Gruffalo Cake

Received this Gruffalo cake order from a friend for her daughter's birthday party at least more than a month in advance and was dreading it for the entire time - I had never worked with sugar paste to create recognisable cartoon characters before! The spec of the cake was rather flexible - a Gruffalo themed carrot & banana cake for a small party. My friend left the rest to my imagination - no restrictions as to how the Gruffalo is to be presented/made and I got to use any colour I want. After going through countless of Gruffalo cake pictures others made on the internet, I was still rather unsure how I could actually pull this off. 

I thought about making a carved cake in the shape of the Gruffalo inspired by this video but I am simply not confident enough with my cake carving skills - might end up with no cake to carve at all! I also considered the idea of making a one-tier Gruffalo flat cake in the shape of Gruffalo's head - this sounds simple enough but somehow I didn't think it was enough for the birthday girl. The birthday girl is also in love with the Gruffalo mouse so including the mouse would be a bonus. 

The production of the cake took about three days from start to finish (with very little sleep) and oh how much I fought with the sugar paste - didn't have time to buy (and too expensive to buy) a huge amount of modelling paste so I ended up mixing Tylose powder with normal sugar paste to make the Gruffalo. The Tylose powder grade is that bit too fine and the sugar paste dried up rather quickly and cracked easily. The most difficult part of making the Gruffalo figure was surprisingly mixing colouring gel with sugar paste to get the right colour - sore hands were guaranteed! 

Gruffalo figure front

Gruffalo figure back

Made the mouse, too!

Finishing product

Finishing product

Finishing product

According to my friend, her daughter discovered the cake through the holes of the cake box on their way home from picking up the cake and recognised the Gruffalo and the mouse immediately and started to talk to them - a success I suppose! The party goers liked the cake and how it tasted, too - I could not be more relieved with the outcome. 

Sparkling Piggy

Cupcake order

A birthday girl placed an order herself asking for two dozens of red-velvet cupcakes to treat colleagues at work. I am free to decorate the cupcakes but have to keep in mind that her favourite colour is blue. 

A random red velvet cupcake recipe with good reviews from the internet was used (there are sooo many to choose from). I have used recipes from the Hummingbird Bakery and Lola's cupcakes before and the cupcakes did not turn out well at all - they were either not very red velvet like (and tasted.....weird) or did not have the correct colour. The trick is to not trust recipe books from bakeries thoroughly as they do not want to share their trade secrets with everyone or else they will go out of business! Thank god for internet recipes :) 

Making pipeable cream cheese frosting was the hardest thing of the project - the amount of icing sugar required was ridiculous and the kitchen was a mess afterwards. The final frosting never tasted alright - my journey searching for the perfect pipeable cream cheese frosting continues! 

Back to making girly cake decorations!

As with all my cupcake making projects somehow I ran out of frostings to pipe in the end.....again! Luckily I was able to hide any signs of frosting shortage with sugar paste decorations. Making girly sugar paste decorations was really enjoyable. The birthday girl was quite pleased with the cupcakes = happy me. 

Sparkling Lucille

Second commission-free cake: football themed

Received another cake order for a make colleague at work and this time it is football themed - Tottenham Hotspur. 

The team logo is not overly complicated but it has many narrow and very detailed bits and is therefore very hard to replicate using sugar paste. Was very tempted to get ready-made cake topper to save some time but ran out of time to get it in time for the due date. It took me at least two hours to create the logo - lots of moulding and moving really tiny bits of sugar paste in place and lots of throwing ruined sugar paste away and remaking them. 

This tiny logo is no bigger than the length of my palm - so much effort so little result.

Cake baking (carrot cake with cream cheese icing) was rather easy compared to making the logo. I love making non-pipeable cream cheese icing as they have less amount of icing sugar which means the sourness of the cream cheese is still very much retained and the icing tastes sooooo good!

Final result - must get a better alphabet mould

The birthday boy liked his cake very much and thanked me in person. I was simply glad that the logo was recognisable to everyone and approved by the birthday boy himself. 

