Cake in progress

So here is a cake in progress for my husband's birthday. Right now I am working on the gum paste portions. I am using ready made gum paste from a package, which requires kneading in a small amount of shortening. You can also see my planning pages - both inspiration shots and actual measurements. This cake will be roughly 5.5 inches square by 12 inches tall. I will be using an 8" round cake pan and cutting out the squares from it.

Cake flavor is yet to be determined - the husband has not made his request yet. Next steps will be more structural pieces and some decorative bits. Then the painting and any piping of wording.

Based on the photos, can you tell what the cake Ninja is making? (Family members are not allowed to guess.)

Cake 101: Filling and Frosting

It's been a while since we've had a cake 101 video, but here is the latest installment in Cake University -- filling and frosting. See the Cake Ninja wrangle with her most loved/hated tool -- the cake leveler!

An experiment

As you may have noticed, I am not so great on keeping up with blog content. I mean well, but life gets in the way.

So, I am going to try an experiment. For the next two cakes, I will be taking photos and posting on the process from start (concept and reference art) to finish (happy recipients eating cake).

It dovetails nicely into Cake 101, because I'm doing gumpaste for one of them. (Speaking of Cake 101/Cake University, yes there are videos coming, as soon as my editor has time.)

So we'll see how it goes. I am not promising any specific sort of posting schedule, but both cakes are due September 15th, so expect to see more posts soon.

Cake 101: Lesson 9 Gumpaste

This is really more of lesson 9a.

So what is Gumpaste? It is a modeling compound you can use to make more elaborate structures out of than chocolate or fondant.

I usually buy mine either in the premixed pouches or in the cans you add water to, but it is possible to find recipes online.

It takes a varied drying time - the frames for the movie cake dried far faster than the center disk of the reel - and, like fondant, you can mix color in or paint it on afterwards.

Stay tuned next week for part b in which I will show how to use it.

Sneak peek

It's cake archive Monday. I need to pull together a couple of posts about some photos that are on the new gallery page, but here's a sneak peek at the latest cake I did -- you can see it come together in both the July and August Cake University episodes, which we just shot last night.

Cake University

You may have noticed that I'm a little behind on Cake 101.

The next lesson is intended to be gum paste, and as I am getting ready to do Threadcakes, I thought I'd do a picture tutorial instead of just text, so it'll be a little bit.

Additionally, we are shooting two episodes of the blip.tv series this weekend (if all goes according to plan) and hopefully I will have them up at the beginning and end of July (if I put them up all at once, what content do I have to keep my readers coming back?)

I have not forgotten you, dear students of Cake University, never fear! Just think of it as summer break.

Updates

So, you may have noticed the updated look and feel of the blog (sadly, no new content, but I am working on it).

The logo is the delightful work of artist extraordinaire Rachel Dukes, of Poseur Ink.

It was an interesting process -- I started with one idea, she did a fabulous sketch, I came back and said "wait, no, what I really want is , please don't kill me" and she did another fabulous sketch, we refined the colors, and here's what you see - a ninja chef octopus, which if you know me personally, you know makes perfect sense as a logo.

In other news, I am trying to get into the July 14th Denver Handmade Homemade Market to actually sell some cupcakes. If I get in, I will let everyone know what time and where to come and find me.

And, last but not least, I have a facebook page for Denver Cake Ninja now, too. So feel free to like that and get updates and weird rantings about cake :D

Otherwise, I have some cake and cupcake photos to upload, a solid idea of what the next two Cake University videos will be, I just need it not to be 90+ degrees since that's not a friend of frosting in order to shoot them, and I'm getting ready to start on Threadcakes again (Opens mid-June, closes mid-August. Gumpaste, ho!).

Cake 101: Lesson 8: Fondant

Ah, fondant, delight and bane of decorators everywhere. Most people complain it tastes awful (and some do), but it's exceptional for giving a smooth surface to a cake and keeping it moist and delicious.

This being 101, I am only going to give a quick overview of what fondant is and how to use it. Possibly in a later Cake 101 video, I will show how to apply fondant to a cake.

