Happy First Birthday, Avery!

Today is Avery's first birthday, and I'm honored to have been tapped to make her first cake. What you're looking at is a 6" on top of an 8", enough to feed 25-30.

The interior is a new chocolate cake recipe that I'm loving called Black Onyx. It's a very very dark brown, and was layered with pale pink vanilla-bean buttercream. The name comes from the type of cocoa used in the batter, and it has a reputation for being less moist than other cocoas. It's true -- it's drying -- so to counter that I incorporated extra butter and whizzed a generous amount of Guittard milk chocolate chips then folded them in after all the batter was mixed.

The vanilla bean buttercream is an Italian buttercream, based in cooked sugar added to whipped egg whites. It makes for a very shiny, thick, smooth buttercream -- not like those grittier, tooth-achingly sweet powdered sugar-based buttercreams.

To the Prince's, it was great working with you and a big hug to the birthday girl!

Paul Smith Never Tasted So Good.

Voila! Here is the Paul Smith-inspired baby shower cake delivered this morning. The interior is a chock-full-o'-nuts Hazelnut cake, filled with a thin layer of ganache and Hazelnut-Praline buttercream. Each tier is four cakes high, and the exterior features fondant in both colored white and chocolate.

A lot of learning happened with this cake and I love love loved doing it. At left you'll see the hazelnuts in process: The upper tray are the red hazelnuts still in their skins (blanched in 1 qt water + 1 Tbsp baking soda and a glug of olive oil) and below that the beautiful, skinless white hazelnuts. Yes, I did this by hand. Yes you can buy them already skinned. As I said, a lot of learning happened with this cake :\ .

The stripes on the top tier took the longest to do: 9 hours all told with coloring, trimming, cutting, laying together, and attaching to the cake. Note to self: Leave yourself a full day for each tier you plan on doing this to. :)

The drawing of the top-down view of a crawling baby on top was done with a food-coloring pen, and was the motif for the event.

I loved working on this cake! The fashion-forward inspiration (mentioned in my last post -- Paul Smith's designer stripe) was really fun, and the clients were the best. Best comment when I was setting up the cake: "That's a cake?!" That's why I do it. All the work is worth that "whoa" moment from the viewers.

Anthia, Catherine, thanks for letting me be a part of this and I hope the cake was everything you hoped for!

Here's one more shot of the top tier in progress, sans bottom band and a shot of the cake on its cake table:

Ever Heard of Paul Smith?

I couldn't blame you if you haven't. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill name. Heck, I used to be a 'Smith' also. It was easy to hide when Google'd.

But Paul Smith is a different story.

He's *the* Paul Smith. A designer known for his legendary command of fine striping, he has made a name for himself as a master of order in the chaotic world of fashion. I bought a pair of Paul Smith cufflinks for my husband (stripey, oval) and they're his favorite pair. I bought a pair of striped Paul Smith pumps (one of his few forays into women's wear) and felt incredibly hott in them while they lasted.

Now, friends, the universe has conspired to inspire me into a Paul Smith cake. A yogi-friend of friends asked for a baby shower cake done to mimic the look of the mom-to-be's nursery room fabric. A stripe by Paul Smith called Rhythmic 001:

This will be a two-tier hazelnut cake with chocolate icing -- a classic Rocher pairing and great flavor profile for our new Fall season. The top of the cake will feature a pastillage disc with a line drawing depicting a top-down view of a baby crawling -- the motif for the event.

It's awesome to have such a fashion-forward client! This makes me think about what an LV Cherry Blossom cake might look like. Or a Bottega Venetta woven cake...hmm...I'll spend this week tinkering with methods to produce these clean stripes. Some with modeling chocolate, some with fondant, but all yummy and beautiful. I'll post pix when it's done. :)

Until then, hug your favorite Smith. We could all always use a little more love, and you only get what you give.