Sparkling Piggy

First commission-free cake order

In order to practice what I learnt from the Cake Decorating programme at Le Cordon Bleu, friends and families have been informed to come to me for commission-free cake orders (i.e. only ingredients are charged as I have yet to establish a business properly). 

This first order was made by my colleague for another colleague at work for his birthday. Making a cake for a bloke is actually outside of my comfort zone as I usually go for anything cute and/or pink-coloured. Requirements for the cake is that it has to be chocolate-flavoured and be able to feed around 20 people - everything else is up to me to be creative. After some planning in the head I decided to keep things simple and utilise some ninja cookie cutters given to me as gifts last Christmas to achieved a boy-themed cake. 

I have tried many chocolate cake recipes in the past but none actually turned out ok or simple. A new recipe was chosen for the cake as it looked simple enough and has many good reviews - BBC Easy Chocolate Cake. It was indeed so easy to make apart from the chocolate icing - it was still too gooey and runny to lay fondant icing over it easily. 

 Here it is - a boy-themed birthday cake! 

The birthday boy seemed pleased with the cake and everyone kept on commenting on how tasty and moist the cake was. This easy chocolate recipe will be used over and over again. Very glad that the first order was well received :)

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 9 & 10 - Wedding cake project - the end of a small journey

The cake decorating programming was finally approaching to its end - thought this day would never come! We pretty much used the last three lessons of the course making more sugar flowers (I also spent a huge amount of my own time doing so at home - sleep was a scarce thing!), icing fruitcakes with marzipan and sugar paste, layering the cakes into three tiers and fully decorate the whole thing. Le Cordon Bleu also managed to squeeze in a cake business session to talk us through what is required to set up our own food business - they brought in an external lecturer who actually owned her own business to share with us her experiences. 

It actually felt like the whole world was against me while putting the cakes together. My knife skills was (and still is) not up to scratch and no matter what I did none of the cakes were perfectly level. The base cake was rather thin to begin with and after slicing the top off it became even thinner. Chef Matthew saw it and offered to gave me a spare one as replacement. Battling with marzipan and sugar paste became part of me and it took me longer than required to have all cakes fully iced. 

Stacking the cake was fun. Chef Julie talked us through why doweling a cake is very important for tiered cakes. Cutting the dowels was hard though - it felt like I was going to chop my fingers off at any moment! Unfortunately my cakes looked rather wobbly after being stacked so I had to keep on adding sugar paste to the bottom of the cakes until each tier is perfectly level.

I really enjoyed the last stage of the cake decoration - putting flowers on the cakes! I had made so many sugar flowers for me to decorate the cake in many ways.

This is supposed to be a magnolia (tutorial from pretty witty cake - https://www.prettywittycakes.co.uk/video-tutorials/fantasy-magnolia) but somehow it ended up looking like......just a random flower no one recognises

Blossoms and hydrangeas

Daisies

I was lucky enough to have the help from a Le Cordon Bleu student who volunteered to be the class assistance for the final lesson - she saved me a lot of time by smoothing my royal icing pearls after piping and gave me suggestions on how I should utilise my flowers. She actually wanted me to put less flowers on the cake but I did not want my flowers to go to waste. What I ended up with is a very girly and extremely flowery cake: 

I even had spare flowers to make into bouquets :) These spare flowers are now part of my living room decoration - result!

After chef Matthew's done taking pictures of everyone's cake, we then proceeded to another classroom for celebration and to get our programme certificate:

This is really one hard to acquire certificate!

I am simply relieved that the programme is fully over. It did indeed give you a nice insight on the cake decorating world but at the same time it was rather rushed. I was always running out of time to do something and felt that each topic could've been taught more thoroughly. To summarise, I felt that I've learnt a lot from the programme but at the same time nothing was learnt well. I would recommend anyone who wishes to take the programme to at least have some cake decorating related skills (e.g. at least have iced a cake with sugar paste to know what it is about and/or know how to use a palate knife well). Was it worth it? I cannot really say right now as I am still evaluating the usefulness of the programme - I am certainly baking and decorating more cakes then before though! Thank you so much to my friends and families for being my cake decorating business guinea pigs and said nothing but praises when tucking in ugly looking cakes - my baking passion is still going strong and I look forward to the day that I set up my own business :)

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 8 - Sugar Flower

So many ways of many sugar flowers were learnt today. Our chef (Julie) brought in a tray full of incredibly realistic flowers she made as examples:

 Chef Julie's sugar flowers - they are so pretty!

