Early Halloween

Chocolate fondant inspired this early Halloween themed cake. I'd bought two pounds of chocolate fondant for the final class wedding cake, but I'd already made up my mind that if I had enough left over, I would make something Halloween-themed because the light-on-dark look suited it.

I got a set of Halloween cookie cutters after hunting around for a right-shaped ghost cutter. I knew I wanted one that ended in a tail rather than the wavy bottom reminiscent of the ghosts in Pacman. This was a bit bigger than I intended; I'd originally wanted a ton of ghosts swarming the tombstone greeting. At first, I tried rolling out the chocolate fondant and then making the cut-outs and replacing them with white inlays. But I couldn't get it right, I couldn't find a way to glue the seams or get the white fondant to bond with the chocolate. After a couple of attempts, I gave up and ended up just sticking the ghosts on. I was reminded in class the following week that I had indeed talked to my teacher about this, and she had suggested laying the chocolate fondant on the cake first, and then making cut-outs directly on the cake. Oops. I think if the cut-outs were smaller, my initial method might have worked.

Another lesson learnt was the tombstone. Originally, I meant for it to be standing up but I didn't allow sufficient time for it to dry and it ended up cracking and breaking when it slipped from my fingers at one point. I did the flooding with royal icing, because it's what I had on hand. Apparently the difference between royal icing and Color Flow is that royal icing will dry matte while Color Flow is a little shiny. The eyes and mouths were done with edible marker.

Course 3 Final: Wedding Cake

Ta-daa! My first wedding cake.

For the final Wilton Course 3 class, we assembled wedding cakes. Everything was pretty much done at home - the roses, the icing and filling the cakes, bringing them in either covered in fondant or buttercream. We had been encouraged to do pretty much whatever we wanted but that if we didn't want to make 40 roses at home, we'd better be prepared to blow the teacher away, she warned. I made the roses over three evenings, because each layer has to dry a little before you put the next one on.

I'd come up with this design; nothing new or innovative, but it provided me the opportunity to learn how to stack the cakes (vs tiering), do a ribbon border, freehand scrollwork, and fondant drapes (which the teacher later told me we'd be doing in the Fondant & Gumpaste class).

I wanted the base to be an off-white, and I had ivory dye which I used. But I thought it came out still too white, so I used a drop of chocolate brown dye to try and speed up the process. To my dismay, it turned a shade of warm pink. I didn't have enough to start over so I ended up just covering the cake with it. Wish I'd taking a picture before I put the ribbon on, because my fondant work was pretty raggedy (>_<)

I'd left off picking the ribbon till the day of class. As it was held at a craft store, I figured I'd just get it then. I was thinking of a wide organza ribbon or narrower satin band, but could find neither. As luck would have it, I spotted a cotton brown ribbon with two narrow strips of pink in it! I could now pass off my fondant colour as not-a-mistake!

The scrollwork was choppy and difficult at the beginning but it got a bit easier and more flowing towards the end. I went with big loops because it got really tiring and I had to cover the whole cake before I did anything else. Next time, I'll try for a little more patience and smaller scrolls. For a first attempt, I think my draping was ok, but I'd like to learn how to make it a little more fluid. I thought it looked a bit stiff. I left the roses on their toothpicks to hold the fondant drapes in place and also to give them different heights and orientation.

p.s. The top layer was the Golden Butter Cream Cake from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible. It is the bestest, melt-in-your-mouth-est butter cake I've ever had. Go bake it!!!

First-time fondant

My first attempt at fondant. It was at the Wilton Course 3 class, where we are making a present cake (I call it that although the teacher called it a "package cake". When I first heard the term, I was wondering why we were going to be dedicating a class to cake mix).

Working with and draping fondant was a bit of a mini-nightmare. I was late for class and showed up after all the intro information and everyone was well on their way kneading fondant. In quick, whispered tones, I asked the gal next to me what we were supposed to be doing and with how much. I kept kneading well after everyone had started rolling it out. But when I rolled mine out, it tore when I tried to pick it up. The teacher said I hadn't gotten it pliable enough, mushed the whole thing back into a ball and told me to keep going. I also managed to knead a lot of air bubbles into it, so that when I rolled it out, there were huge air pockets like hideous pimples that pricking and deflating didn't really help.

I tried marbling it for the bow with a mix of royal blue and lemon yellow. I get tired of dipping toothpicks very quickly, so I didn't get a whole lot of colour into the fondant. I wasn't happy with the final result, I thought it looked washed out and boring. Then my teacher suggested I use the white lustre dust I'd bought. I'd gotten it on a lark, but when she started dusting it onto the bow with a big paintbrush, the cake took on a completely new look! It made all the difference (^o^)

I've since gotten lustre dust in Peacock Blue, Ruby Red and Super Green. Will be looking for opportunies to break those out soon.

Kai faan

Over Labour Day weekend, I made one of my most favouritest foods in the world...Hainanese chicken rice!

This is meant to be a dessert blog, but I had to share. Hainanese chicken rice or Hoi Lam kai faan (Cantonese for "Hainan chicken rice") is a complete meal by itself. A whole chicken cooked in water that forms a stock that makes the soup, rice and the chili-based condiment (at least that's how my Mum did it). The chicken and soup I usually flavour with ginger, garlic and spring onions. For the rice, I render some of the chicken fat to which I add a couple slices of ginger and then the rice to coat. This goes into the rice cooker with some of the stock and salt. I even found some frozen pandan (aka pandanus aka screwpine) leaves that you tie in a knot and lay it on top of the rice to give it this lovely, indescribable fragrance.

Here's the chili condiment. My mum would pound fresh chilies with garlic and ginger and add lime juice, salt and a little chicken stock to the mix. Fresh chilies, at least the kind I'm familiar with, are hard to come by. There are jalapeños and serranos and Thai bird chilies, but the regular long and skinny red chilies aren't usually available. I don't even know what variety they are. So, I substituted the fresh chilies with sambal oelek from a bottle. It's not quite the same, but beggars can't be choosers.

When the chicken is done, I plunge it in ice-cold water which is suppose to give the skin a smooth texture and form a thin layer of jelly between the skin and meat. I haven't been terribly successful getting the cooking times just right. So far, there's been no jelly under the skin for me.

Here's what it looks like all laid out. The chicken is deboned and cut into almost-bite-sized pieces on top of a bed of cucumber slices and a thin mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil and more chicken stock is poured over it. I've garnished it here with more spring onions, but cilantro works too. I like to add cabbage and tofu to the stock to make the soup. Firm tofu, when boiled for a long time, causes little holes to form, filling with whatever liquid it's cooked in and giving it a spongy, juicy texture.