Three Weddings and a... Birthday (Cake!) {Wedding No.3}

Nothing like a sick day off work to remind me I have some blogging to catch up on - it would be wrong to just leave things hanging half-way through 'Three Weddings and a Birthday Cake', right?! 

After this wee series I PROMISE to put some actual, rustic, homemade, genuine baking ideas up; even I can't look at cake decorating inspo all day. 

Well, except maybe on sick days... in between binge-watching the latest two seasons of Rookie Blue (I feel totally ok if the series isn't renewed after the Season 6 finale, I'm in a good space right now). 

Ahem, so, cake!

Wedding Cake No.3: Naked Glory

When someone mentions a 'naked cake', what comes to mind? Probably a number of dodgy things, but I want to change those connotations to positive ones... think of something like this instead:

Naked cake by BakerMama

That delightful number was C & K's inspiration cake for their wedding at ANZAC weekend this year. My third wedding cake ever, this one was to be the most 'organic' design - so natural compared to the thick layers of fondant, and less piled-on than the buttercream-slathered look. Naked cakes typically have little shaping done to them, the filling between layers is visible and the barest amount of icing is smoothed around the outside (kind of like a light dusting of snow!). Topped with fruit or flowers, no cake could be fresher!

C & K love Chocolate Guinness cake (and each other of course! <3) so the base of their cake had to be that flavour. Classic carrot cake (I believe I used Annabel Langbein's recipe) won out for the middle tier, and some lovely and light lemon poppyseed for the top tier. Given that I had only ever seen naked cakes made with the same flavour (or at least the same colour) for each tier, I did a practice run of the cake...

For this practice cake I used three different covering methods: naturally oozing filling (bottom tier), scraped filling (top) and 'snow dusted' like the inspo cake for the middle tier. C & K stuck to their guns and decided to go with the latter, and liked my garden flower arrangements enough to entrust me with the task of preparing the decorations as well!

So off I went to make 12 inch, 9 inch and 6 inch cake rounds... 

... And to sing to the flowers in my wee garden, in hope they would be blooming at the time of the wedding (an end-of-April wedding could be a chilly autumn event in New Zealand). 

Fortunately, my singing didn't shrivel the flowers, but I did have some trouble with one of the carrot cake layers under-cooking, hence the middle layer is not as tall as I would have liked. Still, the three tiers you see here were served along with two slab cakes (one each Choc Guinness and carrot), so there was plenty of cake irrespective!

My tree trunk cake stand was made for such a rustic, natural cake as this!

The gorgeous white frilly lily-like flowers along with the lovely soft pink rosebuds came from our neighbours garden, after she had heard of my weekend caking requirements! The blue daisy ones are from my Felicia bush, the small blue ones are from a ground cover with blue star-shaped blooms, the pastel purple ones are geraniums, I threw in some smaller pink camellia blooms, and some jasmine leaves make up the foliage.

Love those white ones!

It was a pleasure to be involved in the wedding of these two young love birds and to learn a new cake design at the same time :-)

Three Weddings And A... Birthday (Cake!) {Wedding No. 1}

It's been a bit quiet on the blog-front for the past month or so - which means that it's been busy in the kitchen! I'm finally able to share with you what I got up to slightly secretively in December and give an update of what I've been baking recently - namely a bunch of lovely but challenging wedding cakes for friends plus my bestie E's special birthday cake. There's been a lot of cake (understatement of the century!), so I'm spreading them over four posts altogether.

As much as I like to share with the virtual world, I'm looking forward to reading (and re-reading!) these finished posts myself to remind myself of what I've learnt during the past six months in baking and caking :-) I've also been taking fledgling steps in food photography, which you'll see in some of the posts, although where the images are not mine (mainly this post) I have given credit to the photographer(s).

Wedding No.1: S + J = Fondant Frills

Seeing as I was enjoying getting into cake decorating for the first time in 2014, I figured I would need a challenge to flex my new skills on by the end the year. S and I had flatted together before I got married, and then I got wind that her own engagement was near (having a unique vantage point because of J's request to hold the fort at the church bookstall while he took her out to a 'surprise' weekend retreat!).  I asked (as soon as it was proper) who would be making their cake, and was met with "we weren't even thinking of having a cake!" 

Well, that was all I needed to see my mission in life as their personal wedding cake-r. In my enthusiasm, I didn't ask how many people they were inviting, which meant a wee bit anxiety, a lot of thinking and a fair bit of consulting other more experienced cakers. The loans of my parents in-law's freezer and a colleague's massive perspex cupcake stand - to store and then display 370 cupcakes - convinced me that this epic first wedding caking could indeed succeed. 