So what is it? It is a sugar and marshmallow (usually) mix that can be rolled out into sheets and draped over cakes or used to make cut-outs, flowers, borders, etc.

You can buy it premade (and pre-colored if you like) or you can make your own. You can color it by mixing the icing color in as you knead the fondant or you can airbrush or paintbrush color on later.

There are a million and a half tools out there to help you with fondant and to cut fondant, but I have found that cookie cutters work just as well as the specialized tools. The ninjas on the ninja carousel cake were from cookie cutters. I free-handed the sections on the carousel to match the sections on the carousel tops, and then rolled out fondant ropes to twist together.

The Guinness cake seen previously in the cake archive is covered in white fondant, which was then painted with a vodka and icing coloring mix. I used the same technique on the "fail" cake for threadcakes, and the movie camera cake. The border on the Guinness cake is just fondant balls rolled together.

Fondant can seem daunting, but like everything else, it's just practice practice practice. Next week, we'll talk gumpaste.

Cake 101: Star Fills

Here is our second instructional video. This time it's all about how to fill cakes in with the star tip. Happy Caking!

Cake 101: Lesson 7: Chocolate

My apologies for the lack of post last Friday -- things got a little hectic around here and posting fell to the bottom of the to-be-done list.  On the bright side, it gave me a couple of extra days to think and I now know what the next three lessons are.

Today's lesson is chocolate. Not as in chocolate flavored, although a good chocolate cake is a divine thing, but as in the myriad of things one can do with chocolate.

Here are some of the common ways you  might use chocolate

1. Straight -- either pieces of candy on top of a cupcake, or chocolate curls on the side of a cake (I made a cake once for my best friend that involved shaving down a 2lb block of dark chocolate with a cheese grater to get tons of little curls).
2. Melted -- chocolate flavored almond bark, baking squares, candy melts (which may have a chocolate flavor, but aren't really chocolate), etc.  Both the cupcakes featured this week and the week before had candy melt/almond bark chocolates on them. You can buy a million different chocolate molds, and it's a quick way to add decoration. I've also used candy melts over molded rice krispy treats for things like cows, and you can paint with them to do freehand work. (See Monday's cake archive post for some examples).
3. Modeling chocolate -- this is a sort of putty-like chocolate that you can either sculpt as is, or you can sculpt over a wire armature to make figures. I've seen it done a lot on various cake shows, and I saw some advertised for kids in Target recently. It's on my list of things to check out, but as I'm not the most proficient sculptor, I have tended to shy away from it.

So tell me -- do you use chocolate to decorate your cakes?

Cake 101: Five Minute Flowers

I am pleased to present our first how-to video. Cake 101: Five Minute Flowers.  We filmed this late last year, but my editor/cinematographer has not had a chance to put the edited version together before now.  Let me know what you think:

Cake 101 Check-in

So we are six lessons into Cake 101, and I thought I would take this opportunity to ask you, my loyal readers, what you think so far.

What do you like?
What do you dislike?
What would you like to see covered?
Do you want to see more pictures?

I am interested in what you have to say, so lay it on me please so we can work together to have a series that's fun to read and write.

Cake 101: Lesson 6: Inspiration is everywhere

Lesson 6: Inspiration is everywhere.

I probably have something approaching 20 books on cake now, everything from recipe books to little books of decorating tips and tricks. I have books that are aimed at the home baker and books that assume you've had at least some pastry training. I have books that provide step by step instructions and books that are more about the art of the cake. Each of them informs how I approach cake and how I approach decorating.  Some of my favorites are Martha Stewart's Cupcakes, Sky High: Irresistable Triple Layer Cakes, the Ace of Cakes book, and Hello, Cupcake! and What's New Cupcake?.

However, you don't have to have a book on cake to be inspired. One of my favorite sites is Cake Wrecks, partly to laugh at the wrecks, but mostly to look at the Sunday Sweets and take inspiration from them. There are tons of other forums on the web, too, filled with people posting about their cake experiments.  Heck, there's my perennial head-banging effort in threadcakes -- cakes inspired by t-shirts.

