Advanced Cakes, Day 6

Wedding Cake Day!

This will really just be a photo entry.

Here is chef's example cake...

And here is my cake...

And other people cakes....

Advanced Cakes, Day 5

Swag cake today. It is simply iced in buttercream, covered in fondant and decorated with a fondant border (our choice of design) and buttercream swags.

These cakes got boxed up to add our gum paste roses to later.

Then we tackled and divvied up 200 pounds of buttercream.............

Advanced Cakes, Day 4

Animal Caake Day!! The challenge for the day was this:

9 inch cake
iced with buttercream
basketweave sround the outside
three animals of the same species in different poses
decor to match your animals
a piped message


What popped in my head was the "three little pigs" so i went with that.

Here is the cake assembly..... are these series getting old yet?

Here is my cake...

Here are some other cakes from the class. I wanted to get photos of everyones cakes, but a bunch of people threw them away before I got photos. Oh well!

Advanced Cakes, Day 3

Today was another prep day! We made chiffon cakes...

Then gum paste. Usually, gum paste is purchased but we had to make this crazy finicky paste. Then we started to make roses. Mine are kind of flash colored, but I was going for an antiqued look.

Advanced Cakes, Day 2

Today we made a praline cake. It was hazelnut cake, hazelnut simple syrup, vanilla buttercream, and praline glaze. My camera died halfway through the process, so here are the first few steps only.

Advanced Cakes, Day 1.

Starting a new class! Advanced cakes is all about decoration, not flavor. Although the cakes taste ok, we don't really care.

On day one we did tons of prep. Lots and lots of buttercream as well as fillings.

Here is our praline (hazelnut) filling.

And buttercream.... if the room temp is to cold, you have to heat the bowl with a blowtorch.

Plated Desserts, Day 9

Last day of Plated Desserts!

We had to make and plate a mini entremet. That was really the only guideline. So here is mine...

It is a Chocolate Orange Entremet, wrapped in chocolate, orange and chocolate sauces, and sugar garnishes.

Plated Desserts, Day 6

Today was our Chopped challenge day. Yeah, so much fun!!

Each group had to pick three ingredients out of a hat and make three mini tasting portions of desserts. Our group got fresh oranges, almonds, and apple cider.

We each took one ingredient and made a dessert. We had two and a half hour to get everything done, and we lost one of our tablemates to the ER only half an hour in. So two of us had to tackle an abreviated version of our plan.

I made an orange pound cake with fresh oranges, orange marsala sabayone, and orange fennel brittle.

Ashley made spiced apple cider sorbet in a walnut lace cop with caramelized apple sauce.

The other last minute dessert was a almond tuile filled with chocolate almond mousse, raspberries, and toasted almonds.

In the end, our chef had 10 other chefs come in and blind judge our desserts. My group won Best Presentation, Best Taste, and Best Overall. We got third in Most creative. So 3 out of 4 is a pretty good record if I do say so myself!

Here are some other plates from the class.