Big cake update

We've have the great pleasure lately to produce some big cakes for customers that have pushed our skills to new limits, and I wanted to share them with you because they're just so delicious to look at!

The first was a Dora cake for a little girl turning three. Inside was a vanilla buttercake layered with white chocolate ganache. We spent quite a lot of time working up the colour density in the fondant to give this cake the vibrant theme that Dora is famous for. We thought it was all about the colours! But when our young customer laid eyes on it, the first thing she said was "Where's the monkey?". Turns out Dora doesn't go anywhere without Boots the monkey! Next time we'll have to work out how to incorporate him into the cake.


Last weekend we made a cake for a new t-shirt company called Yellow & Co. Yellow's philosophy is quite simple - different colours represent different frequencies and you choose your colours based on the frequency you want to project. Cool, right? When we started this cake last Friday night, it was after a really tough day at work. I was feeling particularly low when I started working up all the different coloured fondants for The Colour Cake. For five hours I had these vibrant colours mere inches from my face. By the time the cake was finished my mood had completely changed and I could hardly get to sleep, I felt so re-energised.

On the inside of The Colour Cake we served a quadruple tower of chocolate cake sandwiched together with chocolate ganache. It was terrifying putting white fondant over the dark chocolate tower. I'm pleased to say there was not one smear of chocolate on the white. Phew!

Comments

Hannah said…
Hello, I have just discovered your blog, thanks to a google search for the best white chocolate ganache - it led me to your post back in 2009 about ganache. I was wondering, what kind of coverage would you get with the quantities you suggested (750g choc & 225ml cream)? I'm making a 3 tier wedding cake covered in white chocolate ganache, and need to calculate quantities!
Your cake creations are stunning & I will most definitely be coming back to your blog : )
9:22 pm
Petrina said…
Hi Hannah,

I think my quanties are three quarters of the original batch size. Let me check my recipe tonight by I believe you need 1.3kg white chocolate and 450ml pure cream for a full batch. and I'd use that to cover 2 x 8inch cakes sandwiched together to make four layers. How big are your tiers?

Cheers,
Petrina.
3:27 pm
Anonymous said…
This is my first time i visit here and I found so many interesting stuff in your blog especially it's discussion, thank you. bakeries in bentonville ar

2:31 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marshmallow Sherbet Cones

Image
I have always been a big fan of sherbet in the many forms it comes in. As a kid, I loved those sherbet cones you bought from the corner store – semi solidified sherbet in a stale cone, with chewy marshmallow on the top, coated in hundreds and thousands. I also loved Wiz Fizz – fruity sherbet in a glassine bag with a little plastic shovel. I’d most often buy these on the way home from the pool, because they were only five cents. Unfortunately, my hands were usually still wet from the pool, turning the bag to a sloppy mess before I could eat its entire contents. For my 10th birthday my mum decided to include homemade sherbet cones on the menu. Thanks to The Australian Women’s Weekly recipe cards, we had the recipe for sherbet and marshmallow, albeit, on different cards. My clever mum bought flat bottomed square cones, half filled them with sherbet and then topped them with pink or green marshmallow. Of course each had a liberal sprinkling of hundreds and thousands. In my explo
Read more

White Chocolate Ganache

Image
I don’t think there is an occasion more joyous than a wedding. Of course, once a wedding has taken place, many more joys follow, like the arrival of a long awaited baby. But it all starts with a wedding, and I find weddings to be chock-filled with hope. If you’re lucky, you only ever need to have one wedding – although some people have more than one, if not several! So the trick to getting your fill of wedding joy is to know lots of people who are planning on getting married. As a cake baker, I am getting to participate in weddings, baby showers, naming days and even funerals (although not too many of those, thank goodness)! I consider it a privilege to be invited to create cakes and cupcakes for these landmark occasions in people’s lives. We (my darling husband and I) always try extra hard to come up with something special that fits the occasion and the people who we’re baking for. And what we’ve discovered is trying extra hard allows us an opportunity for continuous improvement. When
Read more

Road Test: Sunbeam Mixmaster v Kenwood Patissier

Image
Back in 2003 when I began my most recent baking odyssey, I acquired a Sunbeam Mixmaster – the remake of the classic retro mixer from the fifties. My mother had a Mixmaster which she bought in the seventies, and which I did most of my cake baking with as a teenager (when the obsession truly took hold). She still has that Mixmaster today, although it is significantly worse for wear – the plastic cover over the light is broken and they haven’t made the bulbs for years, so there’s a “live” cavity where the light bulb should be. I can vouch for that because I stuck my finger in there accidentally last year and got a nice shock from it. I paid quite a lot of money for my Mixmaster and it held pride of place on my kitchen bench for three years. That is until I had it running one Sunday and one of the motors blew up! I discovered that the twin motor “600 watt” power it claimed worked in two ways: 1. to run the beaters; 2. to turn the turntable the bowl sits on. After seeing flames shooting fro
Read more