My job as a pastry chef often presents me with challenging special request wedding cakes. One of my jobs is to transform two dimensional pictures of cakes hotel guests bring me into reality. Oftentimes cakes look easier to make than they actually turn out to be. One situation comes to mind; the Blue Orchid wedding cake Episode (also known as How I use fondant to cover a tricky wedding cake). Since this cake consists of a square bottom tier topped with two round tiers, the first challenge was making a nice looking square cake.
Though it looks easy, unless you've made one, you don't know how much "fun" it is! The leveling and straightening on a square cake never ends. Just when you think you have it right on one side, you focus your attention on another side and find you have more work to do. In the Blue Orchid cake episode, one of my staff decorators set, iced and stacked the cake. My contribution was finishing the product; the fondant work and arranging the flowers.
California Culinary Schools
At first glance, fondant ribbons seem easy to make. Fondant is the smooth, silky finish you often see especially on wedding cakes. Before it dries and hardens, it has the consistency of dry "Play Dough". In order to "surface" a cake, all one does is roll out the fondant and then lay cut strips on the cake. Sounds simple, right? Well, it is on paper but NOT in the real world! Fondant ribbons have a tendency to stretch out of shape easily unlike, for example fabric ribbon which always holds its shape. Since the bottom tier of the cake was a 12" square, I needed to roll out about 50 inches of fondant ribbon (twelve inches per side plus a couple extra as a safety factor).
I started out with a large "sausage" which I flattened to make rolling it out easier. Working in a professional kitchen, I have the advantage of using a dough sheeter to roll out my fondant pieces to uniform thickness. To keep the rolled fondant from sticking, I covered the fondant with a light dusting of sugar. I used a "powdered sugar sachet", which is simply a large piece of cheesecloth folded into several layers, filled with powdered sugar, and tied up to prevent the sugar from going everywhere. This method allows a just enough dusting of powdered sugar in order to prevent sticking but not so much as to leave powdered sugar splotches on the fondant. This was especially important, since I was working with colored fondant rather than basic white. I cut the fondant into 1" strips or about the width of a yardstick using a pizza cutter.
A quick kitchen tip: I have found that this tool does a better job than a knife because the fondant doesn't shift and compress as much when you cut the material. Fondant starts to form a dry skin quickly once exposed to air so I tell my staff to only cut one ribbon at a time and keep the remaining fondant covered. Since the piece was so long, I had to take extra care not to stretch it. The best solution was to roll it up. Unfortunately even after rolling it up, I still found it would be easier to ask for help to put it on the cake. After determining which side of the cake looked the best and would be the front, I started at the back and guided the fondant placement while my assistant unwound the ribbon as he walked in front of me.
An important suggestion: It is much easier to apply the ribbon to cold, hard butter cream than room temperature soft butter cream. I consequently worked with the cake directly out of the refrigerator. The middle tier needed four evenly spaced thinner ribbons, a ½" in width. The ribbon placed along the top and bottom of the tier were easy to apply because they sat right at the edge of the cake. The middle two pieces of ribbon were a bit trickier. As luck would have it, the person who set and iced the cake made it exactly 3.5" tall, which made it easy to evenly divide into ½ inch increments. Using the ruler, I carefully marked the placement of the middle two ribbons.
Yet another important tip: all of the ribbon seams need to line up in the back to keep a professional look. Once the middle tier was completed, I put the ribbon at the lower edge of the top tier and the fondant work was finished! The final step was to add the flowers. The placement of the flowers was dictated by the photograph I was given. The florist provided thin pieces of willow for the twig accents because it is easy to bend. To make the rounded twig accents, I bent the willow into the desired size and secured it with a small piece of florist wire, then placed it according to the picture. But my job wasn't done...
Even though we placed the product on a cart and sent it off to the reception room, even though I assigned my staff to other duties in the bakery, even though surfaces were cleared and tools washed, I waited. The phone rang. The Banquet Manager told me the client loved the cake! At long last, the job was done and The Blue Orchid Cake Episode was successfully closed.
The Blue Orchid Cake Episode Or How I Use Fondant to Cover Tricky CakesChris Brown feat. Kevin McCall - Strip Video Clips. Duration : 2.80 Mins.Music video by Chris Brown feat. Kevin McCall performing Strip. (C) 2011 RCA Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment
Keywords: Chris, Brown, feat., Kevin, mccall, Strip, RCA, Records, Label, R&B, VEVO
Cindy J. Werth (website and blog at http://www.makingchocolatecake.com) is the Pastry Chef at the Stratosphere Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is an alumnus of the Culinary Institute of America in New Hyde Park, New York. Her 10+ years in the trade has sharpened her skills in transforming a guest or client's image and concept into pastry art. Particularly skilled at wedding cake design and production, her background in Hotel and Restaurant Management also includes menu development, recipe creation, and management. Previous to the Stratosphere, Chef Cindy worked at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and at the Irvine Marriott Hotel in California.
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