Cake decorating? ME? Never!!!

Well, that would have been my normal reaction - prior to last week :-). But I guess one should NEVER say "NEVER"!! Because, Yes, I ended up working on decorating a wedding cake. Well, OK, the cake was a dummy (styrofoam shapes of appropriate sizes) but the icing, the flowers, the paints used, the overall decor, etc... that was definitely real! Check out the pictures ....

Let's start with the individual types of decor pieces:

1) These curly-wurly pieces are made with sugar pastillage - which is initially like plasticine or modelling clay, which you can shape and then leave to dry.


2) These tiny flowers were supposed to be baby periwinkles, but ended up as a pretty but miscellaneous flower.


3) These are periwinkles. My team mate Adlina suggested them, and they turned out to be an excellent choice!


4) These are all the flowers, leaves, etc, which we planned to use (some of which we did not have to use in the end). All painted and ready.


5) And here are all the bits and pieces, waiting assembling - including our "ahem" dummy cake, already covered with sugar pastillage icing:


6) This is a rough sketch I did to show our chef/trainer the PLAN:


7) This is the start of the decorating itself:


8) Half-way there!


9) DONE!!!


10) And placed on a display table, in the lounge at the Pastry Academy, for everyone to view (and, hopefully, admire!)


So, there you have it. If the chefs here can teach ME (the least artistic and creative person I know) to do something this nice, imagine what they can teach you :-D.

Yes, I AM enjoying the course. Yes, I AM glad I took this up - it is proving to be a very welcome change of pace from the total stress of the last two years (as well as the total stress I will face when I do eventually go back to work!).

This coming week would be a dream for all choc-a-holics! We are learning all about the art of tempering chocolates, making our own moulded and dipped chocolates, making our own flavoured chocolate ganaches, and even making a (simple) chocolate sculpture. So far, have made dark chocolate ganache, honey lemon ganache, raspberry pate de fruit, and coffee ganache - all of which are either going to be dipped in tempered chocolate, or are used as filling for moulded chocolates. As of now, we have also made moulded chocolates (using either dark, milk, or white chocolates) and filled them all with the ganaches we made. We have learnt the technique of using colours in the chocolate moulds, or gold dust, or even dark chocolate on milk chocolate, to make the moulded chocolates look more attractive.

1) We used gold dust (no paint) for two of these moulded choc types, and the third one we just dabbed a bit of dark chocolate along one part of the mould, then poured in milk chocolate to make the shell. Can you see the dark choc highlight on the milk choc? And can you see the slight shine of the gold dust on the other two?


We have also, guided by our Chef, designed our own chocolate sculpture. Interesting, right?

- This was the rough sketch of our design


- This is the final drawing, to the actual size that the finished piece should be (approx 35inches, or a bit more)


- And here the main pieces are cut out and ready to serve as guides for pouring the chocolate. We will also be making the flowers from chocolate!!


More pictures of the sculpure WHEN it is ready :-).

Till next time my friends, stay happy, stay safe, stay well.