Intermediate Pastry Arts Class 4

The 4th installment of my Intermediate Pastry Arts class focused on cake decorating. Now to fit all of the components of cake decorating into a 2 1/2 hr class is impossible, so our chef showed us some basic techniques on frosting a cake, decorating it and writing messages on it.

My class is turning into an episode of Survivor. The first class had only 4 students. My beginner pastry class had 10. The third class had only 3 students, the girl who I am partners with is the one who didn't show and I swear, I am a nice and clean smelling person so I have no clue what happened. Our class this week had only 2 students, the third person informed the chef she couldn't come that week.

The two of us remaining tribe members actually both had a little cake decorating experience, so this was really a good refresher course. As you can see from an old post of mine, I took a few cake decorating classes a few years ago and made quite a few cakes at the time. I unfortunately haven't done much decorating for a while, choosing to focus more on just baking, as I thought my artistic skills were lacking.

Again, due to the time restraints, we were given premade chocolate sponge cakes to work with. The recipe is below.

Chocolate Sponge Cake

2/3 cup vegetable oil

8 egg yolks

1 cup room temp water

1 tbl vanilla extract

2 1/4 cups cake flour

3/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 cups sugar

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

8 egg whites

Grease and flour the bottoms of two 10 inch cake pans. Do not grease the sides.

Whip the vegetable oil and the egg yolks together just to combine. Stir in the water and the extract.

Sift together the cake flour, one third of the sugar, the baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder and the salt. Stir this into the egg yolk mixture, and then whip on high speed with an electric mixer for one minute.

In a spotless bowl whip the egg whites (make sure that any item that contacts the egg whites is meticulously clean, otherwise they will not whip). Whip the whites till foamy then gradually add the remaining and whip the whites till a stiff peak is formed.

Carefully fold the egg whites into the yolk base. Divide the batter between the two pans.

Bake at 375 for approximately 25 minutes.

Our chef taught us how to properly slice through the cakes to make three equal layers. There are tools that you can buy that will help you cut through the cake evenly but he taught us the old fashioned way, by using a serrated knife and slowly sawing back and forth on the cake as you spin it around. Before you are know it, you have come the whole way through the cake.

We put a sugar syrup on each layer and then placed our first layer on the turntable. He showed us how to put make even layers of frosting in between each layer of cake. Then when we completed and stacked the third layer, he showed us how to crumb coat the cake. The top layer of the cake should always be upside down as the flat side makes the perfect top to a frosted cake. Learning to put a crumb coat on a cake is a very important step in our cake as we had a chocolate cake and vanilla frosting. The probability for crumbs showing would be much more likely.

We placed our cakes in the refrigerator to set up. He then showed us how they made the frosting we were using.

Buttercream

1 cup egg whites

1 1/4 pounds of powdered sugar

1 1/4 pounds of butter (cubed and at room temperature)

1 tsp flavoring of your choice

Over bain marie in a kitchen aid bowl beat egg white and sugar till sugar is melted and very hot, about 140 degrees.

Place bowl on mixer and beat on high till mixture is cool, white in color and looks like meringue.

Add cubed butter until butter cream forms.

Add flavoring. Can be used immediately or refrigerated.

We removed the chilled cakes and put a final coat of frosting. He recommended that more is always better in this case. Start with the sides and put a generous amount on, as you can always spread that around. If you put too little you may pull into the cake and bring out the crumbs. Once the sides are done, you can smooth them out with a pastry cutter. We then worked on icing the top and making sure that was level. We weren't too concerned with making the very bottom of the cake or the edges up the top perfect, as our decorations were going to cover that. The cakes then went back in the refrigerator to set.

We filled our pastry bags with frosting, and remember to fill your bags only half way so that the bag doesn't become cumbersome and the filling doesn't spill out the top. We practiced different shapes on top of a covered sheet pan so we could just scoop the frosting up when done and start with a clean slate. We did stars, rosettes, shells, and several variations on them.

We brought our cakes back out and put borders on the top and bottom using the methods we had learned. We practiced writing with chocolate, which got alot better and clearer the more I did it. I really started to get the flow of how the chocolate came out and how to direct my hand. When we felt comfortable with our writing, we brought our cakes back out and finished them off.

My husband and I enjoyed a slice each to celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary which was the 17th. The rest was taken to work, where it was decimated by those hungry fools.

It was really nice to take a refresher, and it definitely reminded me that I have to get back into decorating cakes more. Its such a fun an lovely art form.