Cupcakes a-plenty (photo by NOPHOTO)

Beautiful photos by Dru and Talia of NOPHOTO show the outcome: a day that drizzled until the last moment (the tent covering threatened with tiny drips to unleash a torrent of captured rain onto the cake table) cleared up for the ceremony then opened up into sunshine for bridal photographs. The bride and groom made a handsome couple in ivory and tweed respectively, flanked by bridal party members wearing the sunset colours of the icing flowers and leaves on the cake.

Photo by NOPHOTO

The cake itself was my first proper attempt at ruffles using gumpaste and I found this tutorial (by the wonderful Rose Atwater of Rose Bakes) to be invaluable. It took a wee while for each frill to dry but was not the most difficult design, seeing as the rustic look benefits from not looking absolutely perfect!

Photo by NOPHOTO

The gumpaste roses and leaves were made using Wilton and Americolor gel pastes and dusted with colour lustre dusts. I was really pleased with the yellow ones in particular - the orange dust I used gave them a nice depth. In case you're wondering...they were attached to toothpicks and stuck into the cake, while the leaves were attached using edible glue.

Photo by NOPHOTO

Cake flavours were Annabel Langein's banana cake recipe with dark choc ganache and preserved ginger (S's fave!), both covered in white choc ganache under a fondant base. 

The cupcakes were vanilla (MY fave recipe) and chocolate (a la Sweetapolita) with regular buttercream as I've posted about before except substituting half of the butter with Kremelta to make it brighter and whiter. Each had a little rolled rose and leaf in the same colours as the cake's ones. And there were certainly a lot of them...

Photo my own

So when I say it was an 'introduction' to wedding caking... it was more like a  baptism by fire!!! But good fun and good learning ;-) Thanks to the bride and groom for the opportunity, and to them and NOPHOTO (check them out!!!) for letting me use these stunning photos.

Photo by NOPHOTO

Perfect Piping with Swiss Meringue Buttercream

I've had a score to settle with Swiss Meringue Buttercream icing since promising to post about it several times...since forever!!! SMB, as it's known in the cake world, is also the 'problem child' of frostings/icings and can cause much heartache to the amateur cake decorator, such as I am. But if I can do it, then so can you!

For those new to SMB, it is basically a meringue-based buttercream icing where the egg whites are pasteurised (heated) with sugar before whipping until stiff, then butter is gradually added by further beating. I first used SMB to pipe the rosettes on the cake below...

A bit blurry, but I was so proud!

My first source of SMB knowledge came at the same time as my introduction to the amazing inspiration that is Sweetapolita. Rosie's SMB Demystified post clears up most queries and encourages the most tremulous baker to have a go at making SMB. It is her recipe for SMB that I have adapted in this post and her photo diary along with her instructions are a great resource to look at while you make it for the first few times. I'm simply providing it here in the form that I use for clarity's sake. Martha Stewart's recipe is often recommended to cakers, but I prefer Rosie's because it uses less butter but still works perfectly. 

Personally I think the 'secret to success' for this icing lies in the butter: it needs to be nearly room temperature but not soft. A helpful test is that you should be able to leave imprints in it when pressing the butter with your fingers without it 'walling up' or bending the rest of the block or stick (see the second image in this clever blog post by Sonia of Nasi Lemak Lover to demonstrate the right butter consistency!). The difference between butter that is too soft or just right, is a tense half hour spent hovering over the mixer praying that it 'comes together', or ferrying small amounts to the microwave for short blasts then returning them to the mixing bowl and doing more hovering... More on how to fix the inevitable problems later!

Why bother, then, with such a temperamental icing-child? It is hands-down the most useful buttercream that I've used for piping. It holds up well (although is not ideal for the heat of summer), tastes rich without being overly sweet, and it can provide a bubble-free, silky smooth texture like no other frosting! Although I'm stingy with using egg whites, it's worth following the recipe exactly to get the right consistency of icing.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Adapted from Sweetapolita. Makes enough to cover (crumb coat and decorate with rosettes/frills) a two-layer, 9-inch cake. 

8 large, fresh egg whites (approx. 240g worth; be kind and buy free-range!)
2 cups white sugar
550g unsalted butter (that's right...a whole lot of butter!!!), chopped into inch-sized cubes
1 Tablespoon vanilla essence (or other flavouring of choice)

First de-grease the bowl and whisk attachment of a stand mixer using lemon juice or white vinegar. Rinse, and wipe clean with a paper towel (this protects the egg whites from any fat that will prevent them from whipping).

