Long Live the Dessert Crew!

Pssst... hey you! Yeah, you, over there, wondering what the heck fondant is anyway... Want to know how you can score samples of all the fine dessert menu items that will be at Lee & Marsha's wedding? (I mean before the actual wedding, and without being one of my co-workers.) Well, it's simple: sign up for the Dessert Crew!

So that's what the dessert menu goodies all look like, waiting for the wonderful Dessert Crew volunteers to dig in during a meeting of the aforementioned Crew at Lee & Marsha's place.
L to R: Siren's Chocolate Cake with Creamy Bittersweet Chocolate Frosting (cut into little sample portions and decorated), Lemon Sorbet in Lemons, Heath Bar Cookies, and Brownie Cookies. I'll serve a Yellow Cake too, but I didn't make samples of that this time.

Long live the Dessert Crew! And there was much rejoicing.
Thanks to Carrie, Kathleen, Kimberly, Jill, and Vanessa for being reliable, detail-oriented, courageous people! Together, we're going to present a truly marvelous dessert spread. And there was even more rejoicing.

Details of the cake:
One batch Siren's Chocolate Cake, one 9" x 13" layer, about 1.6" tall.
Used 4.7 oz. of Lindt 70%, instead of the 4 oz in the recipe, which worked exceedingly well.

Syruped with 1/4 cup Kahlua.

Used Magi-Cake strips (the Wilton knock-off ones) and rose nail.

Torted into 2 layers.

Total height: about 2".

Used 1 batch of Creamy Milk Chocolate Frosting from Baking Illustrated, with 3.5 oz Lindt 70% and the other 6.5 oz Nestle Semi-sweet chips. Odd, but true.

Fondant dyed with Wilton's gel colors.

Fondant made a few weeks before decorating. (Used up a pre-mixed color.)
Cake made 4 days before serving. Syruped when cool, prior to storage. Stored in 'fridge.
Cake layers torted and assembled 2 days before serving.
Cake decorated earlier the day it was served.

Bottom line:
Good thing the Lindt outlet is having a sale on their 70% bars. I sure stocked up when I saw how lovely it made the cake and frosting. All chocolate cake people seemed pleased, especially the bride and dessert crew. The cake stayed so moist that it sort of melted the fondant in subsequent days.
Note about the purple fondant color: it bleeds out to blue within 24 hours! Be careful!
The Dessert Crew people are fantastic, and I'm so excited to work with all of them!

Happy Birthday, Spuss!

Yes, the loud, little, ball of black angst is 23 years old! Spuss doesn't give a rat's ass about cake (I am not that crazy... probably not anyway...), but I figured it would be a good idea to thank everyone at Metrowest Vets, especially Dr. Suzy, who goes well above and beyond the call of duty with the time she devotes to all my hypochondriac-ish questions on behalf of the Spussmonster.



Also, thank you to Dr. Grace for the years of cat care in Stoughton. Among other fine feats of veterinarianism, she performed a couple of tumor-removal surgeries, which went very well. The little Spuss would certainly not be here without Dr. Grace.

But this is a cake blog, not so much a cat blog...
Sadly, this cake was not so great, so I think I'll do the cookie thing as a better thank you.

Too much booze, fondant was too thick, etc. However, the timing thing works incredibly well if I assemble the cake the day before I decorate it. (Go figure.) Get the crumb coat all solidified, then everything's good to go for buttercream glue layer and fondant! And then if the fondant isn't so thick and heavy that it compresses the entire top layer, the cake has a fighting chance of being decent. Remains went to my hapless co-workers as usual.

Details of the cake:
One batch All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake from The Cake Bible, two 9" round by about 1.5" tall layers.

Syruped both untorted layers with 3/4+ cup: mostly Vanilla Liqueur, with Buttershots, and clear vanilla extract.

Used Magi-Cake strips (the Wilton knock-off ones). But for an unknown reason, the cakes rose unevenly. Both had a slight slope off to one side that I didn't notice until after I took them out of the oven, so I didn't see their orientation in the oven.

Torted 2 layers into 4 layers.

Total height: about 4".

