Ambitious Baking: Tiered Cakes

I absolutely love the challenge of making fondant-covered cakes, even though my skill set in that arena is still pretty lacking. Every year our family friends host a massive beer pong tournament. It's really something you can't believe unless you see it for yourself. Every team agonizes over team name and comes decked out in matching uniforms.

Front View

I had a clear vision of the cake I wanted to make for this party. There's almost a 100 guests that attend this party, so it had to be big. I decided on a three-tiered cake with Solo "cups" made out of fondant mixed with a natural gum so they would dry hard overnight. I used real Solo cups to draw a template and mold the cups. There were 30 teams that participated, so I piped every team name on a fondant plaque that was then put on the back and sides of the cake. The letter piping was the last thing I did, and by the time I got to the last team, my hand was shaking.

Side View - Handwriting was a little shaky

The cake flavors were chocolate cake with cookies and cream buttercream (10"), white cake with passion fruit buttercream (8"), and banana cake with white chocolate buttercream (6"). Despite the massive quantity of cake, it was pretty much demolished at the end of the night. The cutting of the cake went down around midnight, many rounds into the tournament, so it should have come as no surprise that I sliced my hand while divvying up the cake. Luckily it wasn't too deep, and nothing that 5 Band-Aids and another Bud Light could not fix.

Back of the cake

The party happened to coincide with the beer pong commissioner's birthday, so I made a miniature birthday cake. I did a white covering with black polka dots and a pink glittery bow. Thankfully, my friend Vica came to visit just in the nick of time. When she arrived at my house, I was thoroughly in the weeds (chef talk for "in major s***") and didn't think I would finish on time to make it to the party with a completed cake, much less the tiny birthday cake too. Vica stepped in and made an awesome pastry assistant, helping me out with the finishing touches on both cakes.

I have no idea how cake designers transport their cakes without any damage. We had a short 10 minute drive to the party, and my cake arrived with many cracks (albeit they were only noticeable to me). We had a kind of rough drive there, with me sitting in the trunk of the Explorer and my mom driving, us yelling at each other the entire time. She probably could have driven a teensy bit smoother, but at least I know that when I need a delivery person for my future business, we already had the test run (fail). My mom has many skills, but apparently smooth driving is not one of them.

This cake was only 4"

I'm already looking forward to next year's tournament (the 5th annual!), but think I'm going to go easier on the desserts so I can rest up pre-tournament and maybe go further (my partner Morgan & I had a pretty abysmal showing).

Me & a few of my friend at the tournament

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Dad!

Whew, this post just barely made it in before it's no longer even my dad's birth MONTH. As it is, it's 3 weeks since it passed and I made this cake, but better late than never, right?

One of my favorite things about baking is being able to create something special for the people I love - my friends and family. My parents are hands-down my biggest fans, and my dad lately has been known to start telling complete strangers about how his daughter is attending the French Culinary Institute. When it came time for his birthday, I was excited to make something extra special and new just for him. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of asking him what kind of cake he'd like, to which he replied he had been hoping for red velvet. I'm sort of sick of red velvet, and I had wanted to make something just for him.


Chef Cynthia had given our class the most awesome chocolate cake recipe that our class devoured the scraps of when they were set out. I knew I wanted to use this as my base, and decided to also use chocolate ganache and fresh raspberries as filling and chocolate Swiss buttercream to cover the cake. In short, this cake was awesome. My dad really liked it too, hopefully even more than the red velvet.


I haven't really shared a recipe in a while, but you MUST make this chocolate cake. I'm not a huge chocolate fan (although my classmates who have seen me eat pounds of chocolate might disagree), and this has become one of my absolute favorite cakes. It's so moist, so delicious, and so easy to make.

Chocolate Cake Recipe

Ingredients:
2 1/4 c cake flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c butter (1 stick), room temperature
2 1/4 c light brown sugar
3 large eggs, room temperature
3 oz unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 c sour cream
1/2 c hot brewed coffee
1/2 c hot water

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two 8" cake pans and line the bottom with a round of parchment paper.
2. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt.
3. Beat butter at medium speed until creamy. Gradually add brown sugar, better well until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add vanilla and mix well.
4. Add eggs one at a time, beating at low speed until blended after each addition.
5. Pour hot coffee and water over chocolate. Stir until all chocolate is melted. Whisk in sour cream until smooth.
6. Alternate adding the dry ingredients (3 additions) with the wet (2 additions), starting and ending with the dry mixture.
7. Pour in prepared pans. Bake at 350 until cake tests done (Cake should start to come away from sides of the pan and a skewer inserted should come out dry).

