Cookie Lynn

My third and final project for my Cake Decorating class this semester was to create an 8-inch fondant-covered cake, with gum paste flowers and leaves. A few of us decided to tackle tiered cakes as well, adding a 6-inch cake to the top.

I chose daisies because they are my favorite flower, my birth flower… and I have no shame in quoting You’ve Got Mail when I call them “the friendliest flower.” The concept of this cake came to me pretty quickly after choosing my flowers, and I’m pretty happy with the design, even if the execution needs a little work.

I used chocolate buttermilk cake recipe that my chef-instructor developed herself while working at a popular local bakehouse, Zingerman’s. It’s sort of a super-secret deal, and she said she’d only recently given the recipe to her brother after he’d nearly convinced her that she may die any day now without having passed the recipe on to the family. So, I cannot divulge the recipe, but I will say that it was fantastic, paired with a chocolate butter cream filling.

The fondant and the royal icing were made in class from scratch, so the only purchased component here was the gum paste used for the flowers. Hopefully the whole process won’t seem quite so laborious once I get a little more practice in.

The instructor for this class is looking into starting an Advanced Cake Design course, which I would be very interested in taking, even if I finish my program before it comes to light.

The only thing I wanted for my 7th birthday was a Fantastic Flowers kit. (I did get it, and I loved it.) Eighteen years later, I’ve discovered that making flowers, while essentially useless, is still pretty entertaining.

I’m going to be honest; I don’t really “get” using gum paste on cakes. Yes, it’s technically edible… but, you wouldn’t want to eat it. Most real and artificial flowers are equally non-toxic and don’t take nearly as much time and effort. Still, crafting something like this by hand is just fascinating. I’m really looking forward to learning other types of flowers.

The topmost rose was made solely by hand, with no tools at all. The instructing chef told us to imagine that we were stranded on a desert island without our kits, but inexplicably found a batch of gum paste and floral wire. (The conversation quickly diverged to reveal that most of us own all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls, and still watched them regularly. I don’t recall how.)

The bottom two roses were made with this kit by Wilton and was actually very similar to the aforementioned Fantastic Flowers kit.

I hope to make this one of my first step-by-step guides, as soon as I learn a bit more and can coordinate with my husband/photographer.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

We’ve started fondant in my cake decorating class. I’d never had it before, but we did a taste comparison with pre-made commercial fondant and a few variations we made from scratch… I was pretty unenthused about all of them. (Though, my group made it with “homemade” bourbon vanilla, and was my favorite…)

The whole process was much easier than I expected it to be, and I do understand why it is more popular from an aesthetic point of view, as I was pretty pleased with my finished product. However, I think my interest in the baking and pastry field is leaning more towards creating tasty sweets than cake design.

Either way, I am still super-excited to be learning all the various aspects of decorating that I’ve never tried before, and will be very glad to have them in my skill set.

This cake was taken to my mom for her birthday, which happened to land on the same day as this lesson… Worked out nicely, I think.

So, I’ve never attempted to do royal icing on cut-out cookies before. I’ve been making these sugar cookies since I was in middle school, but I’ve always slathered them with homemade buttercream. Though I still believe that buttercream is a far superior topping as far as taste is concerned, I can’t deny that royal icing has it beat in aesthetics.

So, armed with Cookie Craft and an almost unnatural love of Valentine’s Day, I set out to make these heart-shaped cookies.

I used a sugar cookie recipe that I wrote down as a kid, which is now pretty badly beat up and barely legible, but is still my favorite.

1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3 1/2 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well. Sift together dry ingredients, then add to wet a little at a time. Chill dough for 1 hour or until firm. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness and cut out desired shapes. Bake at 350 degrees for 7-9 minutes.

A few notes on this project;

* I’ve read that royal icing can be a bit tricky, yielding various results from the same recipe, and that usually a bit of eyeballing is in order to get the right consistency for the flood icing. Unfortunately, as this was my first time, I didn’t know what the right consistency was… as evidenced by the little points and peaks in my icing.

* Even if you’ve bought a cake decorating kit, you’ll likely need to buy multiples of certain tips, especially ones used for writing and borders. Of course, I’ve known this for quite awhile, as I go through around ten each of #5, #10, and #22 each day at work, but I still haven’t got around to stocking my own kit with these must-haves. As a result, each of the colors were piped with a different size of tip.

* For a good primer on royal icing decorating, go check out Sweetopia’s tutorial, as well as the trouble-shooting guide, which I’ve already stored in my memory banks for my next cookie-making attempt. (Target date; Easter.)

On Valentine’s Day 2008, I decided to make this heart-shaped cake on a whim.

It’s the basic chocolate cake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, with an added splash of orange extract, baked into a sheet cake, then cut into hearts using a large cookie cutter. The filling is an orange-flavored buttercream, and the whole thing is covered with a chocolate ganache, both adapted from VCTOTW.