THE PROFESSIONALS – Episode 1: “ITmen”

My occupation 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 fetch me into reality. Oftentimes cakes look requiring little effort to make than they genuinely turn out to be. One circumstance 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 comprises of a square bottom tier topped with two round tiers, the initial challenge was making a nice looking square cake.

Though it looks easy, unless you’ve made one, you don’t recognise 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.

At primary glance, fondant ribbons seem easy to make. Fondant is the smooth, silky finish you often see specially on wedding cakes. Before it dries and hardens, it has the consistency of arid “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 without apparent effort unlike, for example fabric ribbon which always holds it is shape. Since the bottom tier of the cake was a 12″ square, I necessitated to roll out regarding 50 inches of fondant ribbon (twelve inches per side plus a couple extra as a safety factor).

I started out with a big “sausage” which I flattened to make rolling it out easier. Working in a professional kitchen, I have the vantage 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 merely a huge piece of cheesecloth folded into assorted layers, filled with powdered sugar, and tied up to prevent the sugar from going everywhere. This method allows a just sufficient dusting of powdered sugar in order to prevent sticking but not so much as to leave powdered sugar splotches on the fondant. This was peculiarly important, since I was working with colored fondant rather than basic white. I cut the fondant into 1″ strips or regarding the width of a yardstick using a pizza cutter.

A quick kitchen tip: I have found that this tool does a better occupation than a knife because the fondant doesn’t shift and compress as much when you cut the material. Fondant starts to form a arid skin speedily 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 requiring little effort 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 necessary suggestion: It is much requiring little effort 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 necessitated four evenly spaced thinner ribbons, a ½” in width. The ribbon placed along the top and bottom of the tier were easy to implement 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 incisively 3.5″ tall, which made it easy to evenly divide into ½ inch increments. Using the ruler, I conservatively marked the placement of the middle two ribbons.

Yet another indispensable 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 little piece of florist wire, then placed it according to the picture. But my occupation wasn’t done…

Even even though we placed the product on a cart and sent it off to the reception room, even 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 occupation was done and The Blue Orchid Cake Episode was with great success closed.

The Professionals Episode 1 Itmen Pic

The Professionals Episode 1 Itmen Pic

The Professionals Episode 1 Itmen Image

The Professionals Episode 1 Itmen Photo