Celebrating the year of the dragon and a year of blogging

I started this blog about one year ago with my first entry about a cake that I made for my mother's birthday. After a two and a half-month baking and three month blogging break, I am returning with a cake for my mother's birthday (her 60th birthday to be exact, which is a big one!).

I have not decorated a cake since August. At that time, we were wrapping up our life chapter in our first home. The baking and blogging break coincided with the transition from our condo to our not-quite-finished-being-renovated house. A delayed permit from the city meant throwing all our belongings in the basement and living with my parents for a short time. This is the first cake that I made in our new kitchen. It has taken me a month to write a blog on this cake due to the ongoing process of getting settled into the house (our basement is still full of boxes), work, singing and school commitments. 

This dragon cake is appropriate in a couple of ways. The first and foremost important is that my mom is born in the year of the dragon. The dragon is a symbol of power, strength, luck and prosperity. Interestingly, the dragon also represents change and mobility. This has certainly been a year of change and mobility - literally. We bought a house in May, sold our condo in June, took possession of the house in July and started some major renovations that finished in September. Instead of designing cakes, I was designing rooms in our house. It is a lot of work picking out fixtures, tile, appliances, flooring, doors, etc. 

I am happy to be somewhat settled in and working on cakes again.

The flavour of this cake was mocha with dulce de leche buttercream as per my mom's request. 

This is the second cake that I've carved. The first one being Mater for my nephew's birthday last December.

When thinking about the best method of getting the dragon shape, my original thought was to use a straight-edge bundt cake pan and arrange the pieces into a snake-like shape. After cutting out a paper template, I did not feel that I could get the width or shape that I wanted. I ended up cutting a piece of freezer paper to the size of the cake board (20" diameter) and freehanded the shape of the dragon. I then took out some baking pans and looked at the best combination of pan shapes/sizes to create the dragon. I ended up using a 9x13" pan for most of the body and a 8-inch round pan for the tail end. It was much easier than baking a half sheet size cake.
I still had quite a bit of leftover cake that I used to make cake pops later that week.

One of the challenges I had with the carved cake was how to get it on the cake board. Normally, I cover my cakes in fondant before placing it on the fondant-covered cake board. In this case, since the cake was an awkward shape and in 3 pieces it was necessary to cover the cake once it was already on the board. It wasn't too bad. I used my freezer paper template to see where I wanted the cake to be positioned on the board. I then used an inscriber tool to lightly mark the outline of the dragon onto the fondant. Each piece had it's own cake board which made it easy to transfer to the large cake board. Once placed on the board, I covered the shape in pieces of fondant rather than one large big piece since any seams would be hidden by scales. I just had to be careful when trimming off the excess.

The scales were cut out of modelling paste and then thinned using a ball tool. This took a really, really long time! It is really best to leave the modelling paste wrapped overnight to firm up a bit. It makes thinning the circles easier and neater. I discovered this while making the cake as I was running out of coloured modelling paste. My poor sister was frantically colouring more fondant mixed with tylose and cutting out circles the afternoon of my mother's party. The dragon was dusted with various colours of pearl lustre dust. Teachable moment: when you are severely behind in making a cake, it is very important to stay calm and focused. For this cake, I did not remain calm as I was becoming increasingly late for my mom's birthday dinner. While dusting the dragon, I was gently/or not so gently blowing excess dust off of the cake board. At one point, instead of blowing on the cake board, I blew into the small container of lustre dust. I ended up with an orange face and orange teeth.

The head was made from Rice Krispie treats. I had grandiose plans for decorating the face, however I ran out of time, so it was decorated rather quickly and less precisely than what I would have liked. It looks a bit muppet-y to me but the overall dragon look is there. 

The most important thing is that my mom was surprised and she loved the cake. 

My baking projects will likely be a little less frequent in the coming year as I try to wrap up my graduate studies but I still hope to be baking and blogging once in a while for fun and stress-relief.

Running: Cake on track, moving...not so much.

