Last Weeks at FCI

Whew, this past month has been a total blur, which I guess explains why I've been MIA. In the past 4 weeks, I've completed many major end of class projects at FCI, graduated, quit my job, went to Disney World, and started a new job!! So I'm sorry that I've been neglecting my blog, but hopefully I will have more time now to be updating. I'll get to all the explanations in a bit, but first let's start with the projects!

Candy Bar Cake

Our first major project was to create a menu for a fictional restaurant of our choice. My restaurant was a dessert wine bar on the Hoboken waterfront, called Sweet Surrender. From my menu, my chefs selected two desserts for me to make - the Signature Candy Bar Cake and the American Classics Threefold. My threefolds were 3 related desserts on one plate, and the American Classics one was carrot cake, pineapple upside down cake, and apple crisp. The candy bar cake was flourless chocolate cake layered with chocolate mousse and a roasted peanut caramel, covered in chocolate ganache and then chocolate glaze. I served it with a caramel sauce and peanut butter ice cream. We had two days to prep and plate our desserts, a real challenge for me being as I had 4 separate desserts I needed to make. Everything went really well though, and it came out really well.

American Classics Threefold

After menu projects, we were on to our wedding cakes. The Level 1 students picked the theme, 1920's inspired with red, black, and white decor. I didn't want to do a traditional wedding cake with flowers, and pearls, etc. I decided to use poured sugar to created a mosaic border and blown sugar spheres to cascade down the cake. It took me a full class, 5 hours, to blow all of the sugar balls. It's a process similar to blowing glass, but with edible materials. The days that we did our cakes could not have been more humid, which meant shortly after putting my cake together, it was a sweating, dripping mess. Fortunately it held up for grading though.


When our wedding cakes were completed, we moved right into our final exam. Our final consisted of a written exam, covering everything we learned in the program, and a practical exam where we made five items we drew at random and created an edible stand to display them all on. The theme for our stands was "space." For mine, I did a stand with the sun and planets cut out and sugar poured into the holes. On the stand I had rockets, a moon man, shooting stars, and the moon. My final didn't go as well as I had hoped it would, but at least I finished it and graduated!


Graduation was really nice, with a lot of our instructors showing up to wish us farewell and send us off with their words of wisdom. I surprised myself and graduated with honors, meaning I had a 95 grade average for the entire program. I know grades mean very little, but personally it was reassuring being as I had invested so much into the program and given up so much to make it happen. While in school, I worked full time, attended class, maintained a small side business, and had a restaurant internship every Saturday night and some Sundays for over 3 months! It was tough, but well worth it in the end. Not long after graduation, I got hired at a very good restaurant in the city and started there this week!

I did it!

More Wedding Pics

Lauren, the bride of the second wedding I did in July, was nice enough to send me over some of the professional pictures after my last post. The pictures look incredible, and I'm so happy I can share them!

Some Wedding Baking in July

On top of my already insane schedule, many months ago I agreed to take on two weddings in July. Back in April and May, this seemed like a good idea. Things were a little calmer back then, I think. Flash forward to mid-summer when things could not be crazier, and suddenly it was time for these to be delivered.

Had to throw out almost everything in my fridge to make room for the cake truffles -
just 1/2 the vanilla here!

The first wedding was for their favors which were 300 cake truffles. This was the one that I thought would be the easier of the two weddings, and boy was I wrong. So very wrong. I was under-prepared for just how long it would take me to complete 150 chocolate and 150 vanilla truffles and mistakenly thought I was on the ball. It resulted in a meltdown of epic proportions that required me calling my parents to bring in reinforcements - more chocolate and some moral support (thanks mom & dad!). Once they were all finished and bagged though, it was such a rewarding feeling and I was really happy with how they turned out. I had some pretty great reviews from the bride and wedding guests, and am really happy that everyone was pleased with the outcome.

Bunch of cake truffles packaged

For the second wedding the following week, I had learned my lesson and was super, super prepared. There were lists of lists. I needed to make an 8" cake covered in fondant and 144 cupcakes decorated with individually cut and painted (with edible luster dust) fondant pieces. The fondant decorations were shaped like blossom flowers and butterflies. I was able to get those all done over a week in advance to leave me enough time to bake everything the night before pick up.

