Monday the 22nd - Thursday the 25th

Here it is, Folks!

Our Children's Theme Cakes!

Styrofoam middle (as this project was about modeling), and fifteen plus HOURS over the course of four days to work with modeling chocolate... dark and white, (and if you are anything like me and have a hand temperature of 289 degrees on a normal basis) that melts promptly and sticks to your hands.

We were required to have three figures, many different shades of chocolate (incorporated by hand), a border around the bottom of the cake that relates to your theme, the use of only one color that wasn't made of chocolate and could only be used in a very small quantity, and a pastiage item (another item made of sugar), which had to be painted with cocoa butter... SIGH. This has been, so far, my least favorite thing we have done since we started school in September... Even more so than my terrible Pate a Choux day...

So here is my finished product! I chose Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, one of my all-time favorite books as a child... (next time, I will choose a theme that does NOT require me to make realistic looking figures... Again, le sigh).



A view from the top (my pastiage item is the umbrella)...




And a view of the bottom... (and no, that is not a frown on his face, is a 'stash!)




A close up of my borders... Sandwiches and... a hot dog,




... Some blurry ice cream cones,

B-A-N-A-N-A-S,

... And a chocolate chip cookie.

Here is Monica's... Wallace & Gromit.

Donna chose a penguin-gone-fishin' theme:

Pharyn, true to form, chose a Disney theme: Cinderella. Notice her adorable and almost impossible to make mice.

This was the cake that Chef made to demo for us... Its a baby theme. She used Luster Dust to make those certain parts shiny and the sides of her cake are decorated with buttons.

Here is JM's who chose Sid the Science Kid, which I have never heard of, but his attention to detail is awesome. The pictures just don't really show how much went into these cakes.

Here is Vicki's - Winnie the Pooh. The best part of her cake is Tigger with his head stuck in the honey jar!

Kimberly's... Frog Family Picnic... yes... it seems all sweet and innocent until....

...You get a close up of Mrs. Frog's knockers!!!

This is Rebecca's. She did a Clown theme. (this one's for you, Lisa!)

This one is Jessi's and a class favorite. She did James and the Giant Peach. Remember that one?!

This is a close up of her eight-a-pied, as she couldn't fit 100 legs on him, laying back, enjoying a cigar.

Here is the spider:

Here is Henry's - He chose Lilo and Stitch at story time.

This one is Erica's. She made the pearls around the bottom look totally real with luster dust.

This one is Nika's a.k.a The Russian Spy. She chose a theme based off a Russian children's book. Her details were totally out of control awesome.

Here is a close up of some of her figures.

The last one is Brigi's:

Here is a close up of her hot air balloon which I thought was so cute.

Tomorrow we have yet another pizza day followed by a three hour demo on sugar flowers (gum paste mixed with fondant) as we start making our wedding cakes next week. While we wont be using real cake, we will still be responsible for covering them with fondant, three theirs worth, and constructing and coloring all the flowers and other decoration we might want to use...

Friday, February 19th

On Friday we finished our Princess Cakes... Three layer pound cake with butter cream frosting that I flavored with strawberry puree (with a layer of fresh raspberries) and covered in marzipan...



I had some extra left over so I made a mini princess cake that I split with the girls...



And since I was meeting Stephen for dinner (and he lives oh-so-far away in Santa Monica and never gets to try any of my sweets), I brought him the Princess Cake which Street (the restaurant where we dined) took to mean we were celebrating his birthday... I haven't seen this kind of smile since I last pretended it was my birthday at the local T.G.I. Friday's in Cleveland...




And here the "Birthday Boy" tries a piece of his cake...

Stephen was generous enough to let the restaurant keep the rest of the cake to enjoy, which they were very thankful for. :-)

Wednesday, February 17th

Yesterday and today we made the classic French wedding cake dessert called Croquembouche.

We worked in teams of four so us girls almost literally threw together our first attempt at this dessert below...

We made cream puffs (they were not filled with anything), dipped them in caramel and then dipped them again to attach them. The whole "cake" is covered in "angel hair" and other sugar work...



This is rather sub-par work so we decided to do it again...




The whole cake is mounted on nougatine.

Here is a picture of our sugar work...




And here is us! Me, Vicki, Monica and Pharyn!

Tuesday, February 16th

A special edition blog today, friends, that I have lovingly decided to title The Burn Blog... I went around the class today and compiled a current album of my classmates recent burns.

I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as we enjoyed receiving these physical-likely-to-scar mementos of how much we love to bake.

Here we have Vicki who I believe received this burn at work...



Monica got this bute last week while we were working on our finals.





You cant see Pharyn's that well, but trust me, its there...





... and ironically in the same place that I have mine!

My face says "Hurrah! Burns!!"




The award for today, however, goes to Erica Debrovsky who got this stunner at work...

And poor seems-to-seek-out-massive-disfiguring-burns Jessi got this one today while we were working with caramel...

Ouch!

Saturday, February 13th

Cakes is finished!

Here is the Dobos Torte, yet again. Chef loved the color I got on my caramel this time and liked my even layers.



And the good old carrot cake... Chef thought my carrots were cute and my cake and frosting had great flavor.

But I mean, hello, its carrot cake. I know a lot of people who would eat it off the sidewalk...




And here is me, Monica and Henry playing footsie (we have been a tad on the slap happy side), while waiting for Chef to finish grading, as we are not allowed in the classroom as she does so.

And lastly, a special Happy Saturday shout out to my favorite cheese loving friend, Trina!

On Tuesday... Wedding cakes... :-)

Wednesday, February 10th

Holler!

So... Here is my second attempt at the Alhambra cake...



And here is a close up of the flowers... Chef liked them but said that I need to create a bigger difference in size...




So yesterday we had the choice to make either an orange chiffon cake or angel food cake and I chose the latter... It isn't much to really see, as you know, but I thought that I would take it to my pharmacist at Rite Aid because I see them oh so frequently (and she mentioned that she debated between becoming a pharmacist or a chef), but as I pulled my cake carrier out of the car, the bottom of it fell off and the cake landed with a little "pooft" on the wet garage ground...

Needless to say, I picked up my drugs with sticky hands and instead of giving the fine ladies at Rite Aid a cake, they got a very sincere smile...

Today we made the Feuille d'Autunm... Its four layers of meringue layered with chocolate butter cream and finished with a chocolate collar and chocolate curls and fans... It was our first time really working with chocolate and it was interesting, a tad more challenging than we thought, and very messy... But it yields a rather impressive result...

That is, if I do say so myself...

Thursday, February 4th

T.G.I.T.!!!

Below is the Alhambra Cake: chocolate hazelnut cake layers soaked with a sweet rum syrup and iced with chocolate ganache... The cake is then glazed and topped with handmade marzipan roses (read: time consuming). We have to do this for our test on Monday so hopefully I will be able to get "Alhambra" piped EVENLY on the cake...



Close up of the flowers...

I'll give you one guess as to what type of cake this is...

No, Mom. It's not as good as yours!

Here is a close up of my handmade marzipan carrots. How cute are they?!!?

This was made today: A Dobos Torte... Layers of sponge cake with chocolate butter cream topped with a layer (the triangles) of caramel glazed cake... Tres time intensive... We have to do the Carrot Cake and this one for our finals at the end of next week.

Fancy, no?