Hart for Her 1st anniversary cake

My friend Patricia asked me to make a cake for the 1st anniversary of her women only gym and gave me a carte blanche. She was confident that I would come up with something nice. Actually nice is not something I would go for when I make a cake for someone. I'm always going for the WOW effect. 

I have to admit that I was a bit stressed. It's been a while since I last made a cake so I was hopping that I didn't lost my touch. Luckily it's just as riding a bike. 

A couple of days before I started to look online for inspiration. I found some really pretty cakes but I still had no idea what I would design for the cake. Since the gym color is fuchsia I would of course use that color. I though that some shades of pink and white would be nice for a cake. 

The day before the party I started making some crème pâtissière using this recipe:

- 500 ml milk
- 100 gr sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- 32 gr custard powder
- vanilla pot/essence/sugar
- pinch of salt

While the crème pâtissière cooled down I baked the biscuit for the bottom and top layer. For the bottom layer I used:

- 300 gr eggs
- 150 gr sugar
- 130 gr flour
- pinch of salt
- lemon zest
oven temperature 170C
And for the top layer I used:
- 200 gr eggs
- 100 gr sugar
- 50 gr flour

- 20 gr coco powder

- 3 teaspoons of coffee powder
- pinch of salt

 

While the biscuit cooled I made some butter cream:

- 128 gr water
- 338 gr sugar
- 150 gr egg white
- pinch of cream of tartar
- 750 gr room temperature butter in cubes
- 200 gr melted dark chocolate

I divided the butter cream in three portions. One portion I kept plain, one was used to make chocolate butter cream and the other portion was turned into some apricot butter cream.

I started with the bottom layer first. After I cut the biscuit in three layers, I spread some crème pâtissière on each layer to keep the biscuit moist. Then a layer of apricot jam, a layer of crème pâtissière and a layer of apricot butter cream. This was the filling for all the layers of biscuit. After that I crumble coat the biscuit and put it in the fridge to harden. 

Now it was time for the top layer. Again I spread some crème pâtissière on each layer, then some raspberry jam, some more crème pâtissière and some chocolate butter cream. I used some chocolate butter cream to crumble coat the biscuit and when that hardens I spread an extra layer of plain butter cream. If I wanted to coat it with some white fondant, the butter cream will not shine through. 

Now for the fun part. What shall I do with the cake decorations. I didn't want to make a "jump in your face" pink cake. I wanted something more then that. To keep the bottom part from being too busy I covered it with some white fondant. I love ombre cakes and I always wanted to make one so I used some pink fondant to make some fuchsia fondant by adding pink color. Then I used three different sizes heart shaped cutters to cut out the hearts. I did the same with a piece of different pink fondant. The idea was to use the different sized hearts to cover the cake all up. I started with a layer of fuchsia hearts and after adding a layer of pink hearts I decided to not cover it all up. As the top layer would be "in your face" I wanted to keep the bottom layer less busy. To give it more glam I added some mini sugar pearls in between the hearts. After all this I put the cake in the fridge.

In the meantime I used some of the left over hearts by turning them into balloons. I used some water to clue two hearts together and added a piece of wire in between. 

I also made some pink roses and cut out the letters for the gym. Instead of cutting out the letters "hart" I cut a heart out of fondant and put the letters "for her" on it. 

Now it was time to decorate the top layer. I wanted to try and see if I could make a pink ombre rose. I wanted to go from fuchsia to light pink so I had to cover the biscuit with a fuchsia fondant. As I didn't had enough left I had to make more and luckily I manage to get the same color as before. To that fuchsia fondant I started adding more white fondant to get the lighter shade. Layer for layer I clued all the different shades of pink pedestals with some water.

Because I was missing some decorations on the top of the cake I cut out some hearts and arranged that according to a pattern I had on a stencil. Then on the overlap of the pedestals I added a fuchsia sugar pearl. 

The next day I used some of my silver dust to give the pedestals a little shine. I also added the flowers.

At the gym I put the two cakes together and used some of the heart balloons to make it extra festive.

It's great to start a cake with no concrete idea and then to come up with something like this. Patricia and her guests loved it so mission accomplished!

Woezel & Pip theme cake

There have been a lot of first times this past week. It started with making a 3D boat cake, creating a fondant sea, modeling parrots and octopuses. This time it was making a Woezel & Pip birthday cake for an one year old boy. His mom has seen this particular cake online and she wanted to have the same one. This kind of limited my creativity, but since she like the cake so much I just made it for her. At that time she didn't know it but of course I would give it my own little twist. Just to keep it more fun. 
She wanted a square cake for about 20 people with the name Alec and his age. For the biscuit and the stuffing she went for a lemon vanilla biscuit with fresh raspberries, raspberry jam crème pâtissière and chocolate butter cream. A very good choice I might say. 