Used 1 1/2 batches of Creamy Milk Chocolate Frosting from Baking Illustrated between the 1st and 2nd layers, and between the 3rd and 4th layers.

Used 1/2 batch of Peggy Weaver's (American) Buttercream I recipe, and added a few tablespoons of raspberry jam. Turned the thing yet another horrid shade of pink. Blech. But tasty. Placed the buttercream between the 2nd and 3rd layers, used for crumb coat, and used for fondant glue.

Fondant painted and dyed (yes, it's slightly purple-ish, but way too pale, as it turned out) with Wilton's gel colors.

Fondant made 3 days before decorating.
Yellow cake made 4 days before serving. Syruped when cool, prior to storage. Stored in 'fridge.
Cake layers torted and assembled 2 days before serving.
Cake decorated about 24 hours before serving.

Bottom line:
Syruping + thin torting (a few days later) = bad idea.
Better to under-syrup (booze) the cake, than over do it. The cake was still sort of crumbly, all the outside surfaces were gooey from the booze, but after they're torted, the layers just couldn't hold together. So I broke every single layer as I assembled the cake. Evening off the outside edges after I stacked the layers was a messy, difficult chore. And I wasted a lot of cake because it crumbled apart. Forgot to try bringing down flour or sugar amount in Yellow Cake by a tablespoon or two. Still have to balance the syruping thing. For the L5R cake, it was about 2/3 cup per 9x13" layer. For this cake it was 3/4 cup per 9" round, so it came out to about 1.5 cups for the whole cake. I think it was too much for structure and taste. No more than 1 cup per batch of this Yellow Cake.

Passed the Mid-Term Exam

It's big, giant box o cake! Nifty. Weighed in at about 15 pounds and about 7.5" tall, before resting on the plywood for transport.

This was like my mid-term exam, and it went relatively well. A+ for effort and C+ or B- for decorating, so say I.

Reason for being of the cake: Paul played celebrity for a day at the semi-annual Northeast Kotei (a game tournament) in Agawam, MA. A fine opportunity to make a cake for over 100 very un-picky people. So if I muffed it up, which I magically didn't, at least it's a very forgiving crowd.

(The game is Legend of the Five Rings, or L5R. They've commissioned Paul for artwork over the last 12 or 13 years, so he goes to some of the tournaments, signs cards, sells prints, original paintings, sketches, mugs, t-shirts (of his own line), etc. I play the self-proclaimed Lovely Assistant. We've been a fixture at the NE Kotei for years. We're heading to the Tacoma, WA, kotei the first week in April. No cake for them, sorry. The narc dogs at the airport might eat it.)

Funny thing about the tournament... apparently, the tournament organizer (Eric) also had a baked goods competition with an L5R theme, unbeknownst to me. And I show up with a cake for the occasion anyway. Fantastic!

I didn't enter the contest, even though the judges tasted my cake too. They were pleased with the edible (even yummy) marshmallow fondant, and the lack of a cake mix.



I attempted so many techniques and stuff with this cake, and most of it went relatively well, yay!

Check out the fine tier separation (between yellow cake and chocolate cake) with the thin sheet of ABS plastic. Durable, lightweight, food-safe, almost easy to cut to size... what's not to like? Just don't get acetone on it, or it'll melt.

Both chcocolate cakes came out well! About flippin' time I caught a break with the choc cake deal. Yeah, yeah, they look the same in the photo. We'll they're different. The bottom one (Marcel's) is a little darker, didn't rise as high, domed (even though I used cake strips, stupid recipe!), and was a little too dense. The top one (Siren's) has the somewhat airy, moist consistency I've been looking for, but less chocolatey. That might be ok with the filling and fondant, though. Of the people I polled, the returns were split.

Tried tons, learned tons, didn't mess it up except for not enough fondant, and last minute, sloppy (but I meant it to look like that, yeah, that's the ticket...) painting.