Wee Cakes in Menlo Park

Wee Cake anyone? This is just a sampling of the 16 adorable cakes designed by BethAnn Goldberg at Studio Cake in Menlo Park, Ca. I spent my last three weeks of school interning for BethAnn working on this line of cakes and I loved every minute of it!

First, BethAnn drew out all the images of what the cakes should look like. This monkey is stacked with alternating chocolate and vanilla cake and filled with caramel buttercream, then covered with brown fondant and decorated with fondant details. The end result was a delightful set of 16 Wee Cakes, soon too appear on BethAnn's site at http://www.studiocake.com/.

"Yeah, Andrea, those are cute and all, but what did *you* do?" I'm so glad you asked.

I baked all the cakes (just under 30 total), made many pounds of fondant, color-matched it all to color swatches BethAnn had, then used it to cover and decorate the cake boards. After that BethAnn, Arlene and I stacked, buttercreamed, then covered the cakes with fondant, and added the details. I loved the whole process, but the cakes really came to life when I worked with BethAnn to make and affix the key elements like paws, noses, ears, bellies, collars, flowers, spines on dinosaur backs. I also created a tool used to indent the sheep's fur with swirls and in the case of our Alien Wee Cake (named "Allen"), I stuck on *three* eyeballs and inserted antlers. That's right, I said antlers. At Studio Cake, anything that sticks out of something's head are not antennae or horns, they're "antlers". Love it.

Here's a picture of the sheep and Allen for your viewing pleasure:

All in all I think I might have had the best internship ever. BethAnn and Arlene, the powerhouse duo behind Studio Cake, are the most generous, kind, nurturing, funny, real people you could ever ask to work with. They will be lifelong CFFs (Cake Friends Forever) in my book, and I so look forward to my future knowing they'll be in it. :) Check them out on Food Network's Nov. 1 airing of the Simpson's 20th Anniversary Cake Challenge!

I also wanted to send a shout out to Cindy Davis, the amazing chocolatier who shares the Studio Cake space with BethAnn. Cindy is the principal chef-owner of Xocolata, and kept us filled with truffles during our work. She's a lovely person and her work is outstanding! Check out her product at http://www.xocolataconfections.com/. Cindy, thanks for the "ride-along" chocolates eaten during my 5-hour trek down the 5 to LA. They made the journey so much faster!

Big hugs to my Menlo Park peeps: BethAnn, Arlene, Cindy, Gary, Pat, Dizz, and Fanny! Thanks also to my hosts and in-laws in Hayward: Tom, Alex, and Zoie (TAZ!). Love to the Aptos Crew: Embrulie! Kisses to Mom and Dad, and HELLO GREG AND PICO in LA! I missed you guys...

Here are a few more pix of other Wee Cakes for fun:

Adventures at Studio Cake

Hi All! Sorry for the long silence. As you can see I've been hard at work on a line of cakes called Wee Cakes for BethAnn Goldberg here at Studio Cake! The line is a set of carved cakes like a ladybug, octopus, or puppy, and they sit on a fondant-covered cake plate, like the one I'm covering here. I made 15 of these today to host the menagerie of cakes we're going to work on tomorrow and next week. Here are three shots of the rack full of trays hosting the various elements of each cake in the line:

While I worked on that, BethAnn started her day by putting the finishing touches on a birthday cake for Mary Meeker, famed internet financial guru. I can't publish a pic of it here because Mary is supposed to get it this evening, and I don't want to spoil the surprise!

After that, BethAnn and her lovely assistant Arlene worked on a very big robot cake. Here's a shot of Arlene painting the whole thing silver and a detail of his iron cupcake:

We're having a blast putting all this together and I can't wait to see everything completed. I'll try to post more soon!

Lots of love,

Andrea (and BethAnn and Arlene)

Hanging in the Hayward Highlands

I arrived yesterday in a lovely area of the Hayward, CA hilltops called the Highlands. My lovely sister-in-law Alex, her hubby Tom, and their daughter (my neice!) Zoie, Greg, Pico and I are relaxing nicely amid gorgeous fog in the morning and bright sunshine around Noon.

