Wednesday, January 27, 2016

THE DARING KITCHEN JANUARY, 2016 CHALLENGE: CAKE DESIGNING







Daring Bakers is evolving and now will be called The Daring Kitchen. The main change is that the challenges will extend out side the scope of baking. I am very excited about this change and look forward to lots of fun in the kitchen with my daring friends. This month, Shillpa Bhaambri from Cakeline the Journey, a Baker and Cake designer living in Mumbai, India is hosting the challenge. Her challenge is a cake design challenge. Here is the link to her challenge with lots of great ideas and recipes.

Here is the exciting part of Shillpa's challenge for me. I returned home yesterday from a course with Nicholas Lodge of International Sugar Art Collection in Atlanta GA. I took a PME certification course in Rolled Fondant Techniques. This visit was not my first to the school. I have been going every year for the last 18 years. I love the school and I always learn new techniques. I could go on and on about how wonderful the experience is there but I think you have to see for yourself. People  from all over the world come to learn from Nick and I have made some great friends at the school.

For the PME certification class, we worked with fondant, gumpaste and a combination of the two media. Having taken a lot of gumpaste classes with Nick, I have memorized his recipe. I find it very easy to make. Shillpa has the recipe in her challenge so hit that link above if you want to make it.
For fondant, I always buy it. I am not lazy...ok I am a little lazy. If I thought I could make fondant as nice as some of the commercial brands I use, then I would definitely make it. But I am loving the Renshaw brand of fondant and find it economical as well as delicious and easy to use.

Modeling chocolate aka candy clay and I have a love/hate relationship. I have moderate success in making it. I find it expensive to buy BUT when all the stars align, it is my favorite sugar medium to use. Modeling chocolate tastes like chocolate. Yum! Also, I can make decorations and not have to wait for them to dry as I would for fondant or gumpaste. Once they cool they are ready. Great news for the last minute, sort of lazy decorator that I am from time to time.

For this blog, I will talk about the cake that I did in class last week. The cake is a dummy cake which means that the parts that looks like cake are Styrofoam. I can keep this forever or until I turn my back and someone pokes on it breaking the decorations. Speaking of which, I would like to send nasty glares to the Atlanta TSA who somehow managed to start my cake, in its box, right side up through the scanner and return it to me upside down. There was minimal damage, thankfully, due to the fantastic packing job at I.S.A.C.
Below are some pictures the cake project. Hopefully, I will meet some of you in class someday. I am already saving my money for the next visit.



Gumpaste decorations drying in foam

As a sampler cake, we did many designs all over the cake.

Lovebirds?

Two kinds of draping- above and below



His talent is amazing. His generosity and kindness is  fantastic!

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