A Fashion's Night Out and a Cake!

My sister put in a request for a cake which she needed for a co-worker's birthday.  My poor sister, who has no sense of time and planning, put in the request Wednesday night for Sunday. As some of my readers might know, I like to plan my cakes and do cake accents in advance.  I have a lot of free time, right?
So what's the big deal?

The deal was that this week was a special week.  This week was FASHION'S NIGHT OUT NYC!!!  If you haven't heard, FASHION'S NIGHT OUT is a night where stores in the high fashion areas of NYC throw events to celebrate fashion and style.  Ideally, the night should increase sales but most people just go out to dress up and  party.  I was looking forward to it all week long.  So my dilemma was how do I put on an apron when what I really wanted to do is to put on PUMPS!

I CHOSE THE PUMPS!!!

FASHION'S NIGHT OUT NYC in the Meat Packing District!



One of my best friends sipping on a cocktail from one of the many events we went to that night.

One of the best event of the night was at Matthew Williamson.

I figured that I would just take one day to recover from FASHION'S NIGHT OUT and work on the cake on the following Saturday.  My saving grace is that I'm a pretty good planner so I was able to make the cake without any stress. :o)

Blue Polka Dot Cake

$50/12 servings

Vanilla Butter Cake with Vanilla Buttercream covered in Vanilla fondant.

50/50 Fondant bow.

I had never tried this bow before. I was very pleased with the results!!  Here is picture similar to the techniques I used...

Courtesy of http://www.makeit-loveit.com/

It really was a great week! Fashion, style and cakes...I love it.

By the way, who says you can't wear an apron and pumps in the kitchen...

September 11, 2011

A moment to remember.....

Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow,
May looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow.
~Author Unknown

Happy Birthday Baby! You're one!

Baby's First Birthday



California Gurls!!!

So I know I said I would talk about a cake that I created for a 1 year's birthday but I just finished a cake for a client and I'm just so excited to share it with!  What do you make for a little girl who just loves Katy Perry? A Katy Perry Cake of course!

Katy Perry Inspiration Cake



Front



2 Tiered fondant covered cake with fondant accents.

Top Tier

Chocolate butter cake with white chocolate/praline filling

Bottom Tier

Vanilla butter cake with pineapple filling





Left side

Right side




Back

First things first. I had to get the cake board ready.



Then there are the cakes, which are such an important part of the cake decorating processes. You need the product to taste good and then you need to level the product. The cake needs to have a straight edge.  If the cake isn't straight, the whole thing will be lopsided, including the design.

Below is the tool I originally purchased for leveling. Don't waste your money.  I spent $25 on this thing and I only used it once. A professional cake leveler will cost about $300.  I ended up buying the Fat Daddio's cake knife for about $15 and it's now my new best friend.  You just need to have a steady hand and a good old-fashion level when using the knife.  I spent at least 6 hours baking, cooling, leveling and filling cake. Remember after filling a cake, it needs to settle at least overnight.

Once I finished the actual cakes, it was time to start coloring the fondant.  Coloring the fondant can be time consuming especially on a cake that has so many colors like this one.  You want to be sure to spend extra time on getting the color right.  More fondant is always better than less...don't skimp on this dept. Let's just say at the end of this step I had a lot of extra sky blue fondant.

Next is making the decorations for the cake.  I knew I needed the fondant to dry out a bit before adding it to the cake so I made the decorations the night before.  I still covered them with plastic wrap because I wanted them to be a little flexible so they would wrap around the cake. There were some pieces that needed to be completely dried.  The glittered cupcakes were completely dried before I added them to the cake. 

Here is a closer look at the some of the accents:

The glittered #10 and cupcakes were made with fondant and edible glitter.

My most favorite part of this cake was the Popsicle. I just loved it and I don't know why.  Too bad it was on the back of the cake and no one was really going to see it.

I loved making the scalloped edge for the cake.  It was the first thing I added to the cake and I swore it made the cake perfect just like that. 

CUTE!!

Thanks for looking. Please feel free to ask questions. :o)









The drama continues...

First, I would like to apologize for not posting in awhile. I had just gotten back from a mini vacation when I had to deal with a NYC earthquake and a hurricane. It was quite a dramatic week.  I hope everyone made it out of this drama okay.

Speaking of drama...