Details of the cake:
Four layers (9 x 13" each layer) in two tiers, bottom is yellow cake, top is chocolate cake:
- Two batches All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake from The Cake Bible, about 1.5" tall, each.
- One batch Marcel's First Birthday Chocolate Cake from Marcel Desaulnier's Death by Chocolate Cakes, about 1.25" tall, and domed, even with cake strips.
- One batch Siren's Chocolate Cake from Bon Appetit Cakes, about 1.65" tall.
- Syruped all layers with 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup. Yellow cake: Diluted Buttershots and clear vanilla extract. Chocolate cakes: Diluted coffee liquer and vanilla schnapps.

Used Magi-Cake strips (the Wilton knock-off ones), which worked great again! Forgot them on first batch of Yellow Cake, so had to cut off browned sides and slightly domed top. Didn't rise as tall as the second Yellow Cake.

Stacked all layers so that I had one 9 x 13 cake with 4 layers (two tiers), about 7.5" total height.

Used 1 batch of Mousseline BC between yellow cake layers and for crumb coat.
Used 1 1/2 batches of Creamy Milk Chocolate Frosting from Baking Illustrated between the chocolate layers.

Used 3/8" thick sheet of ABS plastic between yellow and chocolate tiers.
Used 3 bubble tea drinking straws pushed into the yellow cake tier to support the chocolate cake tier.

Fondant painted and dyed with Wilton's gel colors.

Fondant made 1 week before decorating.
First yellow cake made 6 days in advance, and 2nd cake made 4 days before serving. Syruped when cool, prior to storage. Stored in 'fridge.
Both chocolate cakes made 3 days before serving.
Cake layers assembled the night before serving.
Cake decorated the night before serving, including ribbon. (Does 4 am still count as night before?)

Bottom line:
- Big ribbons cover a lot of flaws. Attach with BC that compliments cake colors.
- One batch of mm fondant wasn't really enough to cover this cake.
- Messy decorating that isn't trying to look neat and tidy is better than no decoration.
- Assemble and final crumb coat the cake the day before decorating, if possible.
- Layer of buttercream on top of the cake layer that will support the ABS sheet, otherwise the center pieces lose out on any type of frosting.
- Any liquid works for syruping, so long as it compliments the cake flavor.
- More syrup! Try at least 1 cup next time. Syrup several times before wrapping for storage, rather than just once per side.
- Siren's Chocolate Cake recipe is current favorite for chcocolate cakes. Marcel's was ok, but still not the texture I'm looking for. Next time, add another ounce of chocolate to Siren's recipe to try to boost choc flavor without mucking up the rest of the cake.- Bring down flour or sugar amount in Yellow Cake by a tablespoon or two? Still crumbly, but not as bad as without syruping.
- Transport: Wound plastic wrap around the entire cake, even under plywood. No movement, no shifting. Figure out how to wrap vertical book stack for transport.

Choco the Cake: The Return

Onwards, to find a usable, yummy chocolate cake!

I used a recipe that's made for a 9 x 13 inch pan, instead of continuing to doctor recipes that really belong in two 9 inch round pans. Unfortunately, I went a smidge too basic because this cake is supposed to be served right in the pan. It was quite soft and a little crumbly, so of course I broke part of it during assembly. Whatever. Just going to the co-workers anyway. (I can't believe some of them still haven't had enough chcocolate cake. I am totally done. Paul is way beyond done.) But the ganache frosting is a better glue than most others, and no one can tell that one whole layer cracked completely through. Can you see it? Nope. And it's even in the top layer.

Cake tasted pretty good, though. Maybe I'm on the right track, sort of. Edges weren't dry, so yay cake strips!

Skipped the fondant because I didn't try to make the cake smooth. Got in a little practice time with the cake comb, not that it helped.

The frosting came out very well and the ganache filling came out decently, but not quite as well. I could use either one as frosting or filling, they were very similar.

Details of the cake:
One batch of Chocolate Sheet Cake from Baking Illustrated (if you have a subscription to Cooks' Illustrated online, here's the recipe), baked in my still-fabulous, not-as-new Calphalon 9 x 13 pan.

Cut the cake in half to get two 9 x 6.5 cakes, about 1.5" tall, each, maybe a little taller.
Stacked the small cakes so that I had one 9 x 6.5 cake with 2 layers, about 3.5" total height.

