So many of you seem curious as to how one of these things comes together, I thought you all might enjoy the picture filled journey down the path of a sculpted cake.
The preliminary scketch
The night before, I had filled and stacked the cakes, so they would be ready for me to carve, first thing. The top cake is a lemon cake with raspberry buttercream, and the bottom cake is chocolate cake with mocha-toffee buttercream. All the cake layers are soaked with simple syrup; the lemon was soaked with lemon syrup and the chocolate, soaked with Kahlua syrup.
I prefer to use buttercream as a filling in sculpted cakes….it sets up firm and makes carving a cinch. Mousses and jams and curds don’t set up enough and are also very slippy-slidy. When you are carving out a cake, you don’t want your layers sliding around on you.
Here is my top cake…..I baked off two 8 inch rounds and 1 10 inch round. Cut them all in half and filled. Ready to carve!
I just used my long serrated knife to get a general pot shape. Now for the fine tuning.
Lookin’ like a flowerpot!
Next it’s time to put a layer of buttercream on there, for extra smoothy goodness
This is going to be the bottom flowerpot. It’s going to be larger, and a slightly different shape than the top flowerpot. I baked off 2 10 inch rounds and 1 8 inch round for this one. I only ended up using half the 8 inch round, as you can see. I have the saran wrap underneath the cake and on top of the board, so it will be easier to flip over later. ..
Ok, time to roll out some terra cotta colored fondant!
Dust the table liberally with cornstarch and roll away. I’ve done this so much I can just eyeball how much fondant I’ll need to cover a certain sized cake. When rolling out fondant, waste no time from the time you’re done rolling til you get it on the cake, because it starts drying out right away. Drying out means yukky little cracks, and me no likey little cracks! So I race to fridge, retrieve cake, and cover it quickly. Then I take my trusty little pizza wheel and cut the excess away. This excess will get kneaded back into the remainder of my fondant so that I’ll have enough to cover the other pot.
I flip the bottom pot over, place it on top of my melted white chocolate, make sure it’s centered, and peel the saran wrap off.
My next step is to mark where I’m going to place my top pot, then insert straws within that area to support the weight of it. I decided to place the top pot slightly off center, and traced a circle with my paring knife to mark it. For most cake supports I use straws. They’re easy to cut to fit, cheap, and they work. The only time I use wooden dowels is when there is an UNGODLY amount of weight or a weird center of gravity involved. I used to use regular heavy duty bar straws, until I discovered…….bubble tea straws! They are super heavy duty and very large…..they have to be for people to suck up that lovely bubble tea. I don’t really think that fad is going to catch on here much in the states, but as long as I can get the straws I’m happy.
Anyway, I insert the straw, mark it with my thumb where it’s flush with the top of the cake, then pull the straw out and cut it. I use that straw as a measure to cut the rest of my straws. In this case I will use 5. One in the center and four around.
Once that’s set, I flip over the top pot, and place it on my bottom pot.
Voila! Now, I really have to make sure that the top pot won’t slide around, so I stick a few bamboo skewers down through the middle and through the cardboard til it hits the bottom board. I use the side of my needlenose pliers to pound the skewer down through.
Now starts my very favorite part of this whole thing…..details! I figured that using my silicone lace impression molds will make great detailing on the pots.
Gotta make the baby! First I start with a styrofoam core. The reason for this is for stability and less weight. There was a time in my career when I thought I shouldn’t use ANYTHING that wasn’t edible, but talk about making life hard. I’ve made things out of solid modeling chocolate, but they were very heavy and hard to support. Then over the years, I realized that people really don’t eat the decorations anyway (except for a few overzealous kids), so I decided to reduce my chocolate expenses and weight by using styrofoam to bulk things out more and more.
I pat out a disk of flesh colored modeling chocolate, and place my styrofoam ball in the middle.
I modeled the baby’s neck and shoulders, then stuck that right on the top pot. Then I cut the skewers that are coming out of his head to the right length and pushed it down through the neck and shoulders.
I placed the arms and formed the hands. I stuck my umbrella stem through the arm and down into the cake so there would be adequate support……but darn, I wasn’t watching carefully, and the skewer came out of the side of the pot because my angle was a bit off. Oh well, I’ll cover that up with a leaf. At least you can see where the umbrella stem is on the skewer. On top of the umbrella stem is a little half dome of modeling chocolate, to support the gumpaste umbrella. I dab a bit of melted white chocolate on that, and stick the umbrella on top. Now all I have to do is place my flowers, mount the banner, and put his little bonnet on.
Its ready!
0 comments:
Post a Comment