Wedding Cakes

My last post got me thinking about wedding cakes. Originally wedding cakes made to bring good luck to the happy couple. I suppose not everyone spends hours dreaming up the perfect wedding cake and to some people the cake is an afterthought, but to me there is something about that multi-tiered cake that is a thing of beauty.

Black & white cake

The last week or so before my culinary school finals was dedicated to wedding cakes. Our chef asked us to choose designs that would make us practice our piping. He taught us to properly construct a wedding cake, how to price it out considering the amount of work that goes into one and even gave us some handy advise about not being drunk while making wedding cakes.

My first (well first one in class) wedding cake attempt was a black and white wedding cake. The random filigrees are in vogue right now and gave me plenty of practice when it came to my piping. The roses were made from gum paste or marzipan I honestly couldn't tell you. I remember that as soon as I put the roses on I thought to myself, "Oh yes these are perfect." I look at them now, only a year later, and wonder how in the world I could ever think they were so perfect. They look sort of cute, perhaps if I squint my eyes I can see what I loved about them so long ago. I suppose I could always try to convince myself that they were meant to the look that cartoon-y. After all there is no way I could have possibly thought they looked real. Either way they added a beautiful splash of color to my cake.

The embroidery cake that took over 8 hours to pipe.

My next wedding cake took me hours to complete in regards to the piping. My wrist slightly tightens just thinking about how I spent over eight hours sitting and piping with a size 1 Wilton tip. I think part of me was crazy enough to think that I would whip right through this cake when I saw the design like I whipped through the black & white cake. The latter took me less than a class period to pipe but this embroidery cake I had to work on over the course of two days. Also, let me just say that when you are on your fourth hour of piping you begin to feel every shake of the table that you are working on. Suddenly someone placing their stand mixer on the opposite side of the table feels like a damned earth quake and you fear you will ruin hours of work. I am truly glad that this design was on a Styrofoam cake because I have been able to save it. The same could not be said for my favorite wedding cake.

Seriously my pride and joy

The Pac Man cake was my absolute favorite. I know that it is not as technically complex as the other two but it was something I wanted to do the moment I learned we would be decorating wedding cakes. I wanted a "nerd" wedding cake. Something sweet, appropriate for the occasion, but something that could still give a nod to the fact that popular culture is influencing our special days now. Nerds get married too. Creating black fondant is an all around pain in the neck. Do not think that you can just put some black food coloring into fondant. You will get grey and it will more than likely be an ugly shade of grey. I was lucky enough that a classmate of mine had done most of the work and had quite a bit of black fondant left over. I did have to add some brown and red to get the purplish tinge out and by the end of the day my hand were covered in colour but it was all worth it.  My chef hated the idea, or rather he thought I was just being silly about the task at hand . Our final day of class it was the first cake he threw into the dumpster. I knew it was nothing personal we needed to clean and get to the graduation ceremony, he probably knew I wouldn't be able to do it myself. Oh but how I loved that cake.

All this talk of weddings makes me think of my own wedding cake. I once heard that it is bad luck to make your own wedding cake, I'm not sure there is much truth to that (especially if you are not superstitious) but part of it might come from just how stressful it is. I could not imagine planning a wedding on top of making the perfect cake.

I really do not even know what my wedding cake will one day look like. It will be chocolate, but not red velvet, that is for sure.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Family dinner is every Friday, as I think I mentioned in the Baked Shrimp Scampi entry, and dear brother snorlax comes over. With Business School done and over with and me enjoying my summer days I now have a bit of time to do some baking. So for family dinner I made Ina Garten's Lobster Pot Pie (recipe next entry) and for dessert I thought something citrus would be refreshing.

While browsing the internet I stumbled upon another website with just recipes upon recipes for cupcakes, one recipe in particular caught my eye. Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. So fresh, lemony and adorable to boot! If there is one thing that dear brother snorlax loves it's lemon.

Ingredients:

Cupcakes:

• 1 1/2 cups of cake flour Note: If you do not have cake flour you can mix 1 3/4 cups of AP flour and 1/4 cup of cornstarch to make 2 cups of a AP flour substitute then just use 1 1/2 cups.
• 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 stick of butter (room temperature)
• 1 cup of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup of milk

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Mix Flour, baking powder and salt.
3. Gradually beat in butter (if it is room temp this will be so much easier), one the butter is well mixed (little clumps will start forming) throughly beat in the sugar.
4. Beat in Eggs, vanilla and milk and fill into baking cups about 2/3 of the way.
5. Bake for 20 min. You'll know the cupcakes are done when a tooth pick comes out clean.

Filling:

• 1 egg + 1 yolk
• Juice of 1 fresh lemon
• 1/2 stick of butter
• 1/2 cup of sugar

I would recommend setting out everything before beginning this process as you want to be beating the mixture constantly so you don't end up with scrambled eggs.

1. Using a double boiler (that is a bowl set over simmering water) beat the egg and yolk, I used a hand held electric beater.
2. Beat in the lemon, butter and sugar.
3. Stir over medium heat until the mixture has a pudding like consistency.

It will look weird at first especially as the butter breaks down but eventually you will end up with something that looks like a lemon pudding. To me this was like making caramel all over again, because you look at the mixture and you tell your self "there is no way that it is going to get thick" and then 5 minutes later it is thick and you wonder how you could have doubted yourself.

Frosting (Meringue)

• 5 tbsp of water
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 1/3 of cup of sugar
• 2 egg whites
• 1tbsp of light corn syrup
• 1 tsp of vanilla

1. Beat water, cream of tartar, sugar, egg whites, and syrup in a double boiler on low.
2. When the mixture reaches 140 degrees beat on high for 5 minutes.
3. Remove from heat , add vanilla and beat for another 3 minutes.

Assembly:

To put the filling in the cupcakes I used a small cookie cutter to hollow out the top of each cupcake:

Spoon a little bit of the lemon filling into each cupcake:

Pop the top back on and cover with meringue!