Garden Cake for Homeland Florist's 85th Anniversary

Photo from ECHerald.com

I knew when I had agreed to do this cake that it would be quite the undertaking given the crazy week I had planned. The cake was needed the day after my inventory date at my day job. I though, no big deal, I can swing it, especially since it's AFTER inventory I should be able to take a few days off. And then the inevitable happened, work changed my inventory date from the day before the party, to the day after the anniversary party. No manager in the history of my job (that I'm aware of) has ever dared to take the day before inventory off. I guess you could say I either like to live dangerously, or I had no other option. Maybe a little of both? Not too dangerously though, I got permission from my boss and we worked it out.

Kitchenaide "after" pic.

 

I went back and forth on the design for this one. Do I use real flowers, do I use gum paste flowers? And if I do use real flowers, if I don't get them from the florist who's throwing the anniversary party, will they be offended? Do I even have time to order and pick up flowers? Knowing that I basically had zero time to do anything, besides bake, I decided to go with gum paste flowers. I dabbled a bit in making my own gum paste flowers and quickly learned that I would much rather buy them, since I just don't have the time and patience. We did, however, make all the small flowers in shop.

I love, love, LOVE that I was given creative freedom on this cake. It makes things a lot less stressful. I wanted to make sure this cake was extra special, so I was a bit more adventuresome than I probably needed to be. I made all three layers a different flavor; bottom was champagne cake with lemon buttercream, middle was chocolate cake with nutella buttercream and top was carrot cake with cream cheese buttercream. I had planned on doing a different design for the top carrot cake layer, but had to improvise, since carrot cake is SO freaking heavy! It would not hold up in the shape I wanted and kept drooping down. Some quick thinking, a little trimming and a lot of wasted fondant later, I had something else that seemed to work better with the design. Minor disaster avoided.

I was fortunate to have Shannon, my intern, helping me with this one. Between the two of us, it took 10 hours to complete and we were literally painting flowers as we were packing up the car to leave for the party. We painted the flowers with a little vodka and food coloring, since the vodka evaporates much more quickly than water does. The banner and the small flowers on the middle tier were made of fondant, the remaining flowers were gum paste and the other accessories (such as the butterflies and bird) were non-edible and non-toxic. Cake stand is from Crate & Barrel.

Photo from echerald.com

A professional photographer from the East County Herald was there taking pictures and the garden cake pictures made it into the publication and on their webside, echerald.com (click pictures of events, then homeland florist). It was a great networking opportunity and I'm glad I put forth so much time and effort into the cake. We were really happy with the results and it tasted delicious as well!

Picture from ECHerald.com

Succulent Wedding Cake

I must admit that when a bride approached me with the idea of putting succulents on her wedding cake, I wasn't sold on the idea. I had no idea if they were even "safe" to use and had difficulty finding any examples online. After extensive research, I learned that they were non-toxic and would then be okay to use. I still wrapped all the clipped ends in floral tape, just in case.

This cake was a true test of my patience. Turns out, I still have some left. Who knew? I made a double batch of almond champagne cake (recipe to follow), wasn't paying attention, and used baking SODA instead of baking POWDER. I decided to bake it anyways and find out what happens....... Both cakes were baked at the same temperature and were not overcooked. The cake on the left had the baking soda and the one on the right was cooked correctly with the baking powder. The whole place smelled like pancakes! Not ideal when you're baking a cake. I basically had to start over. This was a very long baking day.

With hopefully all the mishaps behind me, we forged ahead with cake assembly. The bride wanted white on white cake. I was able to talk her into lemon buttercream. Flavor is huge with me and I don't often do plain anything, unless I have to.

I also made a lemon mousse filling in addition to lemon buttercream and covered the cake in white fondant. I also saturated each layer of the cake with vanilla bean simple syrup to add moisture and flavor.

The bottom edges of the cake were finished with a turquoise ribbon and set in the fridge to chill.

Finally, the wedding day had come. I couldn't wait to set it up and hope that everyone loved it. The wedding toppers were made by the bride's daughter, Shannon, out of sculpty clay. She also helped me make the cake, every step of the way, and was a ton of help!

I supplemented with silvered thistles to the succulent bouquet. It maybe be the first and hopefully not last time I use thistles on anything. I find them very interesting looking.

Champagne Cake Recipe
(from allrecipes.com)

INGREDIENTS:
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (I used caked flour)
3 tsp. baking powder (NOT soda, lol)
1 tsp. kosher salt 
2/3 cup butter
1 1/2 cups white sugar
3/4 cup champagne (I used almond champagne)
                                                                                 6 egg whites
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 10" round cake pan.
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until very light and fluffy. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together, and then blend into creamed mixture alternately with champagne. (I also added 1 tsp. of vanilla)
3. In a large clean bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. (I also add 1/2 tsp. of meringue powder). Fold 1/3 of the whites into batter to lighten it, then fold in remaining egg whites. (it's extremely important that you incorporate the whites completely into the batter). Pour into prepared pan.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Also, a rule I make a point to bake the cake a day before I assemble it. The cake is wrapped completely in saran wrap and refrigerated overnight. This helps retain more of the moisture and makes it less crumbly to work with. I also don't give out my recipes (unless you're a really, really good friend) but here are the ingredients that I used in the other components of the cake:

