Now that everyone knows I'm decorating cakes, I've been named the official cake-maker for every body's birthday in my office. One of my co-workers had a birthday last week.
My boss asked me to make a cake for him so we could celebrate. The birthday "boy" also asked me to make him one to bring home and share with his family, not knowing that I was already going to make him one for work. He had the recipe for Martha Stewart's Orange and Almond Cake and politely asked if I could try it. I said that I was certainly up for the challenge.
Monday was my cake class. Tuesday I went to our local co-op to get organic oranges and almonds. I boiled the oranges for 2 hours (which is really a weird thing to do) and ground the almonds into fine powder. I also baked two small cakes for his surprise cake. He's a musician, so my idea had been to create a large music note. I frosted those with chocolate buttercream left over from the week before.
Wednesday I rushed home from work to blend the oranges. I didn't have a food processor that was big enough, and it was quite entertaining. Blenders don't like oranges, especially the peels. I finally managed to get the 3 cups-worth that the recipe required and baked the cake.
Trying to be a multi-tasker, I also made the orange topping that his requested cake required. That meant 20 more minutes of boiling orange chunks. I didn't assemble the cake since I knew he was eating it two days later and didn't want it to get soggy. I didn't take any photos, but it looked yummy.
Back to his music note - I frosted it and covered it with fondant. At this point it was close to 10 pm, I believe. I cut out stars from fondant and quickly assembled it. I was messy - and again, I didn't plan for this cake as well as I should have. Upon reflection, I realized that I should have covered the cake with only one piece of fondant, as opposed to the multiple coverings on each piece. I have since invested in some pearl dust for decorating. I wanted to add metallic effects the entire time I was decorating, but had nothing to do it with.
The music note-cake was probably too chocolaty - but I was trying to use up what I had. I believe that the co-workers enjoyed it. It's always good to have some sugar to look forward too during the day. I was just relieved to have two more cakes under my belt
All of your cake decorating looks amazing! I've been meaning to try my hand at fondant for a while now, I'll have to use your cakes as my inspiration!
ReplyDeleteFondant is so much fun to play with. It reminds me of all of the years playing with play-doh
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