We have a long view of the expanse of water that is the SF Bay out the open gating across the back yard. It turns into liquid gold around 6:00 p.m. and is equal in beauty to the fire-sunsets we've been experiencing in LA. It's a really nice perch up here -- makes me want to move North. (Greg, are you listening? :)

I've got some downtime right now, so am spending it keeping Zoie from eating Pico's food and transcribing three module's worth of method notes from school. My last class this past Friday was nothing but net: We made a pot luck buffet worthy of a king. Cecille, your gravy was amazing -- thanks for the leftovers!

I'll post more later when I have some cool pix to show and something more exciting to say. For now sign me,

Auntzilla

Menlo Park, Here I Come!

A little over two years ago, my folks celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. I threw them a party up in Northern California, and needed to find a baker, florist and restaurant that would help us put on the festivities and, for the cake portion of the evening, was lucky enough to find Studio Cake, and its founder/baker BethAnn Goldberg.

I explained to her that I needed something sophisticated, maybe with gold accents (it was their golden anniversary), and should feed about 20 people or so. I figured two tiers, one lemon and one chocolate, should keep everybody happy.

During the party, my mom and dad cut the cake BethAnn made. It was a really special moment (and I'm sure a rare kind of event in California -- 50 years of marriage is unheard of  'round these parts).

In the background of the photos of them feeding eachother, you can see a black-and-white pic of that very couple feeding their original cake to eachother 50 years prior.

The cake was outstanding, and I was so struck by BethAnn's personal story (she was a NASA engineer when she decided to do cake for a living), that I followed her progress and sent her emails every now and then to see how she was doing, and ask cake advice.

Over the last two years, BethAnn was hand-picked by Martha Stewart as one of ten "Dreamers into Doers" featured in Martha Stewart Living magazine. The honor got BethAnn an appearance on the show along with a rare feature segment showing her making a cake. She has also notched on her belt an appearance on the Food Network Challenge: Shrek Cakes, and did a fantastic job with her entry based around the release of a Shrek movie.

Fast forward two years to present day. As my schooling comes to a close, I needed to find a place to do my externship. I thought I'd take a shot in the dark and email BethAnn about working with her. She returned my inquiring email with a Yes, so that means I'll be heading up to her shop in Menlo Park, California a few days hence. Lucky me!

I'm really looking forward to working with her and hope to blog about my projects and work there (but don't ask me for any Studio Cake secrets -- I'm a lockbox!!). I'll be gone for three weeks leaving behind my lovely husband Greg and our 14-year-old sweet dog Pico, which makes me sad, but it will only be for three weeks. Menlo Park, here I come!

Baby Shower Cupcakes for Kate

Hot pink and leopard was on order for Superfine Kate's baby shower two weekends ago, and it was great fun to work on! The leopard/pink combo reminded me of Paris in the 40s or 50s, so I was inspired to make the following cupcake tower with flavors requested by Kate and her Mom, Barbara (uber party-planner extraordinaire):

I developed a cupcake recipe for Kate's baby shower inspired by the ever-popular Red Velvet cake. This one I'm calling (you guessed it) Pink Velvet. It's a baby pink, very soft cake, and on here we topped with pink buttercream.

The lower tiers were cupcakes done in hankie papers, and the upper tiers were done with leopard-print cupcake papers. The topper was a jumbo cuppie large enough to hold these *perfect* baby booties I found online. Now she has baby's first pair of shoes, and they're sassy as heck!!

If you look closely (click the image for a larger view), you'll see the small edible baby bottles I made to go on the top-tier white cupcakes.

All around it was a terrific experience and working with Barbara and Kate was a real joy.

Here's Kate holding the baby shower cupcake tower topper with baby's first pair of shoes.

Congratulations, Kate!