 I last posted about a cake I was doing for a friend's birthday. We tried the lion cake and it kind of  didn't work. So we ended up with a shopping bag cake design.



$200/Serves 20-25



Vanilla sheet cake covered in fondant.

Gumpaste tissue, flowers and lipstick.

Cake board is covered in fondant.

Details on the cake is fondant.

Originally when I decided to do the a shopping bag cake, I was going with a standing shopping bag (not one that was laying down). Unfortunately that didn't work out. Here is an image of a standing up design...

Picture is courtesy of Cakecentral.com

Lets talk about the drama of this cake. In order to get the affect of the standing cake I made 3 sheet cakes, cut them in half and trimmed them to be able to stack them up. Well lets just say I started out with a bag and ended up with a wallet (quoting a friend of mine).  I was concentrating so much on getting the lines straight I didn't realize I was cutting too much.  So it was 9:30pm, the night before the party and I had to make a new cake and design.  ARGGGHHH!!!!!  Thank goodness I live in NYC and some of the supermarkets are opened til midnight.  So I rushed to the car, jumped in, rushed to the supermarket to buy all new ingredients and rushed back home.  I made it to the supermarket and back in less than 40 minutes. I was up till 1am baking the new cakes.  It was a tough night.  I won't even tell you about the drama that I woke up to the next day.

Here is what the details of the new cake....

This gumpaste "tissue" was dried a week in advanced, shaped and painted. 

The shopping bag handle was made using a clay/fondant extractor. My new favorite toy!

These flowers were made to look like Gerber daisies. Noticed the trim? I used the clay extractor for the trim as well.

The lipstick was made to look like a MAC lipstick.  I couldn't find my silver luster dust so they this just had to do :o).

Thanks for reading.  Stay tuned to see what I did for a little girl who turned 1!

Shopping Bag Cake

Stay tune for how I made this cake.

Roooooaaaarrrrr!

I was asked to make a birthday cake that represented a friend's astrological sign.  I decided to make it a sculptured cake.  This was just a practice cake before the actually cake.  When I am making a new cake I always like to do a practice cake, just in case a disaster happens.   I ended up giving the practice cake away to my sister. She was pretty happy!  I am probably to blame for the extra pounds she has gained.  Sorry sis :o).

Anyway, can you guess what my friend's astrological sign is??

Lion Cake

Vanilla Butter Cake covered in marshmallow fondant.

Vanilla buttercream filling and Chocolate Ganache filling.

Rice Krispy Treats were used for its head and feet.

The mane was chocolate fondant.

The most interesting thing about this cake is that I made my own marshmallow fondant for the first time.  It was delicious but boy was it messy to make.

So this is how I went about the marshmallow fondant...

I took a bag of 16 oz. marshmallows and melted them in the microwave.

This was the second batch of marshmallows I melted.
I made two batches of fondant

The melted marshmallows.

If you don't know already, when you melt marshmallows it becomes a gluey mess!  While the marshmallows melted, I placed powered sugar in a bowl and made a little well for the melted marshmallows.

After I poured in the melted marshmallows, I began to knead the mixture.

As I kneaded the fondant, I slowly added more powdered sugar.  The more sugar I added, the less sticky the fondant.

Eventually the fondant took a kinda pizza dough consistency.  Here is the finish product...

This is about 5 lbs of fondant.

To color the fondant, I had to break it up in 2 equal parts.  Its a little stiffer than regular fondant but nuke it for a couple of seconds helps to soften it.  Once colored, I covered the cake.  It was a lot easier to work with than regular fondant but it doesn't set as quickly.  Sometimes you need a quick setting fondant.  The accents I used on the lion were made out of regular sugar fondant.

There was some design issues that I new I would have to change when I made the actually cake.  These are the things I would change...

The nose had curve on the top that I would definitely take out.

Also, the mane went around the ear and not the face.  I would also like to make the mane more dramatic.

In the end, it was super cute but unfortunately the cake design seemed  more for a child than a 32 year old woman.  So I've changed the design and theme for the birthday cake.  Stay tune next week to see the final cake.

My sister's cheetah cake.

I made a cake for my sister's birthday who I love very much.  She is the best gift my mom has ever given me. Of course, I wanted to make her feel special with one of my cakes.

 I ended up doing a funky design for my special girl.

