Thanks to Julia of AromaCookery.com for inviting me to be her partner to the Discovery Travel and Living Cake Decorating session.
A new television show - "Cake Boss" airs tonight on Discovery Travel and Living at 7 pm. To help promote the show, the PR folks at Discovery invited members of the media and some bloggers to a Cake Decorating Session. (The bloggers could bring a guest, and I went as Julia's guest).
The cake decorating session was held last night at Creative Culinaire. We had Chef Judy Koh as the demonstrator, teaching us how to decorate cakes.
We had two tasks last night. To decorate a cupcake and a cake. Chef Judy demonstrated how to decorate a cupcake and this is her sunflower cupcake. Look how cute the cupcake is!
We had 15 mins to replicate it or come up with something nicer. All of us had 2 cupcakes each to decorate.
This is what I did. Not too bad right? (It's ok, if you think it's bad, leave a comment. I can take it.)
After the cupcakes, Chef Judy demonstrated to us how to make those beautiful cakes that you get to watch on "Cake Boss". Ooo... How exciting! I have never done anything like this before!
So the adventure begins:
All of us got a cake that has been baked earlier and cooled down. (There's no time to bake a cake from scratch and cool it down in 3 hours)
The first thing to do is to trim the top of the cake so it's even. After trimming, we overturn the cake. The bottom is nicer and flat, and it nicer for cake decorating.
The cake was then cut into two and spread with a layer of chocolate ganache.
Ooo... everyone put in a thick layer. Mine's too thin compared to what others spread on!
The cake is then assembled back. You might have noticed that the cake is now glossy.
Well, that's a layer of apricot jam. It acts as glue so that our fondant will stick to the cake.
The fondant we used was the instant kind! Just open the package, knead it and roll it flat with a rolling pin. ;-)
That's me rolling the fondant over my cake.
In the background is Julia's. She's so fast!
I cut off the extra trimming and this is the cake ready for decorating.
Oh, this tool is to further smoothen the surface. Chef Judy said, if we fail miserably in this, we might want to consider being a brick layer. LOL..
Everyone had started to decorate and I was still wondering how to decorate it. After going around taking photos, I decided I should start thinking! Aha! Yellow flowers. It seemed that on one is using yellow! Everyone was making pink hearts!
(It's the fondant trimming leftover that's added with some yellow food colouring and rolled out flat)
Ah... something's beginning to take shape. Randomness!
I was thinking, randomness makes it hard to cut the cake later.
How can I make it easy for people to cut the cake? So I thought putting flowers at the sides would make it easier! It can be used as a guide to slice the cake later. Each slice gets a flower!
I think I went overboard with yellow. Yellow flowers in the middle too? Eeewww....
I decided to change the middle flowers to blue. It brightens the cake up!
This is me using royal icing as glue for the flowers. Pipe out some icing and stick the flowers.
To make the cake look nicer, I put in silver balls in the middle of the flowers. Hey, cake decorating is not that hard after all!
(In reality, we took over 2.5 hours to decorate such a simple cake! As a Hokkien phrase goes, 'buay tan jia' if I am going to be a pâtissier.)
After spending so much time decorating it was photo taking time.
This is my cake posing with Bobby Chinn.
Hey, wait a minute. Bobby does not eat cake! He just loves being nasty to people on his show. Wrong show, wrong show....
The correct show is "Cake Boss". This is the cake posing with Buddy Valastro, the famous American pastry chef. That's the photo of his bakery: Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop in New Jersey.
Look he thinks my cake "can make it"!
Cake Boss premieres tonight at 7pm on Discovery Travel and Living.
(Channel 16 on Starhub if you are in Singapore / Channel 707 on Astro if you are in Malaysia)
P/s, you can watch it online if your computer's IP Address shows that you are in the US. You can purchase it on iTunes too.
(I brought to cake to work today and used it as a belated birthday cake for a colleague hehe)
11 comments:
oh wow.. that's really pretty. i just read this on boo's. same session rite? lovely!
CUMI & CIKI,
Boo's session is in KL. This session is in Singapore ;-)
She was making flowers. Too delicate for me!
What a lot of work! I bet it tasted great, too!
The oven of yours must have baked out wonders too.
Wow, what an experience this must have been! I think you did a great job for a first-timer.
Your photos of the randomness was taken at a great angle.
hello, C&C informed you had a similar decor session LOL your flowers looked good, at least it's much simpler!
This cake looks delicious and pretty! Great job!
I think you did a good job! Was the ladybeetle edible?
I love the flower cutouts - I would just eat them one by one - I'd be a terrible cake decorator! :P
Wah looks so fun, too bad I couldn't come for this session! Hey your cupcake looks great! Even more 3D than the original!
Hahaha, I love your comment on Bobby Chinn!
fondant...very sweet right?
Anon,
Thanks! :-)
babe_kl,
yes, way easier than the flowers you all did in KL!
memoria,
thanks!
Kate,
Yes, the ladybeetle is made from chocolate! Everything was edible, except maybe the muffin paper cup!
Camemberu,
Hehe.. Bobby Chinn sometimes has weird humour on TV. LOL
Anon 2,
Yes, very very sweet!
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