For me a birthday cake is not a birthday cake if it's not at least two layers so instead of one big square cake I made two slightly smaller ones so I could stack them together. 

Two days before the birthday party I baked two biscuits. For the bottom tier (8 inch square pan) I used this recipe:
- 400 gr eggs
- 200 gr sugar
- 180 gr flour
- pinch of salt
- lemon zest

For the top tier (6 inch square baking tin) I used:
- 200 gr eggs
- 100 gr sugar
- 70 gr flour
- 20 gr cocoa powder
- pinch of salt
- lemon zest

Since we talked about either a chocolate or a vanilla lemon biscuit I decided to both as a surprise since I would have two tiers anyway.

I also made some crème pâtissière using this recipe:
- 500 ml milk
- 100 gr sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- 35 gr custard powder
- vanilla pot/essence/sugar

The next day I started with making butter cream:
- 128 gr water
- 338 gr sugar
- 150 gr egg white
- pinch of cream of tartar
- 750 gr room temperature butter in cubes
- 200 gr melted dark chocolate

After the butter cream was ready I put half of it aside for crumble coating and to the other half I added the melted dark chocolate. 

Now it was time to cut and fill the cakes. I wanted to do the bottom layer first. I cut the cake in three pieces and I spread a layer of raspberry jam on each layer, then some crème pâtissière, stuck some fresh raspberries in it and covered it with a layer of chocolate butter cream. Then I used the plain butter cream to crumble coat the whole cake.  I did the same with the top layer. 

While the cakes were in the fridge I started modeling the two little dogs. It was quite difficult to get the color right and I wanted the color to be as close to the original as possible. Once I had the color I wanted I stared with making the bodies first. Then the tail and paws and last the heads and ears. Luckily I found a site online who had step by step pictures on how to model the dogs so I followed the steps and they turned out pretty cute. 

I also added my own little touch, a tiny heart on each dogs body!

I also made the balloons and stuck them on a piece of rice noodle. Uncooked spaghetti was a bit to yellow and to thick and these noodles were just perfect.  

As they were drying I made two mini birthday cakes including a candle, a bone wrapped in a ribbon and a picknick cloth. For the little house I used some brown chocolate fondant, modeled it and covered it with some white fondant. Then I used a wood textured mold to give it a wooden look. For the roofing tiles I stacked some heart shaped red fondant on top of each other.

Now it was time to cover the cakes with fondant. In the example cake they used blue fondant. As I would have two layers I decided to cover the top layer with some green fondant (Woezel & Pip are picknicking on the grass so green would be better then blue). The bottom layer was covered in blue since I want to at least keep as close to the original as possible. 

It took me three times to get the fondant on the top layer right. Now I know why I prefer round cakes. They are so much easier to cover!

I had no idea how to decorate the cake since the example had only one cake and I had two. I decided to make the top tier similar to the example and the bottom tier would be something from my own imagination. In the Woezel & Pip books and cartoons they use a lot of color. So first I worked on the edges of the cake. I used some green fondant so I kinda looked like grass. And I made a rainbow. This also helps to cover up some of the less pretty parts of the cake. 

Then I saw some butterflies online so butterflies it is. And in the picture there were clouds and flowers with faces and a cat. So I incorporated that all in this layer. Then I thought ladybugs, why not ladybugs who leave a trails so you can see where they have been. Ideas come to me out of the blue but mostly when I have some color fondant laying somewhere that I want to use so I make up a purpose for it. In this case I had some brown and red fondant so the perfect color for ladybugs.This layer is finished for now.

Time for the top layer. This was fairly simple since I had an example of how it should look like. I made a white ribbon on the bottom and made some bushes. To this I added some little white flowers. I placed the picknick cloth on top, the house in the back (I stuck it in the cake with two toothpicks) and the two dogs on the cloth with the cakes and the bone in front of them. Then I made little bushes with some white flowers. The example had a tree with fruit on it, but I didn't had enough room for that so I skipped it. I press out the letters for the name and place it on the frond. This layer is also finished for now. 

On the day of the birthday I had another look at the cake. I wasn't happy with the top layer since it was still missing some stuff. At firs I wanted to make a kite but then I changed plans and made a banner. This was suppose to cover the two sides in the back, but they looked so festive that I wrapped them around the cake. As the name was in the front I decided to make some more balloons to give it a finished look.

And I wanted to make some party hats for the dogs as well. I had some little stars so I used them to make the hats extra festive. 

Then I got the brilliant idea to use the stars on the bottom layer as well. Just to give it some extra dimension and to make it more fun.  

Sometimes you got to know when to stop and luckily I knew. A couple of hours later I delivered the cake while it was raining cats and dogs. I always put the cake together on the spot so nothing can happen to it in the meantime. I also added the age and the balloons to finish it.

