Asian-themed cakes, like for yakudoshi, are one of Cake Creations' biggest sellers. Lori Tamashiro decided to teach us, step by step, how to make her design. It's something she's created over the years after getting repeated requests and then feedback about what people like. She included a lot of Japanese elements in this.
Mine
To make it, she taught us how to pipe bamboo and a flying crane.
My practice bamboo
My sorry looking crane
My crane definitely needs work. Then, we followed her step by step as she piped and airbrushed the quarter sheet cake.
Lastly, we got to work with a new frosting - whipped cream - to see what it's like to use that kind of product. We got to design our own 5 inch yellow cakes to take home. Most people did a variant of the Asian theme she just taught us, but I forgot that I'm a bit of a non-conformist, and I did Hello Kitty. Taking this class brings back memories of how I was in grade school.
Using an illustration of Hello Kitty, I freehanded the outline in the cake using a little paint brush, and then piped the frosting in. Then I flattened it out and scraped off half the frosting. Then I added the detail.
Um, I forgot to color my frosting before piping it. Reluctantly, I airbrushed part of it, which I found difficult because the air blast started blowing away my frosting (the nose and some letters) when I got too close. If I held the airbrush further away, then it sprayed too many other things on the cake.
OK, live and learn. But, I like the basic design. Extremely girly, but I like it.
Ocean-themed cakes are one of the signature items of Cake Creations, so in this class, we learned to pipe, airbrush, and decorate that. We got cake cardboards to practice on. We iced that and then decorated it.
First, Lori gave a demo of how she does it. I felt like I was watching Bob Ross' PBS show, The Joy of Painting. When I see him do it, it all looks easy and possible. Then I try and it's like, what the heck? Hence, Lori talked while she decorated, making it look so easy.
My doodlings
Stuff placed in no particular order while I fooled with the technique
Molds for gumpaste shapes
She talked about how to sketch out the canvas, how to draw the big items in first and let the little things fall into place around it, and then how to pipe all the figures in. We got a quick intro to gumpaste molds to add texture. We saw how to airbrush it.
In my hands, the piping bag, paintbrush, and airbrush gun were unwieldy and clumsy. Still, it was interesting to try. If nothing else it gives you real appreciation for how difficult the craft really is!
BOILED ICING
Lori taught us how to make boiled icing, which tastes like marshmallow and is much trickier to make than the buttercream we've been using for weeks.
Timing is everything with boiled icing
Lasts only a day
Make meringue cookies with leftover boiled icing
Now THIS is a bowl! (12 qts)
COOKIES
This is such a dangerous hobby for my wasitline. I spend way more time in bakeries now than ever before. I now find myself browsing in the bakery aisle, or going to different bakeries, to just look at other people's work. I go to bakeries and I buy treats to eat and analyze, to study the texture and see what I should strive for.
I see things differently now that my relationship to baking has changed from passive to dynamic. I'm a novice, I readily admit. But it sure keeps life fun and fresh to try new skills.
On my own, I practiced making sugar cookies and icing them. I bought more cookie cutters (in addition to my hand me downs from Mom), and played around one week.
My friend Jason's birthday
I am so lucky my housemate has a sweet tooth. The most massive sweet tooth I've ever seen, actually. How he stays so thin is amazing.
Most of all, I loved giving Olivia her custom cookie. She was so happy with it. To see the smile on her face when I presented it to her was even better than the reward of a sugary snack!
Lei making and airbrushing started off the first class of this Intermediate series. We got to work with a variety of airbrushes, from a cheap starter one ($100) to the $800 professional grade one that the cake gals use.
Professinal airbrush
It was SO MUCH FUN. I had no idea airbrushing was that addictive. I thought it was easy, and it made coloring the cake easier. It almost makes me understand why people like tagging, though I must clarify that I cannot condone illegal graffiit.
Lori
How to hold it
Practice fine and thick lines
My graffiti
Joy
If I buy an airbrush, you can bet every other kind of food that can be colored, will. Pink potatoes, blue butter, red pancakes...
We also learned how to make six different kinds of lei: plumeria, carnation (which to me looks like torch ginger), ilima (with maile and pikake), Micronesian ginger, orchid, rosebud.
PlumeriaCarnation
Ilima, with maile and pikake
Ginger and rosebud
Rosebud
I was tired. That's a lot of flowers. We all got tired forearms. It gets tiring to keep squeezing the bag after a while. My favorite is the rosebud, which of course will be prettier when I really do it because I'll color it for the cake. Which one do you think I should use for Olivia's birthday cake?
This class is the fourth in a series of four. We had more flower lessons and a "final" which comprised of us making a garden-themed cake.
We learned: sweetpea flower, rosebud (lying down), rope border, ribbon, and basket weave.
Classmates
ICE DIRTY TO ME
In between this, the teachers brought out our cakes and taught us to "dirty ice" the cake, also known as "crumb frosting."