After demonstration we spent the rest of the lesson making flowers we will use for the final cake project of the course (tiered wedding cake). I proceeded to try and make at least 1 of each the demonstrated flowers but the results were horrifying. I could not get the size of my flower stamens correct - my lily had a really fat stamen and almost couldn't wrap the leaf around it; my rose stamens were commented on by chef Matthew for being.....again too big..........

Luckily by the end of the lesson I had an idea about the types of flowers to use for the final project - small daisies, hydrangeas and blossoms all in different colours. They are easier to make (not less time consuming though due to the number and size of them). I went home with some colourful small flower stamens and the very next day I visited a cake decorating shop and bought a bag full of petal paste, food colourings and flower press/moulds. Time to get sugar flower making! 

Time to get sugar flower making! 

Sparkling Piggy

First solo huge cake project - and transported it overseas!

Now that the cake decorating lesson is more than half way finished (4/10 lessons left), I've decided to make a huge cake as a visiting gift to friends in Greece. Fondant icing and I are still getting well acquainted but I am now getting my hands on every opportunity to practice using it.

The cake is Victoria sponge based again (it can never go wrong so I only had the decorating bit to worry about). As there was not enough time to acquire petal paste (or tylose powder to make petal paste using fondant icing), almost every decoration was done using fondant icing for the cake.

Making roses, leaves and the ribbon base using fondant icing was simply a crazy hard thing to do - things kept on breaking and I almost pulled all of my hair out. The end result is still a bit wonky with many flaws but at least it was sturdy enough to survive a plane journey from London to Athens (as carry-on luggage) and my friends in Greece all liked it very much.

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 7 - A non-eventful cupcake decorating lesson

Our regular chef was absent for the lesson. The substitute chef rocked up and started doing his own thing - it took us a while to realised that we were supposed to follow and copy what he was doing.

We made cupcakes using two kinds of moulds - the regular muffin mould and the dome mould. The regular ones would be the base and the dome ones would be the top. The chef then taught us how to fill the cupcakes with icings/sauces, crumb-coat them with icing and briefly showed us ways to decorate them.

The whole lesson went by relatively fast and I honestly wished that I had more time to decorate my cupcakes. As the London Underground staff were on strike on the day of the lesson I had to carry my cupcake box across town and squeeze into a very crowded bus to get home. Everything was smudged or crushed by the time I reached home so......no pictures :(

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 6 - Carving a cake + chocolate, chocolate and chocolate

Woohoo - we finally got to make a tall/stacked cake! But first we had to conquer making fruitcakes for the final project of the course. Am never a big fan of food or alcohol and the smell of them really made me want to run as far away from the kitchen as possible. We actually started preparing for the fruitcake during the previous lesson by cooking fruits, tea bags and alcohol on the stove and then sending the mixture to mature for a few days. Today we used the mixture and combined it with dry ingredients into cake batter - enough for 4 cake tins.

After sending the cake tins for baking we then began the very chocolaty part of the lesson. The chocolate cakes from the previous lesson are carefully sliced, stacked and levelled and then carved the whole stacked cake into a cone shape. This was rather nerve wrecking as it is not easy getting the angle and the amount to cut right. After doing this we then covered the cone completely with chocolate ganache.

The chef then explained how to temper chocolate - we didn't get to do this ourselves as it would require lots of practice and time. He then used a pot of tempered chocolate sauce and poured a ladle or two each onto the back of huge baking trays. The chocolate is then evenly spread to cover the whole surface of the trays and put aside to set. Now it is time to make decorate chocolate strips. Each of us were given a metal scraper which we used to scrape the set chocolate off the trays against a wall, whilst taking care not to break the strip. The strip is then used to wrap around the chocolate cone cake - this has to be done as soon as a strip is scrapped off or else it will harden and break. Unfortunately as the temperature of the kitchen was too low and yet again I did not have enough force to scrap off the chocolate without the strips looking badly shaped and broken, I ended up with what you call an......."edgy" chocolate decorated cake.

