My first fondant cake and the learning curve that comes with it.

I haven't made a cake in months and I've been dying to get into a kitchen and try again. This has ended up as my last attempt at making the Martha Stewart White Wedding Cake. I can't get the cake right (or maybe it is right and it just sucks). I also attempted the Raspberry Buttercream and, for the first time ever, trying to make a fondant. So here we go...

First, I made the cake but took no pics of the process as it's pretty standard. As it is in the oven, I start to make the raspberry puree for the buttercream. I actually used mix berries and not just raspberries. Then I cooked them with sugar for a bit, put them in a blender to mix them up and then through a seive so that I just get the liquid. Tada!

The puree is put aside to cool down and I focus on making the buttercream. It mainly consists of egg whites, sugar and butter. What you don't see is the making of the meringue. I put the egg whites and sugar together in a metal bowl over a saucepan of boiling water. I wish the egg whites and the sugar together over the heat until the sugar is completely dissolved in the egg whites. I then put it in the mixer and whisk it non-stop until there are soft peaks (I think I should have whipped it longer but I was too impatient. Soft peaks:

Once you reach the peaks, you slowly add butter to the meringue and it turns into a buttercream. This is how much butter the recipe calls for:

Once it becomes the buttercream, the puree is added and it takes on a nice pink hue:

Then my cake came out and I cut it up, layered it and did an initial coat of icing to lock in the crumbs:

After it was cooled down, a final layer of cream was spread over the entire cake. I didn't think I needed to make the sides/edge perfect as I thought the fondant would fix it. It does not, as I later found out.

As I waited for the cake to cool in the fridge, I decide to making a chocolate frosting, which is made of cocoa powder, icing sugar and butter. Mmmmmmmm...

So now the assembly starts. I made a fondant with corn syrup and icing sugar and it didn't work well. After rolling it out, I put it on the cake and look what happened!

So the next morning I tried to make fondant again but used a different recipe - Marshmallow fondant. It was easy, see...

This is when it got tricky. I managed to trim it down but I did not know how to remove the creases from when you fold it in. Need to learn. Also, notice how you can tell the icing underneath was not flat. New lesson - I now know that fondant cannot hide imperfect icing, it hugs it too much.

Tips welcomed! Anyway, then I proceeded to decorate and I have no imagination so this is what I did...

This is the end product:

Jamie Oliver's Fruit Cobbler

Just pictures, using this recipe!

George Brown's Sponge Cake and Martha Stewart's Buttercream

Yesterday I had a few hours to kill in the afternoon and attempted another cake. I needed something light and fluffy. I decided to make George Brown's Sponge Cake from my Art of Baking class and wanted to play with the Buttercream that I made earlier in the week (I wanted to know what would happen if I kept adding the full amount of butter called for in the recipe rather than stopping when it started curdling).

The sponge cake was delicious. Truth be told, I had a small cake baked at the same time and ate it all. So nice and fluffy and not super sweet. My concern is whether it will hold with icing and toppings on it. I'm going to taste test it with my mom (I hope) and we'll see how it holds up.

As for the buttercream, I found it easier to work with compared to the previous attempt but I also found that it didn't hold at room temperature as well. So I think I will revert to stop adding butter when it starts curdling and then just beating it until it is really really smooth.

So here was the process of putting the cake together.

Bake the cake (only about 20 mins of baking time - the beauty of a sponge cake).

The split it in half (which I did a bad job of! I need a better, longer serated knife), added a layer of buttercream, diced up strawberries and threw it on top (diced because my last attempt of small cross slices did not work well) and another layer of buttercream on top.

Then a crumb coat layer to keep the crumbs from going on the icing when I actually work the cake.

Then the frosting is added. Before making the cake today, I watched a 13 minute video of how to make straight, smoooth layers of frosting on the cake and so this was my first attempt at making it. The first layer is added and the goal is not to make it perfectly smooth as another layer will come. I think I did ok for my first attempt ever. :-)

Then came the second layer and this is the more important one. It was 8 p.m. by now and I was tired. This is the best I could do at 8 p.m. Also, you need a blow torch to make the icing perfectly flawless - because you need to heat up the levelling tool. Another thing for me to look into. Learning so much a long the way.

I had a very small amount of icing left over and piped my "S" on it. Can't wait to try it with my mom and see how it turns out as a package. I'm pleased with this attempt.

Martha Stewart's White Wedding Cake and Buttercream

Earlier this week I took a crack at making a White Wedding Cake with a Buttercream, minus the Raspberry part. For the cake, I didn't pay attention to how much time it had been in the oven and kept opening and closing it. This affects the way it rises and it ended up like below. Ideally, you don't open it until you're checking for when it's done so I need to be more aware of the time it's been in the oven.

As you can see from the middle of the cake in the picture above, I poked it many times. The cracks are not the biggest deal because the cake needed levelling off anyway - see below - but I think the fluffiness of the cake was really affected by my constant opening of the oven. It ended up being really dense, will need to try again.

The buttercream was much more of a success and very yummy. I loved whipping it and watching it come together. As a note to myself, I did not put all the butter in, I stopped when it started churdling and then whipped it smooth. The texture was more managable doing it this way (compared to the frosting I made the following day, which "melted" a bit more).

