Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Princess Cake, Chocolate Cake

Sorry it has taken me this long to post! School along with working a retail job during the holidays got the best of me! I have been enjoying a small break from school since December 22nd and will return next Tuesday January 9th to the early mornings and life in the busy kitchen! In the mean time I am trying to get caught up on other things in life--like cleaning the toilet and scrubbing the floors! Come to think of it, I can't wait for school to start up again!

This post is from the 7th week of the Cakes class. We continued practicing our perfect layering and icing skills and this traditional Swedish Princess Cake was an exercise in draping a cake, rather than icing the outside. Here we used marzipan, which we colored (the traditional cake is a pastel green color) and the inside cake was genoise layered with Creme Mousseline (this is just a fancy term for pastry cream which is mixed with whipped cream) and Orange Jam (traditionally a raspberry jam is used). The crumb coat is whipped cream as is the dome on top, a characteristic of a traditional Princess Cake. Then the whole thing is draped with marzipan, which has been rolled to 1/4" thick and then the cake is decorated with marzipan roses and other decorations.

This was the result when the Princess Cake was cut. I have really improved on my layering--yeah! I love the look of the whipped cream dome. Also, this was one of the tastiest cakes yet thanks to the filling being something other than a heavy buttercream frosting and of course the marzipan--I swear I could eat a pound of the stuff! I have even earned the reputation of liking it so much that the class now piles all of their marzipan scraps at my work station!

This is our first chocolate cake, and wow it was so good! The offical name of this cake is Sacher Torte, which is a chocolate pound cake layered with a chocolate ganache buttercream. I have never tasted a better chocolate frosting and if you don't like chocolate frosting this one will convert you! The outside layer is a poured ganache with the inscription on a marzipan plaque.

There were several problems with this cake. First, the cake baked on an uneven sheetpan resulting in a very slanted cake. In order to layer the cake I had to trim the top to make it even which gave me a cake with 2 layers rather than 3. Secondly, I let the ganache cool too much and it coated too thick on top. However all of that is aesthetic and in terms of taste, it was awesome!

Also this week we practiced piping buttercream roses, a method where buttercream is piped onto a rose "nail" in the shape of the rose and then transferred to the cake. We practiced by making 100 roses--talk about hand cramps! I found this to be a very challenging way to make a nice looking rose, but my chef says after 500 more they will look great!

This is a rose made out of white modeling chocolate, which is white chocolate with some additives that make it pliable. I found it more difficult to work with than marzipan because it tears much easier, as can be seen at the edges. To this point we have learned three methods for making roses: marzipan, modeling chocolate and piped buttercream.