You can also find inspiration in the every day -- maybe there's a photo in a magazine you like, or a pattern on wallpaper, or that funky building you pass every day on your commute.  It's always worth trying to recreate what you see, even if it doesn't turn out, because you might just learn something new.

Where do you find inspiration for your cakes?

Cake 101: Lesson 5: Frosting

It's Cake 101: Lesson 5: Frosting. I know the series is kind of jumping around a bit, but that's mostly because it's how things organize themselves in my mind as I go. That said, if there's something you'd like me to cover next/soon in the Cake 101 series, hit the comment button and let me know.

So, frosting.  There are probably 7 million frosting recipes out there and what I use depends on what I'm doing.

For a standard cake that I don't intend to do any decorating on (i.e. it's just cake and frosting) I generally use whatever frosting the recipe calls for. Cupcakes are mostly the same way -- some of the time I use this great frosting recipe from Hello, Cupcake! that involves marshmallow fluff. I've also used that as a base layer on a cake before and discovered that you shouldn't refrigerate it because it gets gummy.

For decorating cakes, I use the Wilton class recipe -- it's meringue powder, shortening (not butter, although you can do it with butter, the consistency is just a little different), water, powdered sugar, and flavoring.  This recipe is close -- use all shortening instead of butter, add 1 tablespoon meringue powder, and use water instead of milk.  The class butter cream recipe on the Wilton site doesn't match the one I have from the booklet for the course I took, so I'd recommend starting from the linked recipe.  You can add 3/4c cocoa powder to make a chocolate icing -- I recommend doing so if you intend to color the final product black as it gives a darker base to start from.

How much water you put in determines the consistency of the final product -- the base recipe gives stiff consistency. Add 1 tablespoon water per batch of icing to make medium consistency and 2 tablespoons to get to thin. Here's how I use the various consistencies.

• Stiff  - this is what you'd use to make the Wilton rose, and what I use for making some flowers.
• Medium - borders, drop flowers, some other flowers (pansies, sweet peas) piping (with piping gel added), stars, shells, etc. This is also what you would use if you were covering a cake in basket weave.
• Thin - this is the base icing for covering a cake. I also tend to use thin with piping gel for leaves.

Lastly we can't forget royal icing.  This is a stiffer consistency icing used to create various decorations. There's also a technique called color flow where you use a thinner royal icing to fill in shapes.  The advantage to royal icing is that the decorations made from it will keep for months.

You can of course, also use frosting from a can, but I find that the average can of frosting does not have a consistency that stands up to piping decorations. You can also buy pre-made icing and icing mix from Wilton, but I don't find it that hard to do, so don't spend the extra money to buy pre-made.

So that's the lowdown on the sweet stuff. Questions? Comments? The cake ninja is, as always, all ears.

Cake 101: Lesson 4: Mixers

Mixers are one of those subjects that everyone has an opinion on, and here's mine.

The way I see it -- there's three ways to mix a cake: by hand, with a hand mixer, or with a stand mixer.

There are some things you just can't do by hand and/or shouldn't try to: frosting, whipping egg whites, divinity.

I used to think that a hand mixer was all I needed in life. I have a cuisinart 70 watt hand mixer, and it'll do a double batch of stiff frosting without even breaking a sweat.  I'd get annoyed at recipes that specified "use a stand mixer" (I'm talking to you, Alton Brown!).

Then I got a Viking stand mixer as a gift.  There's something to be said for the ease and simplicity of being able to add ingredients without stopping the mixer, scraping down, adding the ingredients, picking it back up, etc. I'm also getting a better consistency out of the frosting, and making bread is much easier. Plus, it's black and silver and shiny and sleek and bad-ass.

However, that doesn't mean you should run right out and buy a stand mixer. If you're not going to be making a lot of cakes on a regular basis, then a hand mixer is probably right for you.

