Crazy Awesome Spinning Cakes

There are really no words needed for this post.

Just hit play on the video below.

 

If you want it to get really trippy, hit play on all four videos at the same time.

I came across these videos some time ago, while looking on YouTube for something or the other. Even the music is fun.

A Google search for "Quenary Academy" reveals that it's a baking school in Malaysia, neighbors with my home country of Singapore.

They call this course of study "clay art cream design" and it reminds me of a pottery class I took a few weeks ago.

Does anyone know anyone who does this stateside?

"Piece of Cake" Cake

Aaaaaaaaahhhhh.

That's the sound of me working on a cake after a two-and-a-half month dry spell. Between work and travel, and work travel, my cake supply cabinet was in a sorry state of neglect.

Cake supplies amid some cobwebs.

This week I finally had some time to dust off my turntable and rev up the KitchenAid, for not one, but two mini cake projects, just for fun.

One was a design I had been eager to try for a while: a "Piece of Cake" cake.

I've seen this concept on several Web sites, usually as part of a multi-tiered cake. Take the one below, made by CakeCentral user, "lilo_taart" who credits one of "The Whimsical Bakehouse" books. (I found these books at my local library.)

Just doing the top slice is a great way to make use of a single leftover cake layer, or to create something small that still makes a statement.

One layer, cut into 6 segments and stacked (I only used 4 of the segments)

As you can probably tell, I wasn't too concerned about being neat or mixing the right colors - I really just wanted to "flex my muscle", try some new things and practice some little-used techniques. Like making white chocolate ganache...

My ganache kept separating... 

... and ended up a little gritty.

... and working with modeling chocolate.

I had also been dying to play with one of my new cake toys, a KitchenAid pasta roller attachment that I got for Christmas.

I tried feeding some modeling chocolate into the roller but it just crumbled into a messy pile.

I wasn't discouraged, I just wanted to play and really hadn't taken any time to research this technique. My guess is the modeling chocolate was too dry to be workable. I have the "Wrapped Cakes: Extraordinary Stripes" DVD from Baking Arts, where they use the pasta attachment to  roll out the modeling chocolate. I'll probably give this another go after watching it.

Click on the video below for a sneak peek.

The second mini cake I made this week had a little more care put into it. More on that in a later post.

Love for EVERYONE (Plus One Way to Get a Perfectly Flat and Smooth Buttercream Top)

Today, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
That makes this a fine day to share one of my favorite cakes:

A friend had asked about having me make a cake to celebrate Pride weekend in San Francisco last June. He didn't end up needing one after all, but I was so excited about the idea, I made one anyway. As it turns out, the weekend I made this cake was also the weekend New York state voted to legalize gay marriage.
(Aaaand, it was also still my birthday month, so there was that...)

Because a rainbow flag, rainbow letters and rainbow sprinkles weren't enough...

... I also made it rainbow inside.

I showed the rainbow cake process in this picture montage from another post.

I had really been struggling with getting a smooth, flat top on my frosting and used this opportunity to try out an interesting new technique I came across on Cake Central: icing the cake upside down. I thought the results were pretty flawless.

I didn't take any of my own pictures, but here's a collage I made with pictures from the Cake Central post:

Click on the picture to see the full tutorial.

It's basically four steps:

1) Tape a piece of parchment to a board and pipe on a circle of BC, the exact size of your cake (this will be the top of your cake!) Freeze or refrigerate until firm.
2) Place your prepped cake on the frozen circle of icing, fill and layer as needed, and then ice the sides (hence, icing "upside down.") Move quickly! Chill again till firm.
3) Remove the cake from the fridge/freezer, and quickly and carefully flip it over onto your board. Leaving the parchment on top, chill yet again.
4) Once the top is nice and stiff, gently peel back the parchment paper. Perfection!
 
Until this post, I actually forgot how well this technique worked for me. I have to do this again, perhaps on an 8 inch cake (though I'd certainly recommend starting with a 5- or 6-inch if you're trying this for the first time - easier to handle.)

Total game changer!

I hope you like, and I hope you try.

The Cake-tastrophe Part 2: What Went Wrong?

One of the hazards of being a mostly self-taught cake artist: the "errors" in the "trial and error" process.

This one was a doozy.

Rapunzel's Tower cake in the morning

I introduced you to this project in my last post, The Cake-tastrophe Part 1: "Just Like on Those Cake Shows", but here's the set-up in a nutshell.

What my boss said: "Hey Gitu, can you make a Tangled cake Charlotte's birthday? Nothing crazy, just for 4 people. Any time this weekend, or even next weekend. It would make for a nice surprise. Feel free to say no if you can't take it on."