One batch of Creamy Milk Chocolate Frosting from Baking Illustrated, which is paired with the Chocolate Sheet Cake in the book. I used semi-sweet chocolate (about 55% cacao, Nestle's chips) instead of milk chocolate.

One batch of Chocolate Ganache Frosting from Cooks' Illustrated online recipes for the filling and crumb coat.

A few handfuls of Nestle's raspberry and chocolate swirled chips for decoration.

No fondant.

Cake made 2 days before serving.
Cake layers assembled and crumb coated 1 day before serving.
Cake decorated and assembled the night before serving.

Bottom line:
The Creamy Milk Chocolate Frosting, made with semi-sweet chocolate, is a keeper. Must double it for this recipe to use it as the filling too. Try it under fondant sometime, hopefully it won't be too rich. Narrowing down the type of chocolate cake I need: light, but sturdy; chock-full of chocolate; but not overwhelming, rich, or super-sweet (like a mix). Maybe I'll try other sheet cake recipes. Maybe I'll try a pound cake recipe after all, even though they're not exactly light.

Fondant and Chocolate Cake (2nd Fondant Foray!)

And another success! Yay!

Practice cake originally made for Cake Practice Day, but ended up finishing it later and inflicting it on my co-workers. I mean, it was a gift, as you can see.

The goal of this cake was to practice making a dark chocolate cake, and putting fondant on a squarier cake.

Chocoholics seemed to like the cake. Non-chocoholics (such as myself) thought it was ok.

I noticed a bitter-chocolate finish if I just ate the cake alone. More chocolate flavor than most chocolate cakes. The fondant and both buttercreams (Neoclassic with Bailey's between the layers, and American buttercream for the fondant glue) mellowed out the chocolate flavor enough for me to like the cake and consider it a success.

Again, I can see a lot of flaws, but maybe I'm improving... sort of... perhaps...

Details about the cake:
Velvet Devil's Food Cake (1 batch) from a recipe in Cook's Illustrated's Baking Illustrated book. Used 2 - 8" x 8" pyrex dishes, one for each layer, no torting. Each layer was about 1.33 to 1.5" tall. Tapered sides cut off, cake was about 6" x 6" before decorating.

Neoclassic Buttercream from The Cake Bible, spiked with Bailey's Irish Cream between the layers. Peggy Weaver's (American) Buttercream I recipe for crumb coat and fondant glue.

Fondant dyed with Wilton gel colors: blue, touch of black, violet.

Fondant made about two weeks before decorating.
Cake made a week earlier, frozen, thawed, and assembled two days before serving.
Cake decorated the day before serving.

Bottom line: Velvet Devil's Food Cake could work, but I want to continue experimenting with other chocolate cake recipes. Freezing, thawing, and assembling the cake is ok to do.

O Buttercream, where art thou?

I'm expanding my buttercream horizons, as it is a standard cake filling and glue for fondant.

In the Snowflake Cake, (see First Fondant Foray) I played it safe and used American buttercream. Nothing magical: butter and confectioners' sugar, mostly. (Icing sugar, powdered sugar, etc - whatever you want to call it.) Tasted ok, no complaints.

So there are French buttercreams, Italian, Swiss, and just what is mousseline? Most call for cooking something: a simple syrup, egg yolks, etc. Guess I'll just start trying them and see what works out the best. Looks like my instant-read thermometer will be handy.

Cake 1, Buttercream 1: Frosted a White Spice Pound Cake with Neoclassic Buttercream. (Both recipes from Rose Levy Barenbaum's The Cake Bible. I made this buttercream with my hand mixer.) The taste and texture are far superior to American buttercream. However, I didn't actually get to taste the frosted cake: Cake Practice Day = chaos. After several hours of sitting out in a bowl, the Neoclassic Buttercream separated, became a much darker yellow and slimy. Yum! (Not really.)

Cake 2, Buttercream 1: Used the Neoclassic Buttercream between the layers of the Velvet Devil's Food Cake from Cook's Illustrated's Baking Illustrated. Attempted to make a crumb coat for the Devil's Food cake too, but watering down the Neoclassic Buttercream did not end well.