In the mixing bowl (or other heatproof bowl) place the egg whites and sugar. Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water - make sure the bottom of the bowl is not touching the water surface. Whisk the egg and sugar mixture continuously while heating until the sugar has dissolved and the egg whites are hot - this might take ten minutes or longer. You can check by (swiftly) running your finger along the bottom of the bowl and feeling for any grits of sugar that aren't dissolved. Don't get burnt though!

Remove the mixing bowl from the heat and place in the stand mixer (if you have used a bowl other than your stand mixer bowl to heat the egg whites, transfer the mixer to your stand mixer bowl). Using the whisk attachment, whip up the egg and sugar mixture until it is a thick, glossy meringue that forms stiff peaks when the whisk is removed; this takes about ten minutes or so of whipping. IMPORTANT: Is the bowl still hot? It must be cold or at least neutral to touch before adding butter in the next step, otherwise the butter will melt. You can choose to place the bowl with meringue in it in the fridge for ten to fifteen minutes to cool it down. 

Perfectly whipped and ready to get all buttered up!

Change to a paddle attachment on your stand mixer (if you have Kenwood mixer, your K-paddle is perfect). With the mixer on low speed, slooooowly (i.e. at intervals of 30 seconds or longer) add the butter a couple of cubes at a time. The meringue mixture will deflate, like in the image below.

Continue adding butter until the mixture 'comes together' to have a smooth, buttery texture - just like you'd want to spread all over a cake! This takes patience and a lot of mixing - if in doubt, KEEP MIXING... It will look more like butter than 

Et voilà, it might look like a mess, but this batch has come together beautifully!

Lastly add the vanilla or other preferred flavouring and food colouring if desired, beating on low speed until mixed through. This icing freezes and de-frosts really well, just whip it back into shape after thawing.

Trouble-shooting

Is your SMB not looking quite like the pictures? First, just breathe... it's ok! This is a VERY forgiving icing. Let's talk about what's wrong with it and see what we can do...

Help! My SMB is runny like yoghurt! Several possibilities: the egg whites weren't whipped to stiff peaks or they were still warm when the butter was added, or the butter was too soft. Either way, refrigerate the mixing bowl for at least 20 minutes and then beat again for five minutes. Repeat this 20/5 pattern until the mixture starts to offer some resistance to the beating and thickens a bit. Add the rest of your butter when this starts to happen.

Help! My SMB seems to have curdled and taken on the texture of cottage cheese! It's likely that your butter was too cold/solid - or too warm! - when you added it. You could try refrigerating then whipping as per the previous advice, or you could nuke it into submission! Remove approximately one fifth of the icing from the mixing bowl and place in a microwave-safe container. Nuke it for approximately 15 seconds, stir, and gradually add this back into the main mixing bowl while beating. Keep beating for five minutes more and if it doesn't make a difference repeat the process. This has happened to me several times, and often it takes two goes of nuking and straining back in, but it always works! 

Remember: keep breathing and keep mixing!!!

For more excellent advice see Sweetapolita's original posts here and here.

Frilly and Floral Continued

The following is the photo diary of a frilly and floral SMB cake. Previously I've posted how we made the gorgeous fondant decorations, so here I'm showing how we put it all together and piped the SMB frills into place. 

To create the vertical frills, we used a Wilton #104 tip, also known as the petal tip. It is shaped like a tear-drop, and when used it's important to keep the fat end pointing up/away from you, while the narrow end is down/nearest to you. Frills are pretty much an in-out, bottom-to-top motion, coming out approximately a centimetre from the cake which was the extra width of our cake board. Frill direction (along the side of the cake, like in Sweetapolita's post, or into it like ours) is up to the decorator!

For the cake itself I prepared one quantity of the recipe for Sweetapolita's easy and delicious Chocolate Celebration Cake that I re-blogged in this post. It made two decent 9 inch-diameter layers with which my friend D showed superb new skills at assembling and crumb-coating with a regular buttercream (recipe from same post as the cake). 

Filling: tick.

Cling wrap protects the cake turntable and the underside of the cake board from stray icing smears

Starting at the base, zig-zagging in and out, SMB piped into perfect frills

Rosette practice: use a plate so you can have a go then scrape off after each attempt and try again!