The cake ninja's quick take is this:
Stand mixer pros: easier to use, handles stiffer frostings and larger batches, can be left to run on its own while you do other things.
Stand mixer cons: expensive, heavy, takes up more space in the kitchen.

Hand mixer pros: lightweight, takes less space, quick to assemble.
Hand mixer cons: not suited for large batches, gets tiring to hold for long whiles, cannot be run unattended.

I still use my hand mixer a lot (makes killer mashed potatoes) and I think both it and my stand mixer have their place in the kitchen.  If I'm just doing a quick box cupcake mix, there's no reason to pull out the stand mixer. On the other hand, if I'm doing a double or triple batch of frosting, I'd much rather take the effort.

As far as brands go, that is entirely up to you, your budget, and your preferences (the cost of an additional bowl for my mixer makes me cringe, but there is something to be said for the relationship between price and quality).  I'm fond of the ones I have, but you should do your research and decide on your own.

I hope that helps. Remember -- there is no one true way to mix. Comments, questions, suggestions on where to get flame decals for my mixer? The cake ninja is all ears.

Cake 101: Lesson 3: Pans, pans, and more pans

Lesson 3: Pans, pans, and more pans

I am not even going to attempt to claim to provide a comprehensive overview to every type of cake pan available. Instead, I am going to hopefully provide you with a quick reference guide for the next time you're contemplating a cake and its pan.

A note about brand -- everyone has their loyalty to a particular brand. Some people prefer Chicago Metallic, some people prefer NordicWare, some people prefer Wilton, others just whatever they can buy at their local store. The majority of my pans are either NordicWare or Wilton, but that's my personal preference. You should use whatever pans work for you.

A note about silicone pans -- I hate them. I have never had a cake come out of them successfully, so I do not use them and do not recommend them to others. However -- your mileage can and most certainly will vary.

Lastly, always be sure to only use as much batter in the pan as your recipe and/or pan calls for.

So here's the Cake Ninja's quick reference on pans:

• Round pans - your bog standard cake pan. Come in various diameters -- most commonly used are 6", 8", 9", and 10", although you will see multi-tiered wedding cakes going to 16" and beyond. The average household oven may not hold a 16" or greater pan successfully.  I like to use bake-even strips with these, especially on the 10" pans and you should use a heating core on anything greater than 10" (and some people do at 10" -- quick note, you can substitute a flower nail placed head down in the pan for a heating core).
• Rectangle pans - 9"x13" is the most common here, although you can get them up to full sheet size (which probably won't fit in the average household oven either). I have them in both glass and metal, and use them almost interchangeably. One thing to note -- you will not get perfectly square corners out of these pans as they're all slightly rounded.
• Other tier shapes -- you can get hearts, diamonds, pillow shapes, etc in tiered sets for wedding cakes. I have not used any of these personally, but do covet a funky paisley shaped one from Wilton.
• Bundt pans -- come in all sorts of styles these days. These are the pans with the hole in the center and often with some sort of fluting on the edges.
• Angel food pans -- like a bundt pan, but straight sided. These you do not use cake release on -- the cake needs to stick to the sides to rise properly.
• Shaped pans -- I have these in multiple varieties. There are the pans that are a single shape/piece (cartoon character, butterfly, castle, etc) that then gets decorated. There are pans that are in two pieces (bee hive, soccer ball, giant cupcake, etc) that are then put together and decorated. And then there are many mini-cakelet pans that come in various configurations (trains, cars, bugs, wedding cake shapes, mini bundts, etc).  These are usually of a heavier metal than the round pans, and all of mine are NordicWare.
• Springform pans -- not used for cakes, but a must if you're making a cheesecake. These pans have a side band that springs/clips into place around a bottom rim. You would not want to use these for a cake as the batter would probably run out.
• Cupcake pans - come in three sizes (mostly), the standard 12 cupcake pan, mini cupcake pans (I think mine hold 24), and the jumbo 6 cupcake pans. You can use them with papers or without, but if you do it without you need to be very good about spraying the pan.