Cake 2, Buttercream 2: Day after Cake Practice Day, I made the Mousseline Buttercream (also from The Cake Bible) to cover the Devil's Food cake. A fine time to use the fabulous Kitchenaid stand mixer that my mom so thoughtfully and generously gave to me about six weeks ago. (Thanks, Mom!)

The Mousseline Buttercream seemed to turn out as described, maybe a little more dense than I expected. The texture and taste were far superior to the Neoclassic Buttercream, and really the American buttercream shouldn't even be allowed on the playground. But it is a finicky recipe, requiring a lot of temperature checking.

This batch o' buttercream ended up sitting in the bowl for about 20 minutes after I finished making it. Went to slather on a crumb coat for the Devil's Food cake, but it looked like the buttercream was sort of weeping... uh oh... another whirl in the Kitchenaid... EEK! DISASTER! A liquid substance (egg whites? Vanilla extract?) continued to leach from the buttercream, and it looked like grey, dirty dishwater. It was so gross! Crap. That's a lot of ingredients to chuck out.

I think this mishap was due to the Kitchenaid beater, but I plan to check with Kitchenaid. The beater attachment for the 6qt mixer isn't enameled like the 5qt beater used to be. I don't know what kind of coating it has, but it's not uniform, it almost looks tarnished. When I washed the beater after the buttercream debacle, I got the same grey-yuck color on the dish sponge. I am displeased. It is a bit of a set back.

Cake 2, Buttercream 3: Ended up using a 1/4 batch of Peggy Weaver's (American) Buttercream I recipe on the Devil's Food cake, which was somewhat smoother than the one I used previously. Still no contest with the Mousseline Buttercream, though.

Bottom line: Neoclassic Buttercream will probably separate in the summer heat. Don't water down frostings for crumb coats, just use a thin thin thin layer of the frosting and refrigerate the cake until the crumb coat hardens. My Kitchenaid beater sabotaged my buttercream! But I can make buttercream with my hand mixer, sort of. American buttercream is only good as a last resort.

Cake Practice Day

Turns out that Elissa wants to broaden her cake decorating horizons as do I. Specifically, to try to re-create this aquarium of amazingness here. So we had a cake practice day last Saturday.

Last year, she tried using Wilton's fondant crap-in-a-box, and hated it. I've heard it tastes terrible. So I brought over some marshmallow fondant, and a couple of cakes to play with.

One cake was a White Spice Pound Cake from a recipe in The Cake Bible. (I used elderly egg whites, so the cake was less than exciting. I tasted some scraps.) Made in a loaf pan, and cut down to an even block for easier decorating. We covered that in Neoclassic Buttercream (spiked with Bailey's Irish Cream, which I learned belatedly that Elissa is not fond of) also from The Cake Bible, to which Elissa attached painted fondant fish and similar adornments that she had made.

I planned to cover the second cake, a Velvet Devil's Food Cake from a recipe in Cook's Illustrated's Baking Illustrated book, but the fondant was a little dry and I proceeded to make it drier accidentally. Mental note: add a little water if it's cracking, not more Crisco. This is why I'm practicing now for the wedding in July.

Then I messed around with the Wilton gel colors I had just picked up, trying to get a leather-color into the fondant, like a book cover. It almost worked, sort of. The fondant was toast, though. The gel colors are mostly vibrant enough, fairly concentrated, and you apply them with a toothpick. Elissa mixed the gel colors with water and then painted the colors onto the fondant fish and stuff. She also used the gold luster (pearl) dust. I really like the subtle effect from the luster dust.

I never got around to covering the Velvet Devil's Food Cake, though. Well, that's what Sunday is for.

Bottom line: Luster dust is wonderful. Wilton's gel colors are probably ok for dying and painting. I have to make my fondant a lot less dry. Painted fondant looks good. Don't use elderly egg whites. Not everyone likes booze-spiked buttercream. Although sturdy, White Spice Pound Cake is not what I want in the wedding cake. Cake practice day is useful, but very hectic and tiring.