So, when I bake, I have a focus. I am trying to master the art of cake making with the limited time that I have. With each attempt, I focus on item/step in the process. The focus in this was project was two fold: (i) on the actual cake was to get it fluffly, which I failed at, and (ii) the focus on the cream was to get the right consistency, and I think I was sucessful there. I did put a cake together for the sake of it and learnt some stuff on the way, but the end goal was not to make a perfect cake. And so it did not end up being the most pretty thing. lol Here's how it looked like as I put it together.

Added strawberries, piped on more frosting and added the top layer. It looks awesome at this point, I think.

Then the part where skills matter comes and this was not my focus today so I played around. It eneded up looking decent, no?

In the end, my mom and I tried it and we give a solid thumbs up to the frosting but a sold thumbs down to the cake. One, the bottom of the cake was too thick and difficult to cut into. It was very dense and a bit dry. I think it was all due to human error and so I am tempted to try the recipe again. There's two recipes that I've done that I need to retry now - and I've only tried about three so my success factor is not the greatest! Clearly a practice until perfect job. It's fun. It's costing me a bit of money but I am thoroughly enjoying myself. I need to find people to give my cakes to. Feel free to volunteer!

Martha Stewart's Angel Food Cake

Over the past few days I tried making the Angel Food Cake twice. The first time I was not a huge fan. I found the cake to be very sticky and not soft enough, though it looked very pretty:

My mother really enjoyed the cake and she raved about it for a few days. I decided to try it again tonight, but whipped the egg whites a bit more to see how the texture changes. I found this time it was not as "sticky" for lack of a better word. It was a better texture but not a good texture for a wedding cake. It will not provide a clean cut.

I like how it's mainly egg whites and sugar without butter and without much flour. I think I would definitely make it again. I should buy an angel cake pan -- presumably it affects the texture. Maybe it won't feel as sticky. Anyway, point is to whip the eggs well and you get a better quality product.

Martha Stewart's Swiss Meringue Buttercream and Basic Yellow Cake

9:48 a.m. post: I woke up this morning at 7 a.m. with an urge to try to bake one more item before I jump on a jet plane at 1 a.m. tonight. So I looked up Martha Stewart's website and came to this Crushed-Candy Wedding Cake. It looks simple enough so I gave it a go.
I have some questions that arose as I started making it: (i) what is considered "fluffy" when mixing the butter with sugar? (ii) when I'm mixing the flour and milk in batches, should I make sure they are completely incorporated before I do the next batch? (iii) when fluffing the egg whites, what is the difference between "stiff but not dry"?
Any way, I used only half of the portion for the recipe as I thought the recipe would have yielded two cakes (with an 8inch pan). Putting it in my 8inch pan, it filled it only half way. Disappointed because I wanted to start working on full cakes. I might try to turn this one into layers. We'll see.

Goal today is to assemble this cake, without the candy. Assuming the cake turns out ok, the focus will be on getting the frosting to look pretty. It should be cooked in an hour and I'll let it cool for a bit. Stay tuned...
10:25 a.m. post: Do you think if I put a dip in the middle of the batter it'll rise a bit more flat? Hate the idea that I need to flatten it and waste some cake...

I know the baking tray is ghetto; should not be using a cheesecake pan but it's all I got so far. Will pick up proper trays in due course. Now we wait for it to cool.
2:30 p.m post: So I just added a crumb coat and put it in the fridge. The icing was really hard so I softened it by mixing it around, then I found that it was almost melting like. So I think there's a middle ground that it has to be worked with. I made one crumb coat thicker than the other. We'll see if it makes a difference at all. Have cut the cake in half - will play with styling a bit, I hope.
11:00 p.m post: I finished the cake today but really messed up the icing. I should have kept mixing in the butter at a really slow speed. I sped it up towards the end out of impatience and it clumped up. This is how it looked like when it went in to the fridge and it never got better:

I kept making the cake in any event. I straighted it out, cut it in half and then crumb coated it. The frosting really was horrible to work with but I tried to keep working with it. I think I beat too much air in to it.

I frosted it as best I can and gave up frosting with the second one. So I piped it. It tastes delicious though it doesn't have the greatest frosting. At least I didn't give up!

I think the pipped one looks very pretty!

George Brown's Bittersweet Chocolate Truffle Flan

From the title, you can tell this is not a cake. But I had the pastry dough already thawed and thought I'd finish off the recipe tonight. Yes, this is the third thing I baked in two days. I am a bit crazy. So I rolled out the pastry dough and baked it.

I actually had (still have) no clue how long it should have been baked for. I baked it for 15 mins at 350f. The toothpick came out dry. Then I boiled 35% cream, mixed it into semi-sweet chocolate and stirred it until it was combined. Then added it directly to the cooled shell. According to the instructions, it should have been added through a sieve but I thought it would clog up the sieve...

Then came the hardest part for me. The designing. I am not an artist. You must show me/tell me. I can follow instructions but leave me to my own imagination and this is what I come up with!

Now maybe people will be afraid of letting me make their cake! :-)
I need to take it out of its baking tray. Will do so tomorrow. Will try it tomorrow as well. I hope it turns out well. Cannot eat anything sweet the rest of the day. I'm on sugar overload!
Next day update: This is really good. Good sweetness. Next time would put more raspberries and which chocolate. When you eat the raspberry with the sweets, it adds a great contrast. Shell is nice and solid but crumbles in the mouth. Yummmmmy. Will freeze one and see how it turns out.

I'd totally make this again!