So there you have it, a quick guide to pans. Anything I missed? Any pans you love? Any pans you hate? Want to tell me how wrong I am for hating silicone? Have at it! :)

Cake 101: Lesson 2: Ingredients Matter

My apologies for the delay in continuing this series -- the birth of my second daughter at the end of November threw off my schedule for a bit. However, it is a new year and I have a renewed commitment to this blog. I am working on a backlog of posts that should allow me to post on a MWF schedule for the foreseeable future.

Mondays will be a look at cakes I've made and a discussion of the techniques in them. Wednesdays will be free-form musings on cake, and Fridays will be the Cake 101 series. I am also hoping to have a video on drop flowers available in the near future, but that will be dependent upon my editor's schedule and he's a bit busy.

So, without further ado, Lesson 2: Ingredients Matter.

Here is a cake frosting made with powdered sugar, meringue powder, flavoring and shortening (the standard recipe I use) with all of the ingredients at their best:

And here is a cake I made where I ran out of powdered sugar, and the shortening I was using had partially liquefied:

Note the difference in texture and consistency. The second cake has a grainier texture, and the frosting is sliding off the cake. The first cake has nice crisp texture and the decorations are where they should be.

Ingredients matter -- especially those that are going to be the first ones seen by people looking at the cake. Quality matters -- cutting corners will only result in unhappy cakes and unhappy people eating the cakes.

So let's talk ingredients. The following is strictly my opinion based on my experience thus far, your mileage can and will vary.

• Flour - I almost never use cake flour, just standard all purpose and I haven't had a problem to date. I will sift it if the recipe calls for it, but that's about the extent of worrying I do. I also don't adapt my recipes for higher altitude, and haven't had a problem there either.
• Sugar - I tend to prefer dark brown sugar if the recipe calls for brown sugar, use the store brand granulated (white) sugar, and mostly use store-brand powdered sugar. I have not found that using name brand sugar makes a difference.
• Eggs - use whatever the recipe calls for.
• Shortening - I use the store brand and haven't had any problems. I do not use butter flavor for my frosting because it's yellow and it'll tint the frosting.
• Baking soda/baking powder -- I tend to use name brand here, but that's personal preference.
• Spices and extracts - always use the best you can afford. Spices (clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, etc) and extracts (vanilla, orange, peppermint, etc) are where the bulk of the flavor in your cake will come from and cheaping out here will be noticeable. If you're making white frosting and want it to be white, use a clear extract.
• Chocolate - never use cheap chocolate. It's worth it to spend the extra for good chocolate. Although I don't necessarily feel the same about cocoa powder -- my preferred there is Hershey's Special Dark.
• Booze - if the cake calls for booze (liquor or beer) use good liquor or beer. There's a scotch cake I make (with nuts and raisins) that I use Macallan in. If I won't drink it, I won't bake with it.
• Raisins, nuts, molasses, etc - I usually use the store brand as it doesn't make much of a difference.
• Icing colors - I tend to prefer paste over gel and usually buy Wilton, but the gel colors available at Hobby Lobby are also nice.
• Cake release/baking spray - while you could do the butter and flour your pan method, I far prefer baking spray/cake release. Brand does not seem to matter here -- I have had good luck with both the store brand and Baker's Joy.

So there you have it -- know your ingredients and buy what works for you, but try not to skimp on the ones that most affect flavor and appearance. As always, I welcome your feedback -- what do you agree with, what did I forget, and what did I get totally wrong?

Cake 101: Lesson 1: Know Your Audience

I was going to start off Cake 101 by diving into ingredients or techniques or baking pans, but I was reminded over the weekend of the most important thing about making a cake: knowing your audience.

That is, who is the cake for, why is it being made, when must it be done by, and what's really important to them?

Who
This is important. I'm getting ready to do my three year old's birthday cupcakes, and it'll be cake mix, store bought frosting, and pre-made sugar decorations. 1) The store bought decorations are the theme she wants (and less time and expense than doing them myself). 2) She wants funfetti cake, and while I could make my own funfetti cake from a white cake recipe, she does not care if Mom whips egg whites into a frenzy or just stirs the mix up. 3) There are potential peanut allergies among her attendees and using store bought cuts down on potential issues.

