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You Might Be a Cake Artist If…

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Erica OBrien in Featured, for the baker, for the bride | 3 Comments

It occurred to me only after I’d colored the fondant navy blue that perhaps, with one of my best friend’s weddings only days away, I should have worn gloves. How many people at the wedding–some of whom I hadn’t seen since high school–would assume I’d been furiously coloring fondant for a disco-themed birthday party? Or, the more likely scenario, how many would wonder if I’d contracted some pigment-changing contagious disease?

If this sound familiar, then this post is for you.

You Might Be a Cake Artist If…

~your two-year old calls Play-Doh “fondant”

~when people ask you whom, living or dead, you’d most like to invite to dinner, instead of Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King, you answer “Ron Ben-Israel”

~you thought 50 Shades of Grey was an ombré cake design

~you think nothing says “I love you” like a new flower cutter

~the staff at Jo-Ann fabrics knows you by name

~you get most of your news from The Food Network

~Cake Central is your Maxim Magazine

~your husband knows the difference between gumpaste, pastillage, Mexican paste, and modeling chocolate and can offer a thorough explanation of their uses, benefits, and pros and cons

And a few favorites from my facebook friends. To read the rest of their absolutely hilarious comments, go to my facebook post.

~manicure? What’s a manicure? {Nancy}

~you have suffered more cake related ailments than standard ones: ruffler’s fingers, ganacher’s shoulder, decorator’s ankle, stacker’s wrist and buttercreamer’s lung {Royal Bakery}

~you pipe shells on your toothbrush with toothpaste {Brigitta}

~you break a drawer pull and the first solution you think of is to make a new one out of gum paste {Tamatha}

And since no post would be complete without a few cake photos, here are just a few recent cakes that we’ve done.

Callan made over 300 hydrangeas for this buttercream cake. Photo by Darren Wagner.

I love working with chocolate fondant. It’s just dreamy.

And finally, sweet and classic.

Until next time, keep on caking, and wear that food coloring proudly!

Cake for Bride’s Magazine, October 2012

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Erica OBrien in Featured | Leave a comment

Last May, Bride’s Magazine asked me to design a cake for an article inspired by a Mediterranean-style real wedding with lots of herbs, lavender, and shades of purple, based on this inspiration. (Photos: Gia Canali)

I immediately sat down to create a sketch to submit to the Bride’s team. (I should mention that I was in the thick of my Summer-of-2012-Berry-Phase, so I felt compelled to include some blackberries. I also did this raspberry cake and a blueberry cake–which hasn’t yet been published–last summer.) I always like to do a sketch when I work on a magazine shoot to ensure that I’m on the same page as the art/creative director(s). Here’s what I came up with:

I didn’t know that the cake was for their “Get the Look” column, which features products similar to those used in real weddings. Bride’s felt that my design was actually too similar to the original cake, and asked me to make it more modern and streamlined. (I do plan to execute my original design at some point. Perhaps I’ll go through another berry phase in the Summer of 2013.) I came up with a traditional-meets-modern concept: a spin on appliqued flowers, extending them off the cake and incorporating some 3-D elements and the shading seen on traditional sugar flowers.

This is the cake. (Photo: Aaron Dyer)

And the article in Bride’s Magazine October, 2012. You can see more of the article here.

Special thanks to Aaron Dyer for generously sharing his photo.

Revisiting Stained Glass Cookies: Stained Glass Cookie Monograms

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Erica OBrien in Featured, fondant | Leave a comment

I’ve written about stained glass cookies before. My family has been making them for years. Below is a copy of the original recipe we used as kids. We first saw it on the 1970s PBS show “Zoom” and my mom sent away for the recipes, as per the show’s instructions and long before email, with a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

I’m glad to see she made some adjustments to the recipe (add an egg, change the amount of honey), presumably in an effort to improve it, but truth be told the cookies were pretty hopeless. The dough was tough, and the cookies, which always ended up a brown several shades darker than golden, took on a puffy appearance. The candy pieces always seemed to bubble up over the cookies and look burnt. And, since it was before Silpat, they stuck relentlessly to the waxed paper.

Last time I wrote about stained glass cookies, I started with a new recipe that required molasses in lieu of the honey and an oven temp of 375. I changed the recipe a bit and swapped corn syrup for the molasses, yielding a cookie that was lighter in color. I also lowered the oven temp to 350, so the cookies wouldn’t puff as much and my candy bits wouldn’t burn or explode.

This time around, I reworked the recipe even more. After my dough was rolled and cut and placed on the baking tray, I popped the tray in the freezer so the butter could chill, further preventing it from puffing up. I realized that the candy takes less time to melt than the cookies take to bake, causing the candy to brown when they’re all baked at the same time. So instead, I par-baked the cookies for about 7 minutes in the oven without the candy, then filled the cavities with candy and returned them to the oven. The resulting cookie was exactly what I wanted: a cookie that was golden brown with a candy filling that looked like glass.