Finished rosettes to build up a floral fondant garden

Positioning the décor

Gorgeous flowers and frills!

A Farewell Feast

I should point out that I'm not 'farewelling' this blog - after less than six month's efforts! This post is about the farewell morning tea that I held a couple of months ago when I left my previous job. I'm well overdue for a post, and I've been meaning to share the shots and recipes of what I made then, so here goes!

Always trying to be classy, I designed a high-tea-like feast centred around sugar! I wanted to use my recently-aquired fondant skills and buttercream designs to get more practice and please a crowd, so I planned three cakey items: a buttercream rosette-decorated chocolate cake, a simple white choc-iced carrot cake, and rhubarb cupcakes with floral fondant decorations. For the 'extras', I had a failed attempt at macaroons (however, you may have noticed that I do not equate 'fail' to 'inedible' so I served them up as meringue bites anyway!) and made a successful batch of fig and ginger slice.

Recipe-wise, I once again leaned on the vast experience and creativity of Rosie at Sweetapolita for her delicious and attractive cakes. Her chocolate cake recipe with Swiss Meringue butter cream that I've blogged previously (and special post on making this butter cream yourself coming soon!) was three layers of decadence which I covered with rows of rosettes in graduated peach colours. For making butter cream rosettes, you need a large, 'open star' type of piping tip such as the Wilton #1M, fitted to a large piping bag. You start at the centre of the rosette and apply an even pressure to release the butter cream while moving the tip away from the centre in a tight spiral. Check out the photos below, taken by the j-amazing James for the detail...

I orientated the rosettes in each row in the opposite direction to the ones below them (i.e. I piped in the opposite direction) because I think that it emphasises the slight colour intensity change - and I like to add interest :-) To get the 'ombre' colour change, you start with a small portion of buttercream coloured as dark as you want to go, use it for the bottom row of rosettes, and with (hopefully!) the last bit of that icing, add a whole blob of uncoloured icing and mix to get your next shade lighter. 

You'd be amazed at how little coloured icing you start with for each consecutive row - colouring goes a long way! I used Wilton's gel colouring in 'creamy peach'. The lighter shades look more orange-y due to the natural yellow of NZ butter! This can be fixed a bit by using a shortening (Crisco, Kremelta, Chefade, etc) to replace some of the butter in the icing.

Cake number two was an interesting but delicious one: ginger carrot cake with white chocolate icing (also of Sweetapolita). Although it took FOREVER to cook (and even then wasn't quite done, as I found out when I cut it...), it was definitely tasty, and a nice change to raisin-and-walnut-ified carrot cake.

I wish I'd been able to take some shots of the inside of these cakes, but I was pretty busy being farewelled and all...

The macaroons, well, I'm probably not the expert on those. I had two goes, being careful with everything from ingredients to macaroonage (the technique for folding all the ingredients together), so I have no choice but to blame my tools and say that my very basic oven could not hack it. The one other time I have made macaroons they were perfect, and I wasn't nearly as careful but I DID have a fan bake oven to use at the time. Meh. People still ate them, and they were gluten-free. I used Christine's recipe from her inspiring blog, 1001 Makron - yes, that is my question in the comments for her base recipe post; it's really nice to have some interaction in the cold, hard world of blogging (hint hint!!! ;-)

These cupcakes were a bit too numerous for all the other baked goods on offer, but they were eaten up as leftovers (who knew that rhubarb was a favourite of architects!). I adapted Julie Le Clerc's vanilla cupcakes recipe by adding some rhubarb - a couple of cups, chopped and 'marinated' in castor sugar in the fridge. The icing is the simple buttercream recipe used here and the fondant flowers I covered in this post. 

I think that's all - oh wait! The ginger fig slice! I LOVE ginger slice, with a love that probably (just) tops my love of brownie. All I did was use the Edmonds Ginger Crunch recipe (which Chelsea Sugar appear to have permission to publish in that link!) and added a cup of chopped dried figs. Crystallized ginger would also go nicely in the topping. When I make ginger crunch, I at least double the topping ingredient quantities and use a good quality butter (so that it sets well), and sometimes halve the base quantities using a margarine instead (so that it doesn't set so well!). Goes nicely in a high tea set-up :-)

Mmmm... my mouth waters at the memory! When you have to say goodbye, sometimes cake is the only way to say it ;-)

By the way... you may have noticed that I've started to watermark some of my images with the blog's URL. I'm doing this in particular for the one-of-a-kind, special items that I make (not many at present, but hopefully a growing number) after reading this interesting post about copyright for images. Since my blog is being accessed around the world (hi overseas friends!) I'd love to have people come back to the source to check out where the random images spinning around the web come from. And if one day I ever want to make a dollar out of this, that's the way to play the game.

