don’t want to add too much water, otherwise you will have watery royal icing and you will not be able to pipe with it. I still ended up using 6 tablespoons. And after I had all three ingredients in the bowl, it was time to mix. I took my trusty hand mixer and mixed away. It didn’t last that long, the royal icing gets hard, and it gets stuck in the beaters. I thought I had mixed it enough according to my directions. So before my hand mixer broke, I stopped, colored it and put it in airtight containers. And THAT was my critical error.

This is what the royal icing looked liked.

This is what royal icing SHOULD NOT look like

When I went to class, my teacher told me my icing was too dry. She added some water and stirred it in. When I went to pipe it, it was fairly stiff, but then the shape did not hold, so I ended up getting flowers that looked as if they had melted in the heat.

This is what flowers look like when your royal icing is not the right consistency

Of course at this point I did not understand what I had done wrong. I thought the teacher had just added too much water. So I made the recipe again, this time making it worse (yes, this is possible). Instead of using my hand mixer, I tried to mix the entire batch of icing by HAND.

Somehow something I thought was bad, got even worse! Have you ever tried to pipe cement? Because frankly, this felt like PIPING CEMENT! I burst 3 bags and had massive cramps in my hand. I swore and thought I would never pipe a flower again. It was the most frustrating day of my short-lived baking days. I felt defeated and incompetent and frankly I couldn’t understand why anyone would use this stuff- – -ah, the misery.

But then I got a bit of sleep and did something clever…. I googled it. Thankfully some others had written blogs and responded to online questions before me and it turns out you really do need an electric mixer to make royal icing. But I would say not only do you need an electric mixer, I would GET A STAND MIXER! I REPEAT- GET A STAND MIXER!!!

So, I dumped my cement mixture (aka disaster of royal icing) into my trusty Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Using the PADDLE ATTACHMENTS I just let the glorious mixer do its job. My advice to anyone in this process is to SET THE MIXER ON AND WALK AWAY (really)… go to the bathroom… do SOMETHING that takes about 5 minutes or so. (But if you do go to the bathroom, please don’t forget to wash your hands!) EVENTUALLY the icing will mix well enough to look smooth, almost fluffy and it will form stiff peaks.

Redemption! Turn off the mixer and check the icing. If the peaks droop, mix a bit more, if they stand up without drooping (stiff peaks) you are golden.

almost ready, but not quite

Finished mixing and ready to go!

(Tip: If you have in fact added too much water, just toss in a bit more powered sugar and that will help to fix the icing)

Fill your bag with this soft, luscious, easy-to-pipe icing and make your favorite flowers. They will be much easier to pipe and will stiffen up and look beautiful.

Assorted flowers piped with royal icing

Tip: While piping, I would have a zip-lock bag nearby. When you are not using one of your bags, put it in the bag and seal it to prevent the icing from drying out, becoming hard and unusable. If your tips have hardened icing in them, just put them in a cup of hot water and the icing will dissolve and the tips will be clean in no time and with little effort.

Red Velvet

The finished red velvet cake

Red Velvet seems to be the hottest and most popular flavor around these days. Red Velvet is EVERYWHERE- I have even seen it as an ice cream and a yogurt flavor! Red Velvet cake is essentially a chocolate cake, colored RED to give it its’ namesake hue. Originally, the red color came from beets, but today most people just use red food coloring to achieve this devilish color. Cream cheese frosting adds a fantastic decadent touch and acts to offset the red color of the cake very well.

Today, as a birthday present, I made my first red velvet cake. Most recipes call for buttermilk, which is not always the easiest ingredient to find in the small, poorly stocked NYC grocery stores. They also call for distilled white vinegar. Another ingredient I am not used to using in my basic cake recipes.

Here is the recipe I used:

Red Velvet Cake (taken from Martha Stewart’s website)

2 1/2 Cups Cake Flour

1 1/2 Cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups canola oil

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2-3 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 cup lowfat buttermilk

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons distilled white vinegar

2 tablespoons red food coloring

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Remember that you will be working with red food coloring, so if you are wearing something nice- CHANGE YOU CLOTHES.

Ok, now you are ready to go!

In a separate bowl, whisk flour, salt and cocoa.

In a mixing bowl, whisk sugar and oil. Once mixed, add eggs one at a time. Then add vanilla and food coloring.

add in the red food coloring and vanilla

Then add flower mixture and buttermilk- add part of the flour and then part of the buttermilk, alternating between the two until mixed in. Most likely, some will stick to the sides, so scrape down the edges and mix in.

add the flour mixture and buttermilk, alternating and mixing as you go

In a small separate bowl, combine the vinegar and baking soda. It will foam up. Add this to the batter and mix for another few seconds.

Pour batter into already prepared baking dishes. I prefer to use rounds. If you have extra batter, make a few cupcakes for sampling-yum.

Bake for 30-35 min at 350 F until cake is done. Let cool prior to frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting (from Ina Garten’s recipe)

1- 8 oz package cream cheese  (room temp)

1 1/2 sticks butter  (softened or room temp)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3 1/2 cups powdered sugar

With paddle attachment, mix together the cream cheese, vanilla and butter. Once mixed, add the powdered sugar and mix until creamy and smooth. (Note: I doubled the recipe to have enough frosting for additional decoration- the basket weave around the sides)

For the cake, I used two 7″ rounds, which left me with extra batter. With this I made a few cupcakes, to taste and give away to friends. The cake was very light and airy, with a touch of cocoa flavor. The cream cheese was soft and creamy, and the perfect complement to the cake. I stacked the cake layers and incorporated a layer of cream cheese frosting between the two cakes for added flavor.

Red Velvet may be over-exposed, but it is still delicious and a great way to wish a fantastic person a Happy Birthday!