It's a thin layer of frosting you apply to the cake, which you can get the crumbs mixed up in and not care about. Then you refrigerate that for 20 minutes and after it hardens, bring it out and ice it for real. You can save the crummy frosting separately for future dirty icings. Frosting saves indefinitely in the refrigerator.
CAKE OFF
Then, the cake challenge was to ice our cakes with certain rules: you had to basketweave the side, and you had to use flowers on the top. Most of us ended up sharing bowls of frosting (to not waste and to be efficient), and even bags of colored frosting. That way you just switch out the tips.
The KCC gals
Naturally, everyone ran to make the basket first. And the brown food coloring was in high demand. Some of us decided to forego brown in favor of another color. I was sharing bags with Joy so she did her basket first. I decided to do my flowers first.
You know what's most exciting? To be able to play around and make all these pretty things. I know that from a design aesthetic, clean and simple is better, but I am always so tempted to practice every skill I have because I love turning a lump of white gooey stuff into a pretty little sculpture.
I decided to make a bunch of roses for the top, and then I got to work on the basket on the side. By this time I was tired. I had gone for a run before class and I was sleepy. It was 8 p.m., which in my world is dangerously close to bedtime. I know. I am so breaking all my rules, staying out late, by taking this cake class. What's next for me? Dancing on the table tops without my apron? Total anarchy?
Anyhow, I am trying to say I didn't finish the basket weave. I just wasn't feeling it. Or, in Ebonics, "fillin' it." I just stopped. I threw some green vines around the back half and called it a day.
It still looked OK if viewed from the front. Claus called an "anchor cake", after the way we news anchors would have our blazers pinned in the back to make it more form fitting, and shorts and slippers under the desk - and it's OK because the folks at home can't see that!
We lined up all our cakes and voted for the best one. There was a three way tie. (Among seven cakes?!) Joy's was one of the winners. I voted for Joy's. Not because we're friends, but because her Virgo sensibilities meant she did meticulously perfect work, with a simple but elegant aesthetic.
Mine
Joy's
This was a really fun course! If you ever wanted to learn a little bit about cake decoration, I would totally recommend it. Even if you don't take the whole series that they offer, you will still learn a lot from this class. Especially if you are starting from zero, which is where I was. Also, we end up laughing and gossiping about various girl stuff, so it ended up being a very girly social experience. (Note: male pastry chefs take the classes too so some classes aren't all female.)
ACE OF CAKES
I'm officially a new fan of Ace of Cakes. It happens to be on when I'm ready to look at the TV and I've seen enough episodes to realize that I'm now hooked. I haven't seen Cake Boss, though I'm told it's more about family drama than pretty cakes. If that's true, then I'll probably stick to Ace of Cakes. I love to look at their cake designs. It's amazing! Amazing!!
Who saw the one with the UFO blowing up the White House? I would never think of making a cake like that, but looking at that show sure has me stretching my imagination in many different ways. And a related aside: I think I'm quite liberal, but I wouldn't have that for a wedding cake. Would you??
What is most surprising to me about this whole process is that it's more about art than baking. You can really separate the two skills sets. I understood that early on in cake classes, but watching the show validates my theory. It kind of makes me want to take art classes (though it's way down on my list for the foreseeable future) because I have had to freehand all the designs and I'm not the best artist. I've never wanted to take art classes before this.
CLIENTS
I have a growing list of "clients," I joke. They're actually just friends and relatives (big and small alike) for whom I've offered to supply the birthday cake. Free, of course. I just want the practice. I could ice the same cake 20 times for practice, but there's something about the urgency of a real-life situation that makes me take it more seriously. I've practiced at home but I tend to get lazy and slack off after a bit. Maybe it's the old news-hound in me that likes the pressure of doing something for real, versus a dry run.
We learned how to make several different types of flowers: rose (the hardest, according to the teachers), plumeria, daisy. I also had a tip from my mother which can make mums, so I practiced that on my own.
The rose took forever and I think many of us would agree it needs more practice. Mine come out puffy, like old roses about to die. Joy's came out slumped over to the side, which then became hard to place all the petals on it. I think those were common problems. The teachers' roses looked like fresh, young, about-to-bloom buds.
You use a flower nail (WHICH YOU DON'T WASH WITH WATER OR IT WILL RUST!) to make the rose. It's a complicated process. We practiced all night.
The rose base is about the size of a Hershey Kiss
As a visual aid, we taped a dime onto the nail and traced it with the Sharpie. We then taped small parchment paper squares to the nail to practice on.
This way the oil won't rub the ink off.
Rose center is about this size
Practice making rose centers
Fallen rose
It got messy after this, but here, I'm learning to add all the petals. That's tricky. I couldn't take more rose photos because my hands got super sticky.
Plumeria
My cupcakes: rose, daisy, plumeria, mum
The plumeria (aka apple blossom) is easy. The daisy is harder. The mum is easy.
Diane Ako is a mother and wife. She spent 16
years in television
news. She freelances in writing, video, and consulting. She is currently reinventing herself!
