Fondant | My Sweet and Saucy

Posts Tagged ‘fondant’

Cakes, Cookies, & a Meme

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

Here are some photos of two recent orders I did this past week. One order was actually for a client I met through my blog. I got to know her even more when she attended one of my classes at Prep Kitchen Essentials. She was throwing a shower for her niece who was having a little boy and wanted me to do the cake and cookies for it. When she showed me the invitation I fell in love with the color scheme. It is so fun doing orders that have beautiful colors to work with! The cake was a variation of one that I made for my sister-in-law for her baby shower. Instead of a tiered cake, I just did a 1/2 sheet cake. The cake was a fluffy white cake with lemon cream and fresh raspberries and was covered in swiss meringue buttercream. Overall I was pretty happy with the cookies and cake!

The other order I did was for a neighbor of mine. It was her daughter’s first birthday party and she wanted a simple, but cute birthday cake. The theme was strawberries, so I went with pink and red colors and also put two strawberries on top to hint at what was inside. The cake was a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and fresh strawberries.

Last week I was also tagged by Kristin at The Kitchen Sink for a meme and I am finally getting around to it. So here it goes…

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Well, I was just finishing middle school…playing soccer, liking boys, and hanging out with the family.

What are five non-working things on my to-do list today?

1. Wish my Dad Happy Father’s Day!

2. Go to the farmer’s market.

3. Relax…since the past three days were crazy with work!

4. Blog…I guess I’m accomplishing it!

5. Exercise

What snacks do you enjoy!

1. Good bread

2. Pinkberry

3. Cheese

4. Ripe fruit

5. My sugar cookies

What would you do if you were a billionaire?

1. Help those around me who are in need of money. (My mom and dad practice this daily and always inspire

me!)

2. Travel…especially to Florence, Italy

3. Save

4. Buy a home in Belmont Shores

5. Put away money for my three nieces for college

Where have you lived?

All in California…Long Beach, San Diego, Costa Mesa, Torrance

What jobs have you had?

1. Babysitter and nanny

2. Grandma’s Ice Cream

3. Memories, a scrapbooking store

4. Teacher’s aide in a couple elementary schools and high schools

5. Pastry assistant at Zov’s Bakery & Bistro

6. Owner of Sweet & Saucy

And I am tagging anyone who wants to share a little bit about yourself with the blogging world. I would also love to know what your favorite blog is…I am always looking for a new blog to check out!

I also wanted to say thank you to The Recipe Girl for giving me the “Yummy Blog Award”.

She has a fantastic website, which you should definitely check out!

Tags: baby boy shower cake, Baby shower cake, baby shower sugar cookies, chocolate cake, fondant, vanilla buttercream
Posted in Baby Shower Ideas, Cakes, Children's Birthday Ideas, Cookies, Desserts | 46 Comments »

Two Cakes & The Cookbook Giveaway Winner

Monday, April 28th, 2008

Well, I am so excited to announce the winner of my first cookbook giveaway! Thanks to all 35 people who participated in this little contest! When I put the info into the random number generator on my computer it said that the winner was….#2!!! Congratulations Landa from the All-Purpose Girl Blog! Your new Martha Stewart Cookie Book will be on its way shortly!Now onto the cakes! This past weekend I had two events…one wedding and one birthday party. This was actually my first official wedding cake and I got to deliver it to the Queen Mary. The bride and groom were from England, which made it even more exciting, and came over to the U.S. just for their wedding. They were having a 1920′s theme wedding and so they sent me a picture of what they wanted the cake to look like. I put my own little twist on it and overall I was pretty happy with the outcome. The cake was carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and the top and bottom tier were covered in fondant, while the middle tier was covered in modeling chocolate. I used a technique called brushed embroidery to decorate the cake. First I made royal icing and colored it gold. Then I piped the design on freehand…basically I just looked at the photo that they sent me and tried to make a design similar to it. When piping I worked in segments…I piped on the royal icing and then used a small, wet paint brush and brushed the royal icing. I then let the icing dry. To get the glittery gold effect I used gold luster dust mixed it with a little vodka and painted over the piping to make it shimmer. Lastly I piped a simple border of royal icing around the bases of the cake.