Start time - just home from class

I was fortunate that when my parents were up to help out with Wedding #1, they took me to the grocery store so I had a car to transport all the ingredients. Which was excellent being as it was 12 pounds of butter, 3 dozen eggs, 10 lbs of flour, 10 lbs of sugar, and many more heavy items! That would have been quite a struggle carrying that back to my apartment.

One of the 6 boxes of cupcakes

Close up of cupcakes

The one issue with this all was that the pick up was on a Friday morning. I'm in class until last Thursday night and don't usually get home until midnight. Class is my first priority, so I knew missing one wasn't an option. Not having the freshest cupcakes possible also wasn't an option, so I settled on the fact I'd have to start baking when I got home from class and stay up as late as it took. Everything went really smoothly though, and I was getting a new batch of cupcakes into the oven every 20 minutes - about as fast as I could expect to go.

Close up of cupcakes

Finished cake

Sometime around 3:00 am, the cupcakes were baked and frosted, and it was time to start the cake. Covering cakes in fondant is always really nerve-wracking for me, but it went pretty smoothly, and I was happy with the way the fondant decorations looked on the cake. I boxed everything up, ending just after 4:00 am.

End time - documented to remind myself how crazy I am

Crashing into bed was probably one of the best feelings ever. What a long day - I was up at 7:30 am to go to my "real" job, then class, then 12 dozen freaking cupcakes!!! Talk about a sense of accomplishment. Somehow I managed to remember to take pictures of everything too (it was on my to-do list!).

The bride was nice enough to send me a pic from the wedding set up - looks beautiful!

Looking back on both these orders, I think I was clearly insane for agreeing to do them, but I'm so happy I did! Not only did I get to be a part of these awesome people's weddings, but I got to test the limits of my baking, something I really love.

Wedding Cake!

Last month, one of my best friends got married. It was just a small civil-ceremony, and they're having a larger wedding reception next July, but I wanted to mark the occasion with a traditional wedding cake.


I frequently struggle with the distance between my ideas and my skill level. In my mind, I had a very specific idea of how I wanted this cake to look. I think that my first mistake was using an American-style cream cheese frosting, as opposed to a meringue buttercream. I've noticed in school that the Swiss or Italian meringue buttercreams provide a lot more stability than frostings made just by combining butter with powdered sugar. The cake was red velvet and I love cream cheese frosting with it, but next time I'm going to opt for a different buttercream. I also need a lot more work with fondant, and there were places it showed on this cake. Fortunately, I was able to cover a lot of the worst mistakes with the fondant cut outs.


Overall though, I was pleased with the way it came out though, and I was so happy to be part of this day. Congratulations guys!

A Crazy Week & My First Wedding Order

Last week was absolutely insane. My birthday was Tuesday, and in addition to being incredibly busy in my real job, I had two orders to bake, one of my favorite coworker's going away party, and my own birthday party on Saturday. Over the course of Wednesday through Friday, I baked almost 250 cupcakes, a two tier cake, and 2 dozen sugar cookies. My to-do list was 3 pages long, but somehow I got it all done.

Close up of the cupcakes

The first order I had was for a wedding - the first wedding I've baked for aside from my aunt's. It was 150 cupcakes to be given as the favor. Half were red velvet with white cream cheese frosting and the other half were vanilla with chocolate frosting dyed black. Silver, white, and black dragees were sprinkled over all of cupcakes.

My apartment was overrun with cupcakes

These didn't take me nearly as long to bake as I expected. The most time-consuming aspect was individually boxing each cupcake. Each needed to be "glued" to the bottom of the clear plastic box and then tied with a ribbon and the favor tag. Fortunately, I had an all-star help team consisting of the bride's sister Linda, who I had done the fiesta order for back in May, and her cousin Andrea. They were such a huge help, and I can't even imagine if I had to tie all those boxes without their help.

Individual cupcake favor

I can't wait to see the pictures from the set up at the wedding and will hopefully be posting them here if I get them.