Happy baking, irrepressible ones! xo

[I Can't Believe It's So Easy] Fun with Fondant Art - Floral Edition

I have much to learn. That's generally the conclusion of any PhD student, and while I don't have the stomach for such a qualification, I'm beginning to feel that way about the world of cake decorating. Thankfully, learning is rarely achieved alone, and I'm grateful to have lovely friends and inspirers to teach and encourage me along the way! This post is one of a series (of two, at least...) where I will share my recent 'I can't believe it's so easy that I can do it myself' baking discoveries. This first one details my introduction to fondant art.

Let me introduce D - she's a great gal with a lot more experience than me (zero experience prior to this post) with fondant decorations, in particular flowers. So while all I generally want to do is smear buttercream everywhere, I realised her skills would be super-handy to add appeal to any baked item!

Baking chat - the best kind! Spot the sweet rations sustaining us :)

D and I scheduled in an afternoon of fondant-garden fun for me to learn the ropes of the craft. See for yourself how it went... photo credits to the j-amazing James :D

We picked bold red, pastel yellow and green for our tiny s-petal-acular creations (har har!). D showed me how to add a few drops of gel colour to a lump of plain icing and knead it until the colour evened out. We then rolled our icing into the thinnest sheets possible, pressed in the dainty cutters, and the little shapes would fall out onto our palms.

So cute and tiny!

Poor Sad Flower - it didn't make it past the flower press...

Shaping and moulding flowers happened in the palms of our hands with some clever tools, then we plopped the little guys onto a bed of clingwrap spread over specially designed plastic trays (or ice cube trays if you've got them) to dry them out in semi-up-turned positions.

I recently learned that melted chocolate is an excellent adhesive to use for attaching fondant flowers to cakes, although you might not need one if you're sticking them to freshly-piped buttercream. Here's a rough ingredients list and a more detailed description for replicating the fondant flora that we made.

Fondant Shapes (flowers, leaves, etc)

• 50 grams of white royal icing per colour that you wish to make (we used pre-made Pettinice)
• A selection of gel colours (water-based food colourings make the fondant take longer to dry)
• Icing sugar - preferably in a shaker/sieve

Equipment: 

• a range of flower and leaf-shaped cutters in different sizes
• a smooth rolling pin
• a smooth plastic chopping board
• toothpicks
• fondant shaping tools (especially one with rounded/ball ends)
• a palette knife (optional, for scraping fondant shapes off of surfaces)
• a fine-tipped paint brush
• ice cube trays covered loosely with cling wrap

For each lump of icing that you would like in a different colour: add a few drops of gel food colouring to the lump of  royal icing and knead together until all the icing is a uniform colour (you may want to add more gel colouring for a bolder colour; and yes, it will get all over your hands...!). 

Sprinkle icing sugar onto your plastic chopping board. Using your smooth rolling pin, roll out the icing on the board until it is approximately 2mm thick. Position a fondant cutter over the icing and press it into the board. 

If you're using a leaf (or other decorative cutter) with an indentation pattern, press to indent. Drop the fondant leaf onto the cling wrap-covered ice cube tray, so that it sits above the centre of one cube hollow - it should curl slightly upwards from its centre.

If you're using a flower cutter, sprinkle icing sugar onto your palm before sliding the cutter off the board (hopefully with the fondant shape inside it!) and dropping the fondant shape onto your palm. Use the rounded end of a fondant shaping tool to smooth the petals, moving from the centre of each petal to the edge. This will take some practice until you know what sort of shape you'd like to create. 

Tools of the trade: shaping tools, fine-tipped paintbrushes and a selection of cutters.

Drop the shaped flower onto the centre of one cube hollow of the cling wrap-covered ice cube - try to ensure that the petals curl upwards. Using a paintbrush, apply a tiny amount (less than a drop) of water to the centre of the flower. Roll some of another colour of icing into tiny balls (each approximately half the size of a pin head) and drop them into the centre of the flower.

Using a toothpick, you can prick the centre of a solid-coloured centre to add texture.

The fondant shapes will dry naturally, uncovered, however they will dry faster if left in front of a fan or in an area with good ventilation. The less food colouring and water added, the faster they will dry. When dry and hardened, store in an airtight container and keep in a cool place. 

It all comes together!