Birthday boy's parents loved the cake so mission accomplished! Although she wanted a specific cake I gave her an one of a kind one made just for her birthday boy. 

Raspberry and chocolate dessert

Today we were making a raspberry bavarois with an interieur of raspberry cremeux and a cookie bottom and a chocolate mousse with a chocolate cremeux with a chocolate cake bottom. All things we made before except for the cremeux. 

We started with making the chocolate cremeux since we had to freeze it in a mold first before we could use it in our final product. For the cremeux we used:
- 240 gr milk
- 360 gr whipping cream
- 95 gr egg yolk
- 55 gr sugar
- 7 gr gelatin powder (soaked in 35 gr water)
- 75 gr cream cheese
- 180 gr melted dark chocolate

We started with cooking the milk and cream. In the meantime we mixed the egg yolks with the sugar. Slowly we incorporated the warm milk/cream mixture with the eggs and poured it back in the pot so we could cook it for a few minutes on 82C to bind the mixture. We heated up the gelatin so it liquefies and added that to the thickened mixture. Last we stirred in the cream cheese and the dark chocolate. We poured the cremeux in the molds and put them in the freezer. 

Then it was time for the raspberry cremeux. For this we used:
- 350 gr raspberry puree
- 120 gr egg yolk
- 120 gr sugar
- 5 gr gelatin (soaked in 25 gr water)
- 100 butter

We cooked the raspberry puree with half of the sugar. To this we added the gelatin which we heated up till it was liquid. The other half of the sugar was mixed with the egg yolk. We heated this egg mixture in a double boiler for about 5 minutes on 85C. Then we mixed in the butter and when that melted we added the raspberry puree. This cremeux also went into molds and in the freezer. 

As there were two different bottoms to make we each made one. I made the cookie bottom using the recipe for "bretonsdeeg". However I didn't exactly followed the recipe, but made a slight adjustment. I used:
- 150 gr butter
- 120 gr sugar (basterdsuiker)
- 1,5 gr sugar
- 20 gr egg (1 whole egg)
- 6 gr baking powder 
- 1,5 gr carbon dioxide powder 
- 200 gr flour
- 30 gr almond flour
oven temperature 180C

I mixed all the ingredients together, pressed the dough in a mold and baked it till it was golden brown. 

My partner made a chocolate biscuit using:
- 260 gr egg yolks
- 140 gr sugar
- 90 gr almond flour
- 60 gr flour
- 55 gr cocoa powder
- 260 gr egg whites
-140 gr sugar
- 70 gr butter
oven temperature 220C

First he mixed the egg yolks with 140 grams of sugar and the almonds. Then he whisked the egg whites with 140 grams of sugar till soft peeks. In the meantime he melted the butter and let that cool for a bit. He folded the egg yolks with the almond and sugar in the egg whites, sift the flour with the cocoa powder and mixed that in. Last he added the melted butter. He spread this mixture on a baking tray and baked it till the cake was done. After the cake cooled we used a cooking cutter to cut the shape we needed for our molds.

After the cake and cookie cooled it was time for the chocolate mousse. This mousse recipe is slightly different then what we used before. This time we used a creme patisiere, which was already prepared for us:
- 170 gr milk
- 170 gr creme patissiere
- 170 gr dark chocolate
- 8 gr gelatin (soaked in 40 gr water)
- 15 gr cocoa powder
- 400 gr whipping cream

We mixed half of the milk with the cocoa powder and the other half we brought to a boil. To this we added the chocolate, the creme patissiere and the cocoa mixture. We melted the gelatin and added this also. While this mixture cools we whisked the whipping cream till it has the same texture as yogurt. We slowly incorporate the chocolate mixture with the whipping cream, poured it in a piping bag and filled our molds halfway. Then we added the chocolate cremeux in the middle, covered it with some more chocolate mousse and covered it with a piece of chocolate biscuit. Then we put it back in the freezer so it would be easier for us to take it out of the mold and to dip it in a glaze. 

For the raspberry bavarois we used:
- 300 gr raspberry puree
- 7 gr gelatin (soaked in 35 gr water)
- 360 gr whipping cream

We melted the gelatin and added this to the raspberry puree. Then we whipped the whipping cream till it has a yogurt consistency and folded the puree in. We piped half of the bavarois in a mold added the raspberry cremeux and covered it with some more bavarois. We topped it with a cookie and placed it in the freezer. 

Since we had to wait for the desserts to freeze we had time to make some chocolate decorations. 

The glaze was pre-made for the whole class and I think it didn't went the way it should. 

When we dipped in our chocolate and raspberry desserts the glaze just dripped right off. At first we thought it was because the glaze was too hot, but if done right, it should stick on the dessert and give it a nice coating. 

Although the desserts didn't look the way they should, the flavor was good. However next time I would coat it in chocolate. I think that will look much better then this raspberry coating.