Vanilla Bean Simple Syrup
white sugar
water
vanilla bean, split and scraped
pinch salt
mint leaves
lemon zest and juice

Lemon Buttercream
Balade butter
powdered sugar
lemon zest and juice
half and half
lemon sea salt

Aint No Party Like a Cupcake Party,

'Cause a cupcake party don't stop! Aw, the cupcake phenomenon. I hope it never dies. Giant cupcakes, mini cupcakes and even regular sized cupcakes seem to be the craze these days. I honestly have probably way more cupcake pictures than is normal for a person to have, but I love that. Here are some of the many pictures of cupcakes that I have made in the past year or two.

The Making of a Thomas the Tank Engine Cake

I was lying on the rolling table at the chiropractor when I got a phone call for a cake order. A Thomas the Tank Engine cake, none the less. This was my first attempt at something of this magnitude, and not having any resources in front of me as I lay there, I quoted the price MUCH too low for this one. I hate it when that happens. Oh, and they needed it in two days and it needed to feed 50 people. If this was all I did, then no problem! But, I have a day job, and have to schedule these things around my work schedule. Luckily, I had the next day off and it worked out, but normally I need to plan cakes of this magnitude at least a week in advance. Let's just say, it was a great learning experience. 

Given my time allotment, I would not have time to make all the fillings from scratch, so I picked up some vienna cream filling from my neighborhood cake store, Do It With Icing, and some frosting pride from Smart and Final (the only place that I've found so far that carries both frosting and pastry pride). After researching, I found a handful of cakes that gave me an idea of what I needed to do. I don't EVER copy someone else's design. I always make it my own. I soon realized that I was going to need fondant in primary colors, including red and also black-yikes. It is extremely difficult to get a true black or red when coloring frosting, so I had to buy the pre-colored stuff to get the look I was going for.


The night before decorating, I baked the cake (vanilla and dark chocolate marble), which took FOUR batches and made the accessories for the cake out of fondant (so they would be dry before adding them to the cake). The structure of this cake was going to be tricky. You would almost need a degree in engineering (slight pun there) to build a cake like this. My dad was a civil engineer, so maybe it's in my blood? Anywho, I figured it out. I had to do a rectangular cake as the base and then cut round cakes in half, in different sizes, to use to shape the train. I used straws in the half-circle shapes to hold them together. Each layer was filled with a vanilla simple syrup, vienna cream and frosting pride. I left the "muffin top" on the front and back half circles, but all other layers were trimmed to the exact same size as the other.

The next step would be to carve away at the cake until it resembles the shape I need. You can start to see the cake start to come together at this point. Next, I frosted the entire cake with frosting pride. This is the messiest part. No matter how careful I am with the layering and cleaning as I go, my kitchen always looks like a bomb went off after I'm done. So, before I can break out the fondant, the kitchen has to get cleaned up.

Oh, fondant. Why do you test me? I bought the "other brand" of fondant and not the brand I usually get, which was easier to mix color into, but more difficult to work with over all. It doesn't smooth out as well, let's just leave it at that. My issues this time, were seemingly huge creases in the fondant on the right side of the train that would just not smooth out. This is killing the perfectionist in me, so I had to decide to just let it go and try to cover it up with the train accessories. If you look closely, you'll see what I mean toward the back of the train. You'll notice, I didn't cover the entire train in the blue fondant. This is because I'm going to be adding different colors and features to the train, which will cover this off. Plus, let's face it, fondant is expensive and doesn't taste very good, so why add more than I have to? Plus, sometimes, I misjudge how much coverage I'm going to get out of the fondant and end up having to compromise.


The next step in this process is to start adding the features of the train. To say I had this all planned out perfectly from the beginning would be a lie. Things happen and your plans change and sometimes I don't know what I'm doing until right before I do it. But, usually it works out okay, usually.

I finished it off by tracing the elements with black frosting (which I had to buy because black is just impossible) and I wasn't too happy with the consistency of the frosting, which made it very difficult to write with, but went with it. I used black decorettes for the "coal" (which I got at the cake store) and stuck them to the cake with the black frosting. The writing turned out a LOT sloppier than I'm comfortable with, but there was no going back at this point. Every element used for this cake is edible, with the exception of the straws I used to hold it together.

I spent a total of about 6 hours creating this cake, 5 of those hours dedicated to decorating. This broke down to, after expenses, about $2 an hour for my labor. Like I said, learning experience. Never answer your phone when you're at the chiropractor.