The second event I had this weekend was a surprise birthday party where I made the appetizers and the cake. The appetizers were Salmon Cakes with Lemon Dill Sauce, Bruschetta on Garlic Crostini, and Hot Parmesan Artichoke Dip with Pita Bread. For the cake I made a chocolate cake with white chocolate whipped cream filling (see recipe below) and fresh strawberries and covered it with chocolate mousse buttercream. As you can see from the photos of the cake, I have been getting more and more into using fresh flowers with my desserts. I have the most adorable flower shop near my house and I love looking at their new flowers they get every day. The theme for the party was “Tequila Sunrise” and so they wanted a cake with the colors pink, red, and orange. I colored some vanilla buttercream I had red and piped a dot border around the edges of the cake and then used the same buttercream to pipe the birthday message. To get the flowers to stick in the cake, I wrapped a skewer around the stem of the flower and secured it with floral tap. Once I got to the party I was a little worried about the cake since we got a massive heat wave here in CA and it was around 90 degrees on Saturday…not so good for buttercream. Thankfully it survived though!

The recipe for white chocolate whipped cream is quite easy and only uses two ingredients: white chocolate and heavy cream

White Chocolate Whipped Cream

adapted from Fran Bigelow’s book, Pure Chocolate

Makes 3 cups

6 oz white chocolate, finely chopped

1 1/2 cups heavy cream, chilled

Melt the chocolate in a microwave safe bowl, at 30 seconds intervals, stirring each time. Let cool slightly. Whip the cream to very soft peaks. Working quickly, with a hand whisk add the lightly whipped cream all at once to the cooled melted chocolate. (Don’t reverse the order, or chips will form.) Whisk until thoroughly combined, but don’t overwhip or you will lose the smooth consistency. Chilled until needed.

Tags: 1920's wedding cake, brushed embroidery cake icing technique, carrot cake, chocolate buttercream cake, fondant, fran bigelow, luster dust, modeling chocolate, pure chocolate
Posted in Cakes, Desserts, Recipes, Wedding Ideas | 15 Comments »

Birthday Cake for Four

Monday, March 24th, 2008

I made this cake about a month ago for the mother of a dear friend of mine. She was celebrating three other of her friend’s birthdays along with her own, so I did a simple, yet elegant birthday cake for all four of them. I wrote all of their names along the cake board using royal icing and made the bow on top with fondant. Hopefully in the near future I can do a tutorial on making fondant bows for you! The cake had two different flavors: the top tier was chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and raspberries and the bottom tier was buttermilk cake with lemon cream and raspberries. I covered the cake in swiss meringue buttercream and then colored a portion of the buttercream and piped on small dots for the border.

Tags: birthday cake, fondant
Posted in Cakes, Desserts | 8 Comments »

Easter Egg Cake

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

I thought doing an Easter egg cake for clients would be fun, so I made a sample cake this past week to test it out. I used Wilton’s 3-D Easter Egg pan. The directions for baking the cake are all on the pamphlet that comes with the cake. I covered my cake in purple fondant and did yellow and white accents.

I frosted the cake in buttercream and then smoothed over the fondant. I then cut out dots with small circle cutters and cut the yellow ribbons with a pastry wheel crimper. I adhered the fondant with a dab of water. After all the fondant accents were on I brushed the whole cake with pearl luster dust. I then piped on a buttercream border with a #802 tip. Lastly I wrote “Happy Easter” with purple colored buttercream using a #2 tip.

Tags: Easter, Easter egg cake, fondant, wilton easter egg pan
Posted in Cakes, Easter | 3 Comments »

Musical Note Birthday Cake

Monday, March 10th, 2008

I have been doing more cakes lately, so I thought I would share some more photos and tips with you. One cake I did was for my uncle’s mother’s 80th birthday party. She has had a passion for music all her life so we decided to go with a musical note theme. Although the outside of the cake wasn’t as elaborate as some of my other designs the cake inside was absolutely delicious…I was wishing that I was invited to the party! The bottom tier was chocolate cake (one of the best I have tried lately…don’t worry I will post the recipes tomorrow) with white chocolate whipped cream and fresh strawberries. The top tier was my favorite buttermilk cake with lemon cream and fresh raspberries….one of my all-time favorite combo’s. Both cakes were covered in vanilla buttercream.