Week 11: Cakes I

The cakes portion of our program is divided into two portions, separated by the second half of the bread unit. Making cakes are really time consuming. One cake we made this week had seven different components that had to be made. I figure it probably took about 3 hours of actual working in order to make that cake.


On Tuesday, the theme seemed to be chocolate. I like chocolate (not as much as vanilla), but working with it is just messy. Tuesday night I had to apply stain spray to my whole uniform. The first cake was a chocolate ganache cake. We built the cake in a ring mold using layers of chocolate genoise and chocolate ganache. Once the cake set in the freezer, we took it out of the mold and poured a chocolate glaze over the entire thing.


Using organic roses (so that they're not sprayed with pesticides), we made candied flower petals. We took the petals and brushed them with egg whites and then rolled them in superfine sugar. This was a really pretty and easy touch to add to the top of the cake.

Sliced Ganache Cake

The second chocolate cake was the one that had seven components was the Marjolaine. We made the chocolate genoise and the nut meringue layers the class before. From bottom to top it was: chocolate genoise (cake), chocolate ganache, nut meringue, chocolate whipped cream, nut meringue, praline buttercream, nut meringue, whipped cream, and a last nut meringue. The whole thing was then covered in the praline buttercream and coated with the chocolate glaze. This was a really decadent cake. And being as it took so long to make, a special occasion cake.

Marjolaine

Inside the Marjolaine

Next up for the week was our Charlotte Russe. The outside was built out of ladyfingers and inside was a white peach Bavarian (similar to a mousse). Both the ladyfingers and the Bavarian were amazing. It was a really fresh-tasting cake. I could see myself eating this in the summer. My ladyfinger piping skills needs some work, so I think I will be making it again.


Thursday night I had a really rough night at class. One of those nights where I was just like "whyyyyy did I come? Why am I not at the bar with my friends??" I love pastry school, and I'm so happy I made this decision to enroll. That said, not every class is a walk in the park. On Thursday, my jaconde (a very thin sheet cake we were using for two different cakes) was over-baked (each class has two assigned people to be bakers) and then another classmate carelessly unmolded my cake and broke it into many pieces. After that, the cake was basically unusable. I'm a total perfectionist when it comes to baking and school, so I was pretty unhappy about this. I ended up being able to scavenge some of my classmate's leftovers in order to make both of my cakes.


The Charlotte Royale was one of the cakes we made with the jaconde. We made a jelly roll using the cake and apricot jam. The log was cut into thin slices and we lined a bowl with them. The cake was them filled with a vanilla Bavarian cream with a round of white genoise placed for what would become the bottom of the cake. Once the cake set in the freezer, we flipped it over out of the bowl. I'm not sure yet how this cake tastes (it's one of three in my freezer currently), but it looks like a brain. If we had used red raspberry jam, this would have been the perfect Halloween cake. Right next to the peeled grape "eye balls."

Silpat with just the chocolate batter on it

Baked pattern cake

The next cake was one I was really excited to learn how to make. When I lived in Boston, there was this amazing dessert bar/bakery called Finale and they always had these type of cakes in the display case where the outside was a patterned cake. I never had any idea of how they got the cake baked into that pattern, but now I know the secret. Using a stencil and some chocolate cake batter (pate a cornet to be exact), you apply the chocolate to the Silpat (nonstick liner) and then freeze it. Once it's frozen, you put a white batter on top of the chocolate design, spread it thin, and then bake it. It's amazing!


This is the unfinished chocolate mousse cake that is currently in my freezer. I texted my roommate on Saturday, "If you're feeling inclined to bring home anything that needs to be frozen, don't." We have this cake, a Charlotte Russe, and a Charlotte Royale in the freezer taking up basically every inch of space. The chocolate mousse cake has white chocolate and chocolate mousse on the inside. Our mousse came out not as great as we had hoped, but tasted great. At some point this week, I'll finish that cake with some whipped cream and bring it to work. I'm really enjoying cakes so far. It's rewarding to have all the different components come together into something beautiful. This week we tackle some traditional American cakes, which will be a nice break from the plain and boring genoise!