Making a Strawberry Shortcake Character Cake

For her 5th birthday,

my niece, Naomi, wanted a Strawberry Shortcake character cake. My normal research procedures when getting ideas for a cake would include "googling" for ideas and several shopping trips to Michael's, Party City and my neighborhood cake store, Do it With Icing. When the shopping trips turned out to be little or no help at all (neither Michael's or Party City had anything Strawberry Shortcake!). I checked out Sears, and they had quite a few Strawberry Shortcake toys and after a LOT of contemplating, I decided to go with a Strawberry Shortcake doll which I would stick into a "skirt" of cake. The idea was to make her sitting on a strawberry with her crossed legs sticking out from underneath her dress. I didn't really care for how the legs turned out, so I didn't use them and was pretty happy with how it turned out (for the most part). I'm such a perfectionist and I hate that I always see the flaws in my cakes when maybe I am the only one who notices them.

I personally think it is pointless to make a cake beautiful if the taste is mediocre. For this cake, I decided to go with a strawberry cream cheese mousse with whipped cream frosting (pastry pride) and organic strawberry syrup. Whenever I use fruit in my cakes, I attempt to use only organic fruit for many, many reasons, which I won't go into right now. I decided to do the cream cheese mousse since I was unable to use gelatin, like I normally do when I make my mousses, since it had to be kosher. (I try to avoid using eggs in mousses whenever possible. I have my many reasons for that too). Simply filling with the whipped icing will not support the weight of the cake and will "ooze" out. You don't want that. It makes life MUCH more difficult than it has to be.

A good rule of thumb when baking cakes is to bake the cake a day before you plan on putting it together. Bake, wrap entirely in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. This helps seal in the moisture and really makes a difference on how moist the cake will turn out. If you don't believe me, try it!

After the cakes have been baked and refrigerated, I cut off the "muffin top" so the layers will sit nicely on top of each other.

I then coated the cake with the organic strawberry syrup (it's easiest to use a squirt bottle) and layered with the strawberry mousse, fresh organic strawberries and whipped pastry pride (which is non-dairy and more stable than regular whipped cream).

For this cake, I made two 9" layers and two 8" layers. I repeated the process with the mousse, strawberries and whipped cream on each layer.

The next step is to carve the layers into the desired shape. I alternated vanilla and strawberry cake layers.

After the cake is carved, I covered it in the whipped cream. Typically, fondant cakes are covered in butter cream, which will "dry", and then either sprayed with water or covered in piping gel in order to get the fondant to stick to the cake. I prefer to use whipped cream icing (depending on the cake recipe) which is a LOT messier to work with and results a more rounded look on the cake edges. But in my opinion, it tastes a LOT better. And let's face it, if the cake doesn't taste amazing, all that effort to decorate it beautifully is wasted.

I have a love/hate relationship with fondant. I do prefer to use the Milton brand (available at Michael's). It just seems to be easier to work with and cracks less than the other types I've tried. After rolling out the fondant (pretty much exactly how you'd roll out sugar cookie dough), I carefully place it on the cake and smooth out with my fondant smoother. I used several different colors for this cake, including red, which is often difficult to get. I came pretty close.

The idea for this cake was to make it look like Strawberry Shortcake was sitting on the strawberry. Not sure if I pulled it off exactly, but that is what it's supposed to look like. I then added the rest of the decorations to my liking. The "5" is made out of edible pearls that are simply pressed into the strawberry made of fondant. Dots are stuck onto the fondant by brushing with a small amount of water. Too much water and it will drip a nice streak of whatever color the dot is, down the side of the cake, so less is more!

The cake is now ready for the doll to be inserted. I undressed her and wrapped her well in plastic wrap so she wouldn't get sticky and dirty. My brother actually asked me if I baked the cake with the doll inside of it (duh!). It would melt and probably poison the cake, so NO, I did not bake the doll in the cake. Her top is made of fondant, simply draped over her frame.

I later realized (after trying to fit the cake in the fridge) that I should have put the doll in later on, since I had to remove a shelf in order to fit her in my fridge! Luckily, my fridge was not too full this time and I could make her fit.

This cake required 3 hours and 15 minutes of decorating time. Baking the cake layers and the making of the fillings takes about 2 hours. Total creating time, about 5 hours.

About the Chef

Courtney Jones, CC

This is my first attempt at a blog, ever, so hopefully I won't screw it up too badly. I basically needed a way to document the cakes and other baked goodies I make for my business (Miss Jones Catering and Cakes) so, here goes!

A little about me: By day, I work as a store manager. Looking for a creative outlet, I took 3 years out of my life and went to culinary school (while still working 50+ hours a week, of course). Now, here I am, juggling the day job and baking like a mad-woman often times.

I get asked A LOT where I learned to work with fondant and create these cakes like I do and it is often assumed that I learned my craft in culinary school. I did learn a TON in culinary school but we never once did work with fondant. YouTube has been a great resource for me, as far as "how to", "tips" and even some "cake ideas." So basically, I learned how to make cakes off of YouTube and lots of patience, trials and errors. There is a YouTube video for just about everything! My friends and neighbors are often the recipients of my little "experiments" in the kitchen.


If you have any comments or suggestions, I would greatly appreciate them. Plus, I really hope you enjoy reading about the baked goodies as much as I enjoy making them!