White Lightning

In the Southern states where my people are from, they call moonshine "white lightning." I like to think of these white chocolate fudge nuggets as something comparable (though the alcohol content is much lower -- more on that later). I'm open to name suggestions.

This white fudge is studded with semi-dried cherries rehydrated in my current favorite cooking liquor, Armagnac. I soaked them for 10 or 20 minutes, then cut them in half and threw them in my white chocolate/butter/condensed milk base. I also grabbed a handful of crunchy cocoa nibs (the raw seed in the cacao pod which becomes chocolate after some processing).

Once the fudge was mixed and set, I tempered some semisweet chocolate and half-dipped them in. After whizzing some pistachios in a blender, I had a nice bowl of bright green and purple pistachio bits, just begging to dress something up. So I dipped the wet milk-chocolate end of the fudge pieces in that too for good measure.

You might've seen me write about tempering chocolate about five or six weeks ago. It hasn't gotten any easier. To temper all kinds of chocolate, there are three temps you have to take it to: High point (melting it and melting the sugars), Low point (preserving the cocoa butter emulsion inside the chocolate), and Working point (a few degrees above Low to loosen it up just enough to pipe, use for dipping, or pour out on a sheet and cut).

I'm an impatient, instinctive cook, and tend to take the chocolate to within a few degrees of each, so my stuff gets out of temper. This is why you're not seeing my streaky, fat-bloom-covered toffee pieces here. I'll post those when they're actually superfine.

I need to practice tempering this weekend (it's Friday at 4:46 right now) so I can do well on my Monday exam. I have to make two truffles (12 dipped and 12 molded), as well as an all-chocolate box to present the truffles in. I've made the box once and I tell you folks, it is an exercise in managing your frustration trying to create a stable structure of chocolate in LA in August. Pray for me.

Tempering my temper,

Andrea

Good Medicine

Imagine waking at 4:10 a.m. and driving under moonlight to a kitchen with several stoves along one wall, wooden work tables and a few quiet girls in chef's whites gracefully stirring bowls of ganache, putting pots of water on to boil, and chopping large blocks of chocolate into small chunks, chips and shavings.

You wrap yourself in an apron and do the same, knowing your work will result in something that turns someone's day around. Bad meetings that haven't happened yet might end with a co-worker offering up something I've made and as soon as it hits the tongue, the team forgets the tension, and there is perspective once more. We're making "good medicine." The remedies for anything that ails you. Today's prescription: Six kinds of truffles, something for each aspect of your personality (more if you need it, Sybil):

Now you have some sense of the elation I feel at the dawn of each work day. I know that when I start, soon I'll have something that delights the down, might elevate the Eeyores, and do what I was meant to do: Nurture your soul with the alchemy that is tempered chocolate, fruit puree, espresso, port, salt and pepper. Something tells me I'd be burned at the stake in Salem for this.

Above is the result of today's work, and clearly its got me waxing poetic. You might feel the same if you spent your breakfast stimulating your brain's pleasure center with a variety of chocolates and experimenting with flavors. These truffles have been designated as this year's holiday gifts, so rest assured beloved readers, you too will be enjoying these soon.

Here are the deets: In the pic above from the upper left corner, we have nut-clusters called "Splitter Truffles." No one knows why -- I think it's because they can cure a splitting headache in two bites. They are made of a tempered white chocolate and praline paste mix, tossed with salted/toasted/chopped hazelnuts and almonds. Once balled and set, they are bottom-dipped in tempered milk chocolate.

The next set of dark, ball-shaped truffles have a lovely center made of black pepper and ruby port. They're dipped in tempered dark chocolate and due to my lust for things decadent, dusted with gold.

Below those are milk chocolate truffles with orange-flavored centers. The red-orange color on top comes from a light painting of colored cocoa butter. Nom nom nom.

The milk chocolate squares are filled with an espresso-chocolate center, and topped with a bean-shaped coffee/chocolate goody.

Next are the shiny white-orange domes. These are filled with a light apricot/ancho chile/lime juice ganache. If that scares you, dear reader, I'm okay with that. More for me.