To make the red pearl border I used a technique that I learned from Earlene Moore at the Capital Confectioner’s cake & Sugar Art Show that I went to last month. First you roll out your fondant to your desired thickness (the larger the thickness the larger the pearls) and then you cut out circles with either the top of a large pipping tip or a small circle cookie cutter (again, depending on what size you want the pearls). Next you roll the fondant in your hands to make little pearls and then add them to a plastic jar. Put a little luster dust (whatever color you prefer) in with jar with the pearls and then put the lid on. Shake the pearls in the jar until they are evenly coated with the luster dust.

To make the musical notes I used a cookie cutter that I found at a local store and then cut it out of black fondant. To make the other type of note I just cut the side part off of it and then I had two types of notes. For the sharp sign I cut fondant strips and adhered them with water. To make the symbols on top I rolled black fondant by hand and formed them into the symbols. I brushed everything with black luster dust before I added it to the cake.

I adhered the notes to the buttercream cake and then piped on “Happy 80th Birthday Mom” with leftover buttercream that I colored red. I also added little dots with the red buttercream. Thanks for looking!

Tags: earlene moore, fondant, musical note cake
Posted in Cakes, Desserts, Products You'll Love | 6 Comments »

Princess Birthday Cake

Friday, March 7th, 2008

My beautiful niece Melody (yes, we have the same name) turned 5 years old yesterday and I had the privilege of making her birthday cake. She is definitely a girly girl so I thought I would do pink, purple, and green for the colors and do a flower/princess theme for the cake. I really haven’t done many fondant cakes before, since I am not a huge fan of the taste, but I wanted the cake to look a certain way and so I thought that fondant would be the best choice for it. The birthday girl loved the cake and so my mission was accomplished!

I am going to share a couple techniques that I used to get some of the details of the cake…hopefully they help you out. First, I think that covering the cake board that the cake sits on top of looks so much better when it is covered in fondant, so that it matches the rest of the cake. I taped two cake boards on top of each other so the base would be more stable and then put a little glucose on the board to make sure the fondant stuck well (you can also use cornsyrup). You can roll your fondant quite thin to cover the board and then you just cut off the excess with a knife. I then added ribbon to the edge of the board to give it a cleaner look. Simply rub your glue stick on the ribbon and adhere.

I then covered my cakes in buttercream and rolled the fondant out to about 1/8″-1/4″ thick. I covered the cakes in three different colors of fondant to give it a fun look, but you could cover it all in the same color if you wanted. I placed the bottom cake layer on the board and then inserted cake dowels into the cake and cut them to match the same height as the cake. (Note: all the cakes have a cardboard cake circle under them) I then stacked the middle layer on top and doweled that too.

I used the leftover fondant to make various sizes of flowers and then adhered them with a dab of water. Next I made large pearls to go around the bottom. To make the pearls you need to roll your fondant out to about 1/4″-1/2″ and then cut out circles with a small circle cutter. You can play around with the size of the pearls depending on the thickness of your fondant and the size of your cutters.

To make the tiara I rolled out fondant to about 1/8″ thick and then stamped it with a swirly design stamp. Next, I cut out the shape with my crown/tiara cookie cutter and trimmed the bottom so that it was straight across. Next, I placed the tiara on a cup with a small width and let it dry for a couple hours until it was stable. I adhered the tiara to the top of the cake with a dab of water or you can use tylose glue. I also added small dragees to the top of the tiara with a dab of buttercream to adhere. In some of the photos you can see that later on I added a small “M” on the tiara for “Melody”. I made this by forming fondant into the shape I wanted.

I was going to leave the cake like this, but then I decided to add some funky leaves and dots in green and I’m really glad I did because I think it made it “pop” a lot more.

To make the leaves and dots I just colored some of my leftover buttercream green and added it to a pastry bag with a #2 tip. Here are a couple of close up photos of the designs so you can see how I did them.

I also forgot to mention that before I piped the leaves and dots I brushed the whole cake with pearl luster dust to give it that extra shimmer and shine. Hopefully these tips help you out next time you make a cake!