The rim of the strips is supposed to be.....smooth, not edgy and chipped like mine! 

We then moved on to making flowers and shapes using modelling chocolate - this was fun and enjoyable. Finishing touches were done to the cake by paining the flowers, shapes and strips where required and I fitted on top of the cake as many spare chocolate curled strips as possible. It is definitely not your standard elegant/good looking/perfect chocolate decorated cake but I myself am rather pleased with its......"uniqueness"!

Must find time at home to practice how to temper chocolate and make perfect strips!

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 5 - Mexican Paste

Ahhh chocolate!! How I love thee!! 

The lesson started with us slowly cooking certain ingredients of chocolate fudge cake on a stove and then slowly combining this mixture with dry ingredients - the key is to temper the dry ingredients gradually to avoid them from getting cooked by the hot mixture. This whole process was rather tiring as we each prepared enough batter for at least 5 cake tins. Stirring and making sure everything is well mixed made my arms and hands sooooo sore! The cake tins are then sent to be baked for the next lesson. 

We then moved on to making our own Mexican paste. This was my first encounter with the paste and I never knew making it would be rather easy - tylose powder is the key! The chef then demonstrated how to use the paste to make drapes, swags, frill and ribbons. As time was running out for us to decorate a dummy cake using techniques learnt from this lesson, my dummy cake only showcased drapes and swags.

I actually attempted to make some frills but as my palms were hurting like hell from rolling the Mexican paste as this as possible (which I failed to do so.....the force was not with me that evening), using toothpicks to roll the frills was too much for me......... 

Now I understand why some cake decorators are so skinny when they are surrounded with cakes - rolling pastes is definitely an energy consuming task!

Sparkling Piggy

First ever self-made fondant iced cake

As I will be leaving my current job after the end of January, I've decided to make a decorated cake (Victoria sponge flavoured - my favourite) as a parting gift for my colleagues. Many tricks I've learnt so far from the cake decorating course were applied to the cake - not the best looking cake in the world but as my first ever solo project it is acceptable (I hope). 

The cake received good reviews - even guys ate some happily even though it looked very girlish :)

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 4 - The disaster continues....

After an eventful second lesson at Le Cordon Bleu, I was honestly hoping for things to settle down a bit in the third one, only to have my cake making/decorating confidence completely shattered during this lesson. 

The afternoon began with us lining and greasing 4 tins each and melting ingredients over a hob for chocolate fudge cake. After this is done the chef then showed us how to make marzipan from scratch. This is when everything went downhill. My goldfish brain simply didn't have the capacity to memorise every single detail of the demonstration. The list of things done/went wrong during this lesson just goes on and on and on and here are some examples:

1. Cream of tartar for the marzipan was added when the pan was still on the hob (when it shouldn't be)
2. It took forever to dry the marzipan mixture on the hob and the marzipan mixture actually got burned a bit at the the bottom of the pan
3. Very little time was left to work with the marzipan mixture on the working bench until it is cooled and paste like - everyone was already moving onto the next thing. Worst thing was that too much icing sugar was added to the marzipan went into pieces instead of forming into a nice looking dough. The chef simply came to my bench and scraped the marzipan mixture into a ball and told me to wrap it up (whilst looking rather serious).......didn't even get to have the chance to handle it myself properly
4. Mixing sifted dry ingredients with the melted chocolate fudge mixture took forever when everyone else seemed to get on with the task fast and easy..........
5. Applying marzipan (thankfully not the ones we made during the lesson) to the wonky lemon cake I made in the previous lesson proved to be difficult
6. Rolling out fondant icing for the first time to cover the cake in a short time resulted in really thick icing and ugly looking cake (the icing at the base of the cake was all smudged up)

By the time we finished covering the cake with fondant icing is was already 7pm (the lesson started at 3pm). I was in an emotional train wreck and actually felt like crying! The programme is not supposed to be stressful at all but it just felt like we are on a battlefield all the time. 