Finally, in the lower-right corner is a version of the Rocher, popular in many stores around the holidays. I opted for a simple single slivered almond on top rather than the tar-and-feather approach of chocolate and nuts found on the more common version. Hope you approve.

So the next time you need a mood-boost, pick up your favorite coffee and a truffle. Any kind will do. In a pinch, have a Spoon Truffle: A spoon + Nutella = joy.

Big love,

Andrea

Wedding at the Beach

Hi Superfiners, Long time, no blog post. As you can see I've been pretty busy with our latest assignment, a wedding cake with sugar flowers. The assignment was to design a cake out of three round tiers. It had to feature flowers that fit a design of my choosing, show some fine piping, some kind of embossing or sculpting on the cake, and had to be completed alongside our regular in-class tasks and homework assignments.

To the left is the result of my work. I colored my fondant in three different shades of sage green (Americolor's "Avocado" gel paste), then covered these 6, 8, and 14" tiers.

I let that set up then made up some royal icing and piped the white coral and little pearls between each tier. I shaped many many shells in fondant and placed them in small piles around the coral. If I didn't have to follow requirements I'd have made these out of white chocolate...can you imagine getting a slice of this cake and a bonus chocolate shell on the side? I love it.

Throughout the week we were being taught how to make different flowers out of sugar. Typically sugar paste (aka gum paste) is used due to it's incredibly hard and durable final state, but it takes a long time to dry. Instead we used fondant for our flowers, and it worked great. The flowers were admittedly a little more fragile, but heck, that's the nature of what we're going for: Fragility and fine appearance.

We were taught two lilies (stargazer shape and calla), a peony, roses, stephanotis, orchids and accents like small buds and leaves. On this cake you'll see roses, orchid buds, and stephanotis.

Today I spent the morning petal-dusting the flowers to bring them to life with colored centers and edges, then floral-taped small sprays of flowers together and placed them around the cake and on top.

This module was my favorite by far: The work was challenging, but so incredibly fun. Channelling all my energy and creativity into this cake was incredibly rewarding and I can't wait to do my next one!!

Monday we start our sugar and chocolate module in which we make showpieces. I'm guessing these will be tall sculptures in both mediums, so I'm stocking up on the Aloe to squirt on the burns. Sugar is dangerous folks, don't try this at home!!

More to come,

Andrea

Monkey Fun

Today was our third (and my final) day of working on this cake, a chocolate children's cake with a chocolate and pastillage sculpture on top. The requirements were 1) to create a scene out of chocolate and pastillage that was suitable for a girl's party that had to contain at least one cocoa painting (more on that later), a "Garrett Frill" (the draping around the side), and the whole top sculpture had to be removeable for cake cutting.

I chose this scene of monkeys in a boat. The pastillage is a white sugar paste that hardens nicely for painting and decor. The sail, palm leaves, boat and plate the sculpture sits on are all made of pastillage.

The two most prominent monkeys were sculpted out of dark molding chocolate (smells like brownies...mmm) and white molding chocolate. Different shades were achieved by mixing the two.

The decoration along the side is what's called a Garrett Frill, made with half-circles of chocolate fondant, then rolled under a skewer to create the frill. It's tricky as all get out: You have to make sure not to poke, rip, stick down, or otherwise damage the delicate frill in the making of it, then once it's affixed to the side of the cake, gently stick two or three toothpicks into the cake under the frill to prop up the folds while it dries hard to give it some life. It's finished with chocolate palm leaves and coconuts.

Next: A three-tier wedding cake! Stay tuned...

The Princess Cake

I've seen this green beast in many local bakeries of fine goods, but never really knew what it was. It frightened me a little, with it's persistently green exterior and mysterious dome shape. What was in it? Would I like it? Why for God's sake is it so green?!

To know your enemy is to conquer her, so after reading over the recipes, diagrams, and history of this thing called a Princess cake, I get it.