My Sister's Cheetah Cake

Fondant covered Coconut Pound cake with a pineapple filling.

Hand painted cheetah print.

Fondant cover based to mimic a zebra print.

I was very pleased with the paint job on this cake.  I used gel food coloring mixed with vodka.  When cake decorators hand paint cake, they usually use a gel food coloring mixed with either vodka or lemon extract. I will say that I should have waited a little bit after I applied the fondant to start painting it.  It need to dry out just a bit before adding the moisture of the gel food coloring mix.

The gel food coloring is different that regular food coloring.  It's not the kind of food coloring you would find at supermarkets. It's thicker and richer in color.

These kind of food coloring are found usually found in specialty shops.  What's great about the gel is the pigment; the colors are so much more intense.  So much so that when I am coloring fondant I actually use a toothpick so that I don't get too much of the coloring on.  Here is a picture of the technique...

Courtesy of Examiner.com

Of course it also depends on the amount of fondant you're coloring.


About the bow...

As you may remember, I've discussed making a fondant bow in the past ("sometimes the cake is gift".) The first bow I ever made was for this particular cake. It's is a prime example of what happens when you don't let the loops completely dry before touching it.





Notice the difference in the two bows.  The second bow was pretty much perfect.  It takes a whole lot of  patience and love to make a great bow.

By the way, the cake was a 6 inch round cake.

"Roll the film!"

This cake was for a film student's birthday.

Film Reel Cake

Chocolate Fudge Cake with chocolate chip buttercream filling.
Fondant and gum paste covered.

To make this cake I knew I had to dry out the gumpaste rounds for the top and bottom of the cake a few days ahead of time. When it was time to start decorating, I covered the top with black fondant and scored the fondant with a icing tool to mimick the roll of film. You can see the details a little better in the picture below.

Icing Tool

Once the gumpaste rounds dried, I placed the cake on one of the rounds and then place the other round on top.  Once that was completed, I wrapped a ribbon of black fondant around the cake.  I then cut out the white fondant squares for the film and placed them on the film.

Lesson Learned: Make sure gumpaste is completely dried before handling.

I think I moved the gumpaste too soon .  It sort of wrinkled in the center.  Next time I will make the rounds about a week or so in advance.  I waited 5 days before using these rounds.  Sometimes when you color gumpaste it takes a little longer to dry as well.

Thanks for reading : )

Have suitcase...will travel.

Sorry it's taken so long to write about my new cake adventure.  I am pretty excited about this one.  Some friends are traveling cross country and I wanted to give them something special.  I wanted to be sure that it was small enough for them to consume right away because who wants to come home after long trip to find a moldy cake in the fridge.

Suitcase Cake



This cake was 6 inches x 4.5 inches x 2 inches.
Pretty small cake :o)

Vanilla buttercream cake with Strawberry buttercream.

Everything on the cake is fondant.

I took a sheet cake and cut it half. I could have made this cake bigger but like I said it was just a little something to wish them a good trip.  I saved the other half of the sheet cake for another cake I am making next week.  

Cakes can be frozen if stored correctly.  I hate to break it to some of you but it is a common practice among cake decorators.  Some cakes are frozen a couple of weeks in advance.  The longest I've frozen a cake is a week.  Cakes must be cover securely in plastic wrap then covered in aluminum foil.  I then place my cake in a plastic bag.  This is to prevent any freezer burn.  Once defrosted, the cake is wonderfully fresh and moist.  Some say it takes even better then it did the day they made it.

This was quite a simple cake.  I covered the sheet cake in chocolate fondant and made all the buckles and handle separately. I then painted the belts and painted brown luster dust on the whole cake.  The luster dust gave the cake an aged look.  I then painted the buckle and the corners with a gold luster dust.

Today's Lesson:  If possible paint your pieces before you add them to your cake.

I waited until I add all the pieces to then paint them gold.  It was driving me insane. I can be a bit of a perfectionist sometimes and the fact that the colors kept running into each other was just killing me.  I would paint everything first and then attach it.  It will be a much cleaner look.





Luster Dust from NY Cake
Picture is enlarged

 Luster dust is expensive for what it is.  Its about 2g of powder for about $5.00 but its an important part of cake decorating, so you kinda of have to just suck it up.  It will definitely transfer your cakes and designs into something really special.  Some people will put it into their airbrush and brush it on that way.