Last cake before moving! Less than two weeks to moving and it's time to pack away the baking supplies. Next project will be in my brand new kitchen! How appropriate that as I'm running out of time to get ready for the move, I make a running cake. I don't know if it was the stress of moving, but I also seemed to run into a few more problems with this one than usual. 

This cake was originally going to be a small cake for two (my very athletic friend and her equally athletic boyfriend), however my friend preferred to have a full track on the cake so the scope and size of the cake grew a tad. 

This was my first time making characters in a standing position (minus the zombies on this cake, but they were much smaller). Normally the characters are sitting which is structurally much easier. These characters had to be started earlier than usual to allow the legs to set properly before adding the other components. To ensure the figures were stable for delivery, I used wooden skewers instead of my usual spaghetti to support them. The heads and arms were supported with small pieces of spaghetti and gumpaste glue. In the past, I've made hair using an extruder and modelling paste however this can be quite heavy and can weigh the heads down. As I really needed these figures to be stable, I opted to pipe the hair using royal icing.

I made the running medal using modelling paste. I used a very small silicone mold for the leaves. I carefully cut out a running figure on cardstock and then used an x-acto knife to cut out the figure from modelling paste. The medal was dusted with gold lustre dust.

I cut the track in one piece from modelling paste. I let it sit for a bit to set before trying to lift it onto the cake so that it would not stretch out of shape. At this point I also dusted the track with terracotta petal dust so it had a texture and colour similar to a real track. You certainly learn from your mistakes are you an amateur cake decorator. To adhere the track to the cake, I painted the back of it with gumpaste glue. This was not the smartest move. As I was trying to place it on the cake, sections of the track adhered to the cake and it was very difficult to move the track into place without getting terracotta coloured petal dust all over the cake. Thankfully, I was planning on piping grass in the centre anyway. Other stray bits of red were brushed away with a Q-tip dipped in vodka. In retrospect, I should have laid the track on the cake, positioned it and then lifted and carefully glued one small section at a time. 

There are many challenges that may arise with cake decorating. One of the most frustrating things for me is working very hard to make detailed items to put on top of the cake, only to find that the cake on which I'm putting them is less than perfect. I have had my share of issues with air bubbles forming underneath fondant. I have had better results with using swiss meringue buttercream underneath fondant versus frosting but even so, I still end up with some lumps and bumps. 

Sure enough, as I was packing up my supplies for the evening, I took one last look at the cake only to see that a very large bubble had formed on the side of the cake. I attributed this to not smoothing the buttercream adequately to rid it of all air bubbles and/or not smoothing the fondant firmly enough against the cold buttercream. 

At this point, the fondant had softened a bit as the buttercream underneath warmed to room temperature. While you can poke a hole and push out the air, smoothing the fondant against the softening buttercream, you need to be careful not to press too firmly or the fondant will tear. Similarly you want to be careful with your fondant smoother as the softened fondant can be a bit tacky and your smoother may be stick to the cake like a magnet. 

As it was the first time I've used wooden skewers to support figurines, I learned another important lesson: cut the skewer to match the depth of the cake before attaching a whole figurine to it! 

To ensure the figurines did not sink into the cake and also to avoid any bits of skewer wood getting into the cake, I placed a straw in the cake where each skewer would be placed. When I placed the female figurine, I came to the unfortunate realization that the skewer was too long and her foot was sticking out above the track. It is very difficult to cut a skewer with a figure on it! I first tried this out using a plain skewer to see how gentle I could be with taking off an inch of the wood. This was successful so I moved onto fixing the figure. All was going well, and then of course, the spaghetti holding the head snapped and the head fell off a half hour before I needed to leave to deliver the cake. You have to think very quickly to try and fix things like this - it is important not to panic! It was going to be impossible to extract the broken spaghetti from the figurine without risking further damage, so I used my inscriber tool to push the spaghetti piece down in the body and the other piece up into the head. This left room for another little piece of spaghetti. If I had had more time, I would have used gumpaste glue to reattach and allowed it time to set. As time was not on my side, I could not be so subtle. I quickly made a small batch of royal icing and coloured it to match the skin. I used this to coat the piece of spaghetti holding the head to the neck. I used a very slightly wet paintbrush to smooth the excess icing around the neck. It did not blend perfectly but apparently it survived a few position changes on the cake track due to the competitive nature of the couple!