I would not serve cake mix to a pastry chef, but neither would I serve a delicate three layer sponge cake to a room full of three year olds. Know the who and their sophistication level and expectations.

Why
Equally important is why. Different occasions call for different recipes, techniques, levels of skill, and expected lack of errors. The cake I make for a paying client has to meet a higher standard than the cupcakes for my toddler or the cake I'm taking to a work potluck or a family occasion.

Knowing the why is the difference between scrapping an entire cake and starting over and being able to do a good cover-up job and not worry.  It's entirely likely that you're not baking for the judges of Food Network Challenge, so feel free not to hold yourself to their incredibly high standards. Know the standards of the occasion and strive to meet them.

When
What is your deadline? When must you be done? Is it a hard deadline or a soft/self-imposed deadline? What other things are happening in that time frame that might interfere with your baking?  When is critical. There's nothing worse than staying up until 3am finishing a commissioned cake because you mis-planned your timeline.

Back to the cupcakes for a moment -- not only did my toddler request cupcakes specifically, but I knew I'd be more than likely having to work Friday or Saturday of the party weekend. Cupcakes take nearly no time at all, and thus are a better choice.

On the other hand, I spent over two weeks on my husband's birthday cake last year between prepping gumpaste shapes, letting them dry, painting them, prepping frosting, etc. You have know how long it takes you on average to do something, and what your commitments are in order to make a good timeline. Always add fudge factor -- as in "OH FUDGE! I dropped the cake!"

What
 Lastly, know what is important to the person the cake is for.  I love making big elaborate cakes. This year, I am not making one for my husband's birthday (he's requested a red velvet cake with cayenne -- I'm interested to see how the recipe I found turns out) or for my toddler, because neither of them wanted one.

You can have the most fantastic cake skills in the world, but if it's too ornate, too fancy, or just plain not what the recipient wanted, then it's not the right cake. Does the recipient hate fondant? Don't use it. Pay attention to every detail - color, shape, design, etc.  It is often more important that the recipient be happy than that you be happy -- and what makes them happy is not necessarily going to align with your expectations.

(Never fear, I have plans of making an elaborate cake for my own birthday. It will be a ninja carousel. It's going to rock!)

So that's Cake 101: Lesson 1. Know Your Audience. Thoughts? Comments? Questions? The Denver Cake Ninja is all (virtual) ears.

Could it be content?

It just might be indeed.

I have learned the folly of committing to what I am going to do for threadcakes too soon. I have decided, given that we are moving into a new house in late July, that perhaps I ought to pick something I am not going to have to move between houses -- which means no gumpaste. With the contest over in mid-August, I did not think I'd have enough time to prep the gumpaste after the move, and I really don't want to try to move a 10" bicycle wheel made out of gumpaste across town -- that seems like a chance for disaster to me.

Instead I am going to try a new-to-me technique called frozen butter cream transfer. I've done the Wilton method of butter cream transfer where you use piping gel to delineate your picture and then pipe directly onto the piping gel on the cake. This is different -- it involves building the transfer on wax paper, freezing it, and then flipping it over onto the cake.  This does mean that this year's cake will be 2D and not 3D, but it also means I might have half a shot at placing.

In other news, I am starting to prep a series of blog posts called Cake 101, which will be part of something I'm going to call Cake Ninja University.  These posts will be the foundation for the YouTube (or possibly BlipTV - my editor and cinematographer likes their terms of service and conditions on how they will use our content better) videos I will be doing next year.  And yes, there will eventually be Cake 102, 201, etc.

This is where you, my audience, (is there anyone out there?) come in. I have some ideas for where to start -- the first few posts will be about ingredients, tools, pans, and display methods -- but I also want to know what people want to hear about. So what would you like to see in a Cake 101 post or show?