Friday, May 25, 2007

Rolled fondant blues

The past week has been spent designing and creating a wedding cake. My hypothetical bride is very classic and elegant, with clean and simple taste. I was inspired by the beautiful blue and white of traditional Wedgwood Jasperware china. Hopefully, it will be completed by Monday so stay tuned!


Meanwhile, many hours of preparation and practice are needed to create flawless and structurally-sound wedding cakes. My cake is a display cake made of styrofoam rounds which were constructed by cutting out and stacking discs from leftover styrofoam salmon boxes. Each tier was then masked in Italian buttercream and then covered in rolled fondant. At home, I converted my kitchen into a small gum paste rose factory which painstakingly produced 14 ivory roses, each rose taking me at least one hour of labour in total.

This cake exercise has taught me not to rush to complete a project simply for the sake of getting it done. When my rolled fondant was too dry and cracking everywhere, I had to produce a new batch reluctantly. And when one mischievious tier just would not cooperate and kept being lumpy, I had to discard the used fondant and make an additional batch. Ultimately, it took me an entire day filled with frustration and attempted patience to cover my three tiers but it was worth it because now I know how to do it right!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow, would get married again just so you could make us a cake! to michael of course! just a couple of weeks until the exam!!!...talk to you after that, sylvia

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.