While this cake certainly had some challenges with a few valuable lessons learned, I was happy with the overall look. Most importantly my friend and her boyfriend enjoyed the cake.

So now the packing continues. I bid adieu to baking for the next couple of weeks as we get settled into our mostly finished house. I look forward to getting back to baking in our brand new kitchen!

Strawberry Lemon Cake

It has been a while since my last post as I have been spending more time at Home Depot than in my kitchen, and I have been getting ready for the new house and spending as much time as possible with my family in the condo before we say goodbye to our first home. I have dabbled in a bit of baking but have had less time to photograph and write about my goodies. 

This weekend, my husband and I went to a friend's house for dinner and we offered to bring dessert. I wanted to make something summery and fruity. I considered doing a tart filled with vanilla bean custard and topped with fresh berries, but I wanted something that I could decorate a little as I think I've been in a slight cake decorating withdrawal. 

I thought about summer flavours and lemons and strawberries came to mind. If you look up lemon strawberry cakes, they are typically very light cakes with some sort of whipped cream type topping. I am not a big fan of whipped cream toppings. I don't enjoy the flavour and texture as much as frosting or buttercream, they are not particularly heat stable, and you can't do much with decorating those cakes. I decided to make a vanilla butter-based cake filled with fresh lemon curd. I covered it with strawberry frosting which is one of my favourite icing flavours. 

I wanted the decoration to be simple and to give a hint of what was inside the cake. Browsing through my books once again, I came across a quilled paisley cake. I am not a big paisley fan but was intrigued by the quilling. 

Quilling is a paper craft that involves rolling thin strips of paper very tightly around a needle/quill and allowing them to uncoil to various sizes, pinching them into various shapes to make flowers, leaves, animals, etc. There are some really elaborate designs out there. A quick google search on quilled cakes revealed some beautiful fondant cakes - some very simple and some extremely elaborate, typically involving flowers and leaves. I decided to make a quilled gum paste lemon slice. I rolled out my gum paste very thinly and I used my ribbon cutter to make 1/4" wide strips. Normally my type A personality would have ensured that each little wedge of lemon was made exactly the same but I was feeling more relaxed this weekend and rolled each strip until they looked approximately the same. If they didn't, I just readjusted and trimmed away excess gum paste as required. I was looking for overall effect rather than becoming a gum paste quilling master in one day. I thought it resembled a lemon slice, so I was pleased. 

I have made strawberry frosting on numerous occasions but I have never made lemon curd. Whenever I am about to try something new, I refer to my abundant collection of baking books and review different recipes, comparing ingredient ratios and techniques. Some recipes involved cooking the curd on direct heat (increases risk of scrambling your yolks), a few involved heating the curd over a bain-marie and one recipe involved cooking a lemon, sugar and butter mixture and then adding some of that to an egg yolk and sugar mixture to temper and then cooking the entire mixture on direct heat. I decided to go with the bain-marie method as I felt this would be the most fail-proof. 

The problem with reading and comparing numerous recipes is that there is a chance you will get them mixed up and combine elements of different recipes...or perhaps it's just me. I ended up adding twice as much fresh lemon juice to the mixture than I was supposed to. I carefully removed what I could which left me with 1.5x the amount I was supposed to use. I figured that since there was a lot of variation in the amount of lemon juice, egg, sugar, zest and butter from recipe to recipe, I could still salvage the curd. There was no way I was going to toss the mixture and separate another 7 eggs. I added a few more yolks, a little extra sugar and it turned out beautifully. Good to know you can take some liberties with ingredient amounts and it will still work. 

To finish the cake, I piped a shell border around the bottom and top borders. The top border ended up being a bit on the messy side as I did some shells too close to the edge and they were precariously hanging over the side, threatening to flop down the side. I also piped a few dots of lemon curd around the quilled gum paste lemon slice.

