Mondrian Inspired Baby Shower Cake

Our recent midterm cake was a baby shower themed cake. Originally I was hoping to do a cake that we can really expand our creativity. Since the class has voted baby shower, I decided that I would incorporate my original idea into this project.

Mondrian uses beautiful primary colors and monochromatic colors in his paintings; so I decided that I would recreate the feel for the side design of the cake. To emphasis that it is a baby shower cake, I used marzipan to create a basket and piped basket weave with royal icing on the basket. On top it's a blanket with fondant strip cut outs. The baby girl dress is made with fondant, decorated with Swiss dot royal icing and lace point.

A Quick Update

It's been a while since I last updated. Here are the works that I've done in class in last few weeks. Tomorrow we are starting sugar paste flower with Chef Ron; it's going to be fun!

Father's day theme cake.

Cupcakes topped with marzipan fruits.

Black Forest Cake with Cherry Compote, decorated with chocolate butterflies, white modeling chocolate blossoms.

A Little More Sugar and Chocolate

It's the beginning of second month here at the FCI. As the class progress, the focus is finally starting to shift towards design and techniques. By all means, I LOVE baking and reading recipes, but I would really like to perfect my skills in assembling cakes, piping techniques, and exploring design senses and creativities. Here's a little taste of what we did last night; royal icing piping and fondant making.

On the right here, it's Chef Cynthia showing us how to pipe with royal icing. Though I've done it before, this is something that one can never have enough practice of.

Royal Icing: Snail trails, Cornelli laces, and Swiss dots.

Making rolled fondant from scratch; which by the way is such a wonderful recipe!

A Summer Challenge Awaits

The biggest challenge of the summer will be the brutal heat. I haveno idea how they do it here in NYC, but I complete admire all the pastry chefs and cake makers baking cakes and making butter cream under such high temperature. Not to mention delivering during the summer time but also during the winter snow. Folks, we have it good in California, no more complains!

Friday night was a very fun class. We baked off sheets of American

milk sponge cake, filled and crumb coated it. Then here comes the chocolate cake.. Talking about getting some chocolate action! This is a devil's food cake filled with chocolate ganache, coated with more chocolate ganache, then decorated with chocolate modeling chocolate roses. Got chocolate? Here are pictures of Chef Cynthia doing demo for us...

Making roses from modeling chocolate:

Here are my creations...

Until next time... :)

A Basket of Fruitiness

Hope y'all had a good weekend. I certainly did from all the good eats in the city of New York, and another fun day working at Silk Cakes Studio.

Briefly catch up on what we did last week; we assembled angel's food cake with strawberry buttercream as filling. Did the best we can to square off the cake to prepare for basket weave piping. The finish product may look more difficult than what it is, but with Chef Cynthia's instruction, it was only the matter of eye-hand coordination and lots of patience.

A Basket of Fruitness assembily... The Base: 3 layers of angel food cake, 2 layers of strawberry swiss meringue buttercream.

Choose colors and pipe,

Add shell and rope borders,

And now we topped the cake with fresh strawberries, blueberries and black berries.

There you have it, folks! Now what? Eat it of course. But those of you who know me for a while can probably figure out exactly what I did with my cakes. Yes, I gave it away, as always. But instead of the firemen, I pick the Roosevelt Island Public Safety Department. :) Hope they enjoy it!

Beginning of Another Week, Another Cake, and Goals.

After two weeks of genoise, I'm sure we all have seen and tasted enough of them; at least for me anyway. :) We are going into the third week with a tiered white cake which we will finish on Monday evening. Moving onto the next step of cake decoration 101. (Pictures coming soon!)

While the lessons are in progress, coming out to

NYC from California is not only about going to school, this journey is also about getting the most out of my 5 months time here. No, I am not talking about partying! Well, maybe a little bit. :) It's the networking, fine dinning, sight seeing.., and most importantly, working opportunities. Whether the job is paid or unpaid, stage or volunteer, finding the right places to learn is essential. There's always room to improve; never the "I've done enough of..." or the "I'm good enough". A cake designer is nobody if he/she is not a good pastry chef. A good looking cake is nothing if it does not taste good. We must ask ourselves, as cake designers, "Do we want one time customers? Or do we want them for a life time?"

To be successful is: to work hard, to be creative, to accept constructive criticism, to observe, to practice, to discover, to read, to 'google', to try new things/food, to not be afraid, and to not complain. I am not perfect, and I will work on it.

Till next time, folks... :)

Chocolate Buttercream + Creme Brulee = Happiness

Cake design starts from knowing how to bake a good cake and put together the cake. To be able to market such a visually appealing product, a pastry chef/cake designer should master his/her piping skills. On Monday night class, we began learning how to pipe with the chocolate buttercream that we made earlier in the class. In the photo to the right is the demo piping by Chef Cynthia.

While trying hard to resist eating this amazing chocolate buttercream, Chef Cynthia and Chef Judy finished off the demo from last class; creme brulee. We were all very happy to indulge this silky creation. I must say, this is another amazing recipe from The French Culinary Institute. Looks like I'll be getting a torch soon...!

Now back to work: after crumb coat the cake, the cakes were finished off in a simple design with shell boarders and curled hazelnut chocolate. Yum!