There are versions of it around the world, apparently. Most all tend to be structured like this one: Three layers of yellow cake seperated by strawberry or raspberry jam, fresh raspberries, and layers of vanilla buttercream. A crumb-coat goes on, then this pistachio-green-tinted, very thin layer of marzipan is laid over and smoothed out. After that a rose goes on top. We made ours out of extra marzipan colored pink, then cascaded some petals down the side.

How did it get its dome shape? It's very complicated: We baked it in a bowl. :). It puffs up, but we trimmed off the puffed part to level it, then flipped it over. Voila: A dome.

Yes, there was a little flat spot on the very bottom of the bowl causing a sheared surface at the top of the dome, but nothing a glob of buttercream and some careful sculpting couldn't handle. I'm finding more and more that buttercream and rose petals are the pastry chef's best tools for improving the look of cakes as well as correcting visual anomalies. They work lovely wonders.

Greg and I haven't cut into this one yet, but when we do, I'll post pix of the inside. More to come!

Croquembouche Day

Day 2 of my wedding cake module and we're in the midst of learning how to make the traditional French wedding cake called a Croquembouche. It's a tower of vanilla cream-filled puffs (the same as used for cream puffs or eclairs) held together with caramel cooked to a hard crack.

Tomorrow I'll post shots of the base made of nougatine, a caramel/almond slice mixture that hardens to a glassy, crack finish. While it's still warm we roll it thin and cut two 8" plates out of it, and some "tiger's teeth," triangles that we will bend and use to decorate the nougatine plates all the way around.

More to come!

Dessert Under the Sea

Who doesn't like puff pastry? It's buttery, flaky, and oh-so-fattylicious.

I worked with puff pastry several modules ago, but for this assignment our chef wanted us to be inventive with it and make it appropriate for a plated dessert. I've got lots of sea-themed goodies at home due to some experiments with Under-the-Sea cakes, so applied a bunch of those tools to this dessert to give it an ocean theme.

The starfish is my puff element. It's a top and bottom cut with a starfish cookie cutter and filled with chocolate-almond cream. It's tough to retain recognizeable shapes with puff pastry (usually the final product is so puffed that it warps the original shape), so when I put the top and bottom together, I sealed the edges with a fork. The fork tines gave a great texture, helping the starfish keep it's shape and stay, well, starfish-y looking.

The treasure chest has white chocolate pearls on it and contains coconut pastry cream topped with a white chocolate sand dollar. The "coral" is baked isomalt streaked with orange coloring. In front of the chest are three shells made of tempered white and dark chocolate. The sand is brown sugar.

Next module? Wedding cakes! Finally -- what I've been waiting for since I started school on Feb. 17. But first, I have to complete my fourth day of finals for this module. Tomorrow I'll be serving two plates each of two desserts: "A Taste of Barcelona" and "Saints and Sinners."

The Barcelona dessert is less traditional and includes a cold honeydew soup with a folded slice or two of jamon serrano set inside. I poached a few honeydew melon balls in Cava (Spanish champagne) and will set those in a cantaloupe sauce. The plate is decorated with Bacon dust (a white powder with bacon fat I rendered yesterday and mixed with maltodextrin) and served with a small taste of Liquor de Yerba, which is a sister drink to absynthe. Everywhere we went in Spain we got a little glass of this beautiful green liquor after our meals. I learned to love it and wanted to rekindle some of that nostalgia here.

The Saints and Sinners dessert has a small angel food cake (a little smaller than an aluminum can top) and a small molten chocolate cake. The angel food cake will sit on a "cloud" of vanilla-bean chantilly whipped cream and have a spun sugar halo. The sinners part of the deal involves piping a little chocolate arrow "tail" on the plate, flooding it with a blackberry-port reduction (nice and red) and placing the the hot molten chocolate cake on top of that, so it looks like the cake has a tail. Caramel "horns" will complete the look.

Stay tuned -- pix coming this weekend!