In the end, it was a successful marriage of lemon and strawberry. As an added bonus, we have a full mason jar of leftover lemon curd. I think it may be time to whip up some scones. 

Monkey Martini Cupcakes

Each year we have a year-end potluck for our interns and each year I try to create a new cupcake flavour combination, usually containing a bit of alcohol. In previous years, I have made Guinness chocolate cupcakes with Bailey's frosting, 'Cream-sicle' cupcakes containing Cointreau and Godiva white chocolate liqueur, and cookies and cream with Oreos and again, Godiva liqueur.

This year, as we are in the midst of moving, my husband has packed away quite a bit of our liquor cabinet. Apparently there was no rhyme or reason to what he packed away, with the exception of his bottles of scotch. Gone was my bottle of Bailey's and my bottle of Godiva liqueur. What I did find was a bottle of creme de banane, so I got the idea to make chocolate cupcakes with a creme de banane frosting.

A Monkey Martini is typically made with vodka, creme de cacao, and creme de banane. I have seen variations with the inclusion of Bailey's, however since that was packed away, it didn't make it into the cupcake. Creme de cacao is a colourless chocolate liqueur with a hint of vanilla. I did not have any of this but wanted to capture the flavour in the cupcake. I decided to make a white chocolate ganache to fill the chocolate cupcakes. The ganache filling was made with cream, Callebaut white chocolate callets, and a little vodka.

The frosting was flavoured with vanilla and creme de banane. It tasted like a banana popsicle. Yum!
I garnished each cupcake with a banana chip dipped in Callebaut bittersweet chocolate.

Pride Cake

Happy Pride! This weekend, between appliance shopping and finalizing the kitchen plans for our house renovations, I decided to make a rainbow cake. 

Back in April, I made this Care Bear cake for my nephew's birthday. I posted a preview of the uncovered cake and a friend exclaimed, "It is a cake for the gays!" As such, I promised to make another rainbow-themed cake for June. 

I wanted the cake to be simple so that the flower stood out i.e. no other decorations, and no border around the bottom. As such, it was really important to have a clean edge on the bottom of the cake. 

I decided to try something a bit different, and propped up my cake on a 6-inch styrofoam dummy so that I could cleanly cut away the excess fondant after covering it. This did not turn out very well. The fondant ended up stretching quite a bit due to the weight and because it was so thin, it was not going to be a smooth background for the flower. In retrospect, I should have covered the cake on a flat surface, trimmed away some of the excess, and then elevated it to cut the bottom edge cleanly with a paring knife. 

To fix the messy looking fondant, I actually rolled out another 2 pounds of fondant, brushed the already covered cake with cooled, boiled water and re-covered the cake. Yes, a bit of a pricey fix, but I really did not want a lumpy fondant job ruining the whole aesthetic of the cake. Besides, if I use up my fondant, it's one less thing I have to lug over to our new home. 

I have wanted to make a ruffled flower on a simple white cake for some time. This was the perfect opportunity to try this out in beautiful bright colours. It also gives a hint of what's to come upon cutting the cake. I tried a few different tools to ruffle the edges of strips cut from modelling paste. At first I tried a ball tool however I found that I would get too many areas that were too thin and I did not find the edges ruffled enough. By the second orange ruffle, I moved on to trying a cone tool. I thought that this produced a better ruffle but I felt that it made the edges of paste a bit rough and it was hard on the fingers. I went back to the ball tool for a bit and then I tried making the ruffles with a modelling stick. I think that the modelling stick was the easiest option.

This was an 8-inch cake filled with an orange cream swiss meringue buttercream. To get the 'orange cream' flavour, I used vanilla extract, Cointreau and orange flavouring. The flavour was great, however, as this cake involves a lot of buttercream to fill the 6 layers and crumb coat the cake (I used 8 cups!), a little goes a long way in terms of serving sizes!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Canada Day and Pride weekend!