What I heard: "Hey Gitu, don't you want to try making a Tangled cake with a 3D RKT tower, covered with marbled rocks? Oh and maybe you can hand-sculpt a Rapunzel and give her lots of delicate blond hair that will be impossibly hard to handle. By this Sunday please."

What could go wrong? Where do I begin.

Rapunzel's Tower cake when I left it the night before

Let's start with the obvious flaws:

1. Engineering: An 8 inch round cake that's 5-ish inches tall will not support a 15-inch RKT tower covered in layers of heavy fondant. Even with double dowels. 
2. Deliciousness vs. Design: Said cake will be even less able to support said tower if it is torted thinly and filled with ganache. This was five layers of chocolate WASC cake. Would I have fared better if I had used two thick layers of pound cake and crusting butterceam instead?
3. Aesthetic vs. Assembly: Ideally, this project would have been finished in two separate pieces, and the tower would be placed on the cake right before presentation. But I wanted Rapunzel's hair to fall all the way from the tower and down the cake and the only way to do that was to apply the hair after  the cake and tower were attached. Wrong decision.
4. Equipment and Storage: The cake was too tall to fit in my refrigerator. It was pretty hare-brained of me to think that I could leave it out on the counter overnight and expect it to maintain its structural integrity. Remember, we're talking about thinly torted WASC cake and ganache here. Unrefrigerated. When I close my eyes I can see the layers settling, and softening, and sliding about in slow motion, as I slept. 
5. This is where you come in. What's your experience with 3D cakes that challenge gravity? Do you have any horror stories of your own and what can I learn from them? Please share.

In the meantime, here's a look at the 15 hours of labor that went into this cake, before going down the drain.

Home-made fondant to cover the cake board. This batch was so difficult to work with, but I persevered. It ended up in the garbage.

5 layers of chocolate WASC cake, filled and frosted with a rich dark chocolate ganache. I'd say this was the most delicious cake I had made up to this point.

I know because I ate most of it with my hands, while sobbing, before throwing the rest out.

In the garbage.

(JK about the sobbing, but wasn't it fun to picture it?)

First time using RKT to create a 3D cake. I used a PVC pipe to shape the bottom part (wrapped in plastic for protection) and sculpted the top by hand.

Only for it to be dumped in the garbage.

Fondant colored and marbled by hand to resemble rocks and applied piece by individual piece to the tower.

Before ending up in the garbage.

Rapunzel face and torso, sculpted by hand.
Check out that cleavage.

It's now in the garbage.

Wood embellishment painstakingly painted and etched onto top of tower.

And then later thrown in the garbage.

Purple fondant shingles cut by hand and applied individually to the roof of the tower.

Not the best job, but certainly not bad enough to throw in the garbage?

Blond hair made of yellow fondant and disco dust, delicately extruded into skeins of fragile filaments.

And then dumped, along with everything else, in the garbage.

Not seen here: me using a pair of tweezers to make sure every last intricate strand fell perfectly in place down Rapunzel's tower.

Buttercream grass, fondant bushes and flowers, candy rocks and even a stream made of blue piping gel.

Now that I think about it, the stream was probably also part of the reason that this cake ended up...

in the garbage.

$6 Cupcakes and Delightful Designs

It's been 3 weeks since my last cake and I'm really fiending for some QT with my KitchenAid. But until I'm back in SF, my cake-centric escapades in Singapore continue.Tonight, I got to check out Marina Bay Sands, a glamorous waterfront megaplex that combines luxury shopping, the arts, a casino, a hotel, and food of all kinds, including $6 cupcakes!

Edible gold leaf was a prominent feature of the fare at High Society, which is actually a local record company that has expanded into the business of food and drink. Apparently the market for super premium products and prestigious brands is still robust in Singapore. The pretty two-bite-sized cakelets that adorn the pastry case ran anywhere from $9 to $12.

I love this idea:

These chocolate cherry choux pastry concoctions come with a little squeezable vial of kirsch sticking out of the top. It looks like you're meant to inject the good stuff into the pastry before eating it - how fun! I have to figure out where I can find those vials.

My best friend picked up a cupcake and a cakelet to bring home to her husband and they were packaged in an exquisite box as precious as the pastries inside.

Next I wandered into a gift shop, where I stumbled upon a fun idea for a cake design.

I love the the intricate patterns and bright colors on these pieces of furniture. I covet a statement piece from the South African designer Thomas Hoffman, but a) my sweet husband would never stand for it (too loud) and b) a small cabinet unit like the one below runs about... erm... $2,000.

So I figure maybe I could just recreate this look on a cake instead, some day... complete with the feet! Or maybe you could. I'd love to see it.