After a short 20 minutes break we returned to the kitchen to decorate the cake with royal icing using brush embroidery technique and other techniques we learnt during the first lesson. Whilst my classmates' flowers looked immaculate mine looked like they were chewed on by dogs........... I made another mistake by asking for alcohol to dampen the pain brushes when the chef clearly told us to use water during the demonstration (got another dirty look from him again........). Arrrrrgh!

You can spot icing cracks and the dodgy royal icing piping techniques all over this cake. 

The lesson finished by us lining the cake board with ribbons. It was such a relieve for the series of disasters to be over with but at the same time I felt like a failure holding a cakebox containing an ugly cake on my way home. 

Now I serious dread the next lesson as we are to apply the marzipan we made to the chocolate fudge cake! Luckily my family and friends are supportive and advised me to simply get on with the rest of the programme and then practice in my own time and this is exactly what I intend to do. Fingers crossed that I don't run out of any lessons in tears before the end of the programme! 

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 3 - It's a bumpy ride (part two)!

Waking up on a Saturday morning at 6am is such an inhumane thing to do. Everything was still totally dark and all the typical London weather was telling you to stay at home. Unfortunately all saturday lessons on the cake decorating programme start at 8am on Saturdays. Imagine having to do this most days if you are a full time student at Le Cordon Bleu (it is one of the important reasons why I am not their full time student........)........

Chef Matthew was already at the 3rd floor patisserie kitchen at 7:50am with everything prepped and ready to go. We are to make a lemon cake and butter cream and then prep it for cake decorating today.

The lemon cake uses the creaming method - you first cream the butter in the mixer (use fire torch to warm bowl up to soften (not melt) the butter), then gradually add sugar, lemon zest and egg in the bowl (wait for each ingredient to be fully mixed before adding another one). Sift flour and baking powder together and add to the mixer on low setting. Finally add milk to achieve a dropping consistency.

We then continued to make the butter cream. Sugar and water were heated on in a pan to achieve a thread texture. This is then immediately poured to the mixer with well beaten eggs and egg yolks. Once fully mixed it is then time to add softened butter and beat until the right consistency is reached.

Sounds rather easy to make a lemon cake and butter cream right? WRONG! The whole experience could not have been more disastrous and stressful for me. My cake looked ugly and you could see bits of it not being perfectly baked when it was sliced in half horizontally. My butter cream was runnier and more yellow my other classmates'. It is as if the same nightmare repeated itself from when I attended a cake baking course not long ago - none of my cakes turned out ok and I am starting to think that maybe being a baker is not a wise career choice :(

The most horrifying thing is.......we now had to assemble and prep the cake as we are to use it for cake decorating in the next lesson. The cake already looked bad to begin with after the brown bits were chopped off (chef Matthew wanted a "white cake" look). After filling it with maple syrup and the runny butter cream I made earlier, the cake kind of tilted to one side while others look nice and straight. Honestly I had the urge to simply smash my cake to the ground and walk out of the room........

The last thing we did to prep the cake was "casting". Chef Matthew used two blenders to help us blend our leftover cake bits (the brown bits we chopped off) with apricot jam to reach a spreadable consistency. We then had to use palette knives to smooth the jam/cake mixture over our cakes (which had been set in a blast fridge for at least 30 minutes) to give perfect straight and smooth surface and sharp edges. This proved to be too difficult for me again........my cake was already tilting and bumpy so it took a long while fill the gaps. My palette knife skills is not really up to scratch to nothing could be smoothed no matter how much I tried. Chef Matthew again came to the rescue. He simply applied more jam/cake mixture to the sloping side of the cake and dipped the palette knife in hot water to make the mixture more spreadable. He then demonstrated that the correct way to hold a palette knife is at an angle. The end result was definitely much better than what I originally came up with. It was then time to pack up for the day.

It was a confident destroying lesson for me as nothing turned out to be just right. Even forgot to take photos of the cake (which I will repost after I see it again). However, perseverance is my motto and there will always be more challenges along the way! Practice and patience are the two things I absolutely need right now.

The journey continues......fingers crossed that the next lesson will be so much better!

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 2 - It's a bumpy ride (part one)!

