Cakes – Part II
Saturday, January 1st, 2011The second half of cakes class seemed a little easier than the first half. I got a lot more comfortable with making smooth sides and a smooth top with a nice crisp edge. I also got better at slicing my cakes so that they were even. I got used to my instructor’s way of teaching. Every instructor, I’ve learned is different. And you have to figure out what things you must do EXACTLY as they say, and what things you can do differently because it just doesn’t matter.
Cheesecake - The first cake of the second half of the semester was a NY-style cheesecake topped with fruit. This cheesecake was creamy and dense, and baked in a cake ring on top of a layer of graham cracker crust. This cake required no waterbath, but was baked at a pretty low temperature. I learned that the trick to mixing cheesecakes is to not overmix, and to make sure that ALL of your ingredients are at room temperature (including the cream cheese). If the cream cheese is not at room temperature, it takes more mixing for it to smooth out in the batter. Overmixing causes a cheesecake to crack. We mixed ours by hand instead of with a mixer, to ensure that we did not overmix. This was delicious if you like rich, creamy and dense cheesecakes. It was happily devoured by my trivia friends, and then by the restaurant staff who were more than happy to see that we had left the rest of the cheesecake for them. I don’t have any pictures of this one because I was in a rush to leave class so that I could make it in time for trivia.
Carrot Cake - This was the only bad cake that I made in class all semester. I think that the Cake God was trying to tell me that I had already reached my cake quota for the week, or even for the day. The night we decorated this cake was also my birthday. Due to some coworker miscommunication, I received 2 birthday cakes that day at work. I ate 2 pieces for lunch (a piece of each cake), and then another piece before I left for class (which was my dinner). Cake for lunch and dinner on your birthday is always allowed, and highly recommended. I’m not sure what exactly went wrong with this cake, but I’m blaming it all on the cream cheese icing. The teacher warned us to work fast or else our icing would not stay cold, and would get runny. I, apparently, did not work fast enough (even though I was faster than everyone else, and none of theirs seemed to melt). So my icing was not very cold, and the layers of cake kept shifting as I would try to ice the sides. Once I finally got straight sides, it started dripping down off of the sides of the cake. Several trips to the freezer later, and I finally gave up. I threw some nuts on the sides and got to decorating the top with the carrots. I’m very proud of how my carrots turned out, not quite so proud of the leaves though. I got my worst grade on this stupid cake. I was so mad that I didn’t take this cake home, therefore I never tried it. I can’t say whether or not it was a good carrot cake recipe. I tried to take a picture that didn’t show the melting sides.
German Chocolate Cake - I really love German Chocolate Cake, and this cake did not disappoint. We were required to put white buttercream on the sides of the cake, and then coat it in cake crumbs. If I had any say in it, I would have preferred a chocolate frosting on the outside of the cake. The filling and cake was delicious. I ended up eating around the buttercream sides. This one got a lot of “oooos” and “ahhhhhs” from the coworkers. I will admit, it was pretty.
Red Velvet Cake - I was very disappointed in this cake. It looked beautiful but tasted like cardboard. And the instructor made us ice it in buttercream instead of cream cheese frosting. I don’t claim to be an expert in red velvet cake, but I do know that cake isn’t supposed to taste like cardboard. And I’m pretty sure I prefer the cream cheese frosting instead of buttercream. But I did learn that Piggly Wiggly sells red food coloring in 1/2-quart containers, so next time I want to experiment with red velvet cakes, I know where to get some red food coloring.
Square Cake - This was the last cake before we had to make our own cake for our final exam (more on that one in the 3rd part of this cakes post). It isn’t easy to make crisp vertical corners on a square (or rectangular) cake, but I think I managed to do an okay job. And we learned how to make rose buds and leaves out of marzipan. We all agreed that this cake looked like the kind of cake you would make for a grandma, so we put a grandma name on it.


























