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