Busytown: One, two, three, go!
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Your cake is so impressive. Much better than the uber-mum who couldn't part with her penguins.
It gives me ideas for the future. If there any cakes for the future.
We've already had all the 21sts, and the two we did ourselves, were much more appreciated than the professionally done first one...
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Cakes that is....
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the uber-mum who couldn't part with her penguins.
Y'know, I'm not one to judge, but... yeah. What was up with that? She's just going to keep them in a special penguin box in the cupboard?
For me the best thing about cake "art" is watching it be demolished. Although the year we did the aeroplane was a bit disturbing, since we just ended up with the tail and a streak of chocolate crumbs... too Erebus for my liking.
It gives me ideas for the future. If there any cakes for the future.
Cakes for the future! That's a slogan I can get behind. You'd be surprised how little excuse you need - go on, I dare you, make a cake at random. Valentine's Day?
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[JG] What was up with that? She's just going to keep them in a special penguin box in the cupboard?
Oh, probably not in the cupboard. Maybe on display in the china cabinet.
[SD] I don't know what fondant is. I have so much to learn.
It's the ungodly sweet white stuff you get on trad wedding cakes. In the baking aisle at Woolworths it's called "Pettinice white icing".
You can also make it yourself easily enough (recipes on internet) although I probably wouldn't bother - it's not like "homemade" tastes any better (sugary goo is sugary goo), and the monetary difference is small enough that you might just consider it a fair trade for not having to do the sticky dishes.
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Sarah, if you can put lollies on a cake and tinfoil gumboots on a fairy, you can do anything! And while I'm keen to emulate Amy in the fondant-fondling stakes, I usually just work with icing the way my nana made it: butter, icing sugar, water. Lashings of the stuff. Food colouring. And anything edible that's the right shape for your decorating needs. (The wheels on the bus don't just go round and round, they are in fact round wines, or Oreos, or gingernuts, or whatever you have on hand).
The fanciest I've gotten so far was melting hard candies in the oven (red, yellow, orange) to make crackling flames for the fire engine cake. That got a round of applause.
It's a nice ritual, staying up the night before and getting all artistic, and it's so gratifying to deliver the goods at the party. I got it from my Mum who always made a spectacular cake. I have vivid memories of the mountain-bike cake for my brother, which consisted of One Tree Hill with a bike going up it. The "grass" just didn't look green enough so we kept adding more food colouring. And then the icing dried and darkened and we realised it was plenty green.
I think the sewers of Papatoetoe ran chartreuse for a week after that one.
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And thanks for the warm comments. I sometimes feel shy about posting family stuff - Soft News, as it were - but y'all make it so worthwhile.
I love this website, Jolisa, bur sometimes the news is a bit hard. As has been said by Giovanni, you write beautifully and it is a pleasure to read. And really? I prefer reading about the busy boys to what the proliticians are doing.
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Jolisa, you did a wonderful job on your penguin cake. It's darling! I wish you much success in your future cake making adventures. There is nothing so satisfying as making our kids' cakes ourselves - and it's so much fun (whether we keep our sugar creations or not, lol *wink*).
Keep up the good work!
~Kim (aka Uber-mom) -
Kim, your penguins were astonishingly gorgeous, really Wallace and Gromit-grade spectacular. I'm not sure I'd have been able to watch them just walk out the door either!
(So will you have a chance to re-use them on a future cake or did they become a stealthy grown-up snack once the kids went home??)
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Well, it was my first time working with fondant and gumpaste and I used the store bought stuff. I don't know what *good* fondant/gumpaste is suppose to taste like, but I took a nibble of what I had when I was working on it and it was truly disgusting. I can't even describe the flavor - like a sort of plasticy weird sweet lardy biscuit dough. I had my girls try a nibble just to show them how awful it tasted (they wanted to know if we could eat the penguins after they were made.) They hated it, too. So no snacking on them later, hehe. The penguins were hard as a rock and I doubt anyone could have taken a bite without breaking a tooth anyway.
The beaks, cheeks, wings (flippers?), hats, feet... everything was adhered with just water, so they would have fallen apart in the hands of 7 and 8 year olds right away. It's a mental thing, I know, but after spending a couple of weeks worth of staying up until 2 and 3 in morning making them, I did hate the thought of handing them over to little ones at the party when I knew they'd just fall to pieces within minutes (and no way was fixing everyone's "broken" penguin). We were having another party one week later and I did think about reusing them, but I had no time to make another big cake and tons of frosting again. So, my girls have enjoyed peeking into the plastic container in our pantry every now and then and looking at their penguins. I guess they are just sugary keepsakes of sorts, or at least until they start disintegrating, or melting, or whatever that does, lol.
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Great penguins, Jolisa. A dear friend who was a pastry chef made a fondant frog for the best cake I have ever eaten - and I believe it was just almonds and icing sugar ground together (plus green colouring in that case). None of that icky fake taste that usually puts me off, anyway.
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I think "good" in gumpaste/fondant is pretty much a measure of mechanical/aesthetic properties. It's always going to taste like sugar and gelatin and gums (and possibly shortening) because, well, that's what it is.
There is a phrase that often seems to come up: "technically edible". As in, you won't be poisoned, but you probably won't like it.
Almonds and icing sugar ground together is marzipan, which tastes a whole lot better. Best tasting of all the playdough-type things is probably "chocolate plastic", which you can make yourself with chocolate and corn syrup.
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Ooops, that's right, twas marzipan not fondant.
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