Here’s what you’ll need:
1 recipe stained glass cookie dough (recipe at end of post)
Rolling pin
Letter cutters in various sizes
Heart-shaped cutter (large enough to accommodate letters)
Mallet or hammer
Lollipops or hard candy in the colors of your choice
Small plastic bag
Silpat or other non-stick baking sheet liner
Baking sheet
Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit

1. Working on Silpat or non-stick baking sheet liner, roll out dough approximately ¼” thick.

2. Cut dough using heart-shaped cutter.

3. Remove excess dough. (Excess can be frozen for future use.)

4. Using letter cutters, cut out monogram from dough.

5. Place on baking sheet and freeze for 15-20 minutes to firm. Bake in pre-heated oven until dough is partially, but not completely, baked and just barely beginning to turn golden, about 5-7 minutes.

6. While cookies are baking, place lollipops or hard candy into small plastic bag. (We used the dulce de leche Dum Dums, and had to buy two giant bags to ensure that I had enough since there were only about three dulce de leche Dum Dums per bag. I’ve since learned that you can buy single flavor Dum Dums on their website.) Use mallet or hammer to crush candy into very small pieces about the size of gravel, but not powder.

7. Fill cavities with crushed candy until it is slightly above the cookie line, taking care not to get any crushed candy on the cookie part.

8. Return to oven and bake until candy is just melted, about 3-5 minutes. Remove from oven. If you plan to hang your cookies, make hole large enough for a ribbon using a toothpick. Allow to cool.

9. Wet a small piece of fondant until it is very sticky. Gently adhere to cookie in several spots, avoiding candy part, and use to affix cookie to cake. Here, we added fondant blackberries and leaves for extra impact.

Stained Glass Cookie Recipe
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
Method
1. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugars until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add corn syrup and vanilla extract, mixing until incorporated. Add egg and mix until light and smooth, about 1 minute on medium speed.
3. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. Fold dry ingredients into wet mixture. Use electric mixer to blend just until flour is incorporated. Divide dough in half and flatten into two disks. Wrap disks in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least an hour and up to 2 days.

Enjoy!

Special thanks to Brooke Sforza of Brooke Allison Photo for her generosity, talent, and photographs.

Hello Kitty and Her Little Cake

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Erica OBrien in birthday cake, Celebration Cakes, Featured | 2 Comments

My baby turned three last week. Three! It took her a long time to decide on the design for her birthday cake. At first she wanted Strega Nona, one of her favorite books, but that was a while ago. As her birthday came closer, she vacillated between Hello Kitty and Strawberry Shortcake (with some random other cakes like owls, Dora the Explorer, and monkeys thrown in the mix) until she finally settled on Hello Kitty. The flavors were an easy decision: vanilla with raspberry. (But not for preschool. For preschool she wanted banana cupcakes with blueberry buttercream.)

I cut a chevron template out of paper (I’ll be doing a DIY on this soon) and used it to cut the pink fondant chevron I appliqued to the bottom tier. For the plaque on the top tier, I cut a pink round out of fondant and hand-cut the lettering and number. Hello Kitty was made of gumpaste, except for her clothes which were fondant. And for Hello Kitty’s mini cake I molded gumpaste by pressing it into two well-cornstarched round cutters and allowing it to dry overnight.

Happy Birthday Mia. I love you so much.

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Two Cakes

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Erica OBrien in for the baker, for the bride, wedding cake | Leave a comment

I considered entitling this post “Two Cakes I Love”, but thought better of it for fear of sounding boastful. I am extremely critical of my work (and, I like to think, quite humble), so it’s rare for me to say I love one of my cakes, let alone two. Truth be told, however, I love both of these cakes. There. I said it.

Both were inspired by invitations found on Wedding Paper Divas, and photographed by Ashleigh Taylor of Ashleigh Taylor Photography.

For the first cake, based on the Floral Ring invite (below), I cut fondant into the same shapes found on the invitation (roses, leaves, and a large circle for the monogram) and dried them overnight. I used a black food coloring pen to outline each shape, to draw the veins on the leaves, and to write the initials on the monogram. The roses are colored with a mix of food coloring paste and powder. I also added some detail directly onto the cake using food coloring pens. The cutouts are adhered to the cake using edible glue (a mix of gum tragacanth and water).

I used the same fondant cutout technique for the second cake (below), based on the Artistic Maple: Autumn Orange invitation.

Gratitude to Ashleigh Taylor, who knows just what I like in a photograph, and to Wedding Paper Divas, who always have plenty of inspiration to share.

Fall Inspired Cake

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Erica OBrien in for the baker, for the bride | 2 Comments

Last July, I went to a birthday party and saw a little girl wearing this adorable Gymboree dress:

Obviously, I was left with no choice but to make it into a cake: a fall cake with edible miniature fruits and matching mini loaf cakes, and accompanied by the gorgeous blooms of Honey and Poppies. (If you notice a slight change to the colors, you can thank Megan, my creative yet bossy co-conspirator from Honey and Poppies. She didn’t like the blue and made me change it.) This shoot was featured on The Wedding Chicks. Special thanks to April and Amanda from April Smith & Co. Photography for their skill with a camera.