My first visit to the new Le Cordon Bleu London campus on 15th January 2014 was not exactly a smooth one. It was easy to find the campus but I arrived when the next wave of classes were about to start so everything was rather chaotic. The receptionist didn't even get to store my fingerprint to their system which is required to gain access to the classrooms - luckily it was sorted at a later stage.

Chef Julie (one of our programme instructors) was able to fish me out of the million other students waiting in the narrow campus corridor for their next classes to begin (well it was not a hard thing to do as I stood out for not wearing the full body chef's outfit) and led me to a lecture room for our first lesson. There are 9 of us on the programme in total - including 2 full-time students who are doing their intermediate patisserie diploma. It tool chef Julie a while to finally gather the full crowd before we can finally begin the lesson. Chef Matthew prompted joined the lecture room and the two of them talked for a few hours on course content, health & safety and then a tour around the campus followed by a 45 minutes break.

My classmates also include a Le Cordon Bleu cuisine diploma graduate, a business woman from India who owns a little bakery shop back home, a full-time mom from Malaysia who would like to continue with the Sugar Artistry Programme afterwards, an audiologist and a DJ who would both like to venture into the cake decorating world, and finally a girl from Nigeria who simply wants learn something crafty. Everyone joined the programme for different reasons.

After the break, we regrouped again in the 2nd floor patisserie kitchen for our first practical lesson - making royal icing and piping it on a dummy cake. It is rather nice that you get to actually make things you are going to use for cake decorating in the programme. We all had our own ingredients, kitchen bench and equipments.

Chef Matthew demonstrated how to make royal icing and then it was our turn. It was my first time using a Kitchenaid mixer but things proceeded without issues (though my royal icing was a tiny bit too thick to be piped in the end). Chef Matthew then showed us how to make piping bags using baking parchments. I had learnt how to make them before from other cake decorating courses but Le Cordon Bleu really taught it the best - simply explanations and I am finally confident to make one without getting lost!

Now it is time to get piping! We were each given a no.2 piping tube and practiced piping basic things using templates from our course book. It was not the most confidence boosting thing to do as the piped patterns seem of have a will of their own......most of the time! As my royal icing a bit too thick my thumb was in pain after rather quickly so I had to take breaks a lot.

Chef Matthew then showed us how to pipe loops on a dummy cake with equal spacing. This took me a while to get to as marking the dummy cake with naked eye was simply too difficult - I ended up with markers that are not equally spaced so I had to wipe them out and then restart again. Luckily chef Matthew came to the rescue and showed me how to make a round parchment paper with equally spaced creases to make things soooo much easier for me.

We simply practiced piping for the whole night. When and my hands were absolutely sore and it was reaching the end of the class it was time to stop. The dummy cake was still covered with amateur-level piping patterns but hey practice makes perfect so watch this space. Below is a picture of my dummy cake:

(Note to self - must also practice piping shells at the bottom rim of the cake)

Chef's piping:

 Chef Julie also showed us her skills and these swirls are simply divine!

One lesson down, 9 more to go!!

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 1 - This is happening!

After months of odd day/half day courses here and there, I've finally decided to enroll in the Cake Decorating Programme at Le Cordon Bleu as the course content looks really comprehensive compared to other course providers out there. The most exciting thing is - it starts today! Am not particularly looking forward to the 14.5 hr schedule though as day job is still in the way and the programme takes place between 3pm - 9:30pm! 

It has been a long time dream of mine to open a bakery (hopefully in the near future) - the cake decorating programme is only a tiny element to help me to achieve that dream (after all cake decorating is really in right now). I will update progress of the programme in future blog entries so watch this space! Le Cordon Bleu is such a reputable culinary school so fingers crossed that the programme will not be too daunting for me. After the cake decorating programme I wish to continue with their Bakery Programme which starts in March 2014. The best thing would be to do the full Patisserie Diploma but that would see me being almost £15,000 poorer! Never say never though.........now better pop out to get those tickets soon........

It would great that by the end of this programme to upgrade my cake decorating skills from this - 

(Pumpkin cupcakes I made for Halloween 2013)

....to any products such as those made by MAISIE FANTAISIE  - her cakes are so elegant and perfectly made! 

So the journey begins! 

Sparkling Piggy