Finished decorated dummy cake
(a little bashed around the edges after being transported home)
(Apologies for dark pics but the sky has been depressingly grey lately)
On Sunday the 13th of February I attended a one day Celebration Cakes course in Cooks Academy. Cooks Academy has recently relocated from Dun Laoghaire to South William Street in Dublin's City Centre. Cooks Academy offer a range of courses from 1 month cert courses, 1 week essential cookery courses and weekend workshops, as well as evening and lunch and learn courses. The venue is light and bright and airy with a demonstration area to one end and a practical learning area with work stations to the other end. Each station is equipped with the essential utensils needed by each student and any additional utensils or equipment can be easily located around the room.
Our tutors for the day were Evelyn and Deirdre and they were both super lovey, really helpful and they gave us lots of great tips and tricks to take away with us. To start off the day Evelyn demonstrated how to make a delicious chocolate truffle cake. Demonstration over it was time to pick a work station and then bake our choice of chocolate truffle cake or lemon poppy seed cake. I chose the chocolate truffle cake, not just because of my grá for all things chocolate, but because I am fairly confident in my lemon cake baking but had had an issue with a chocolate truffle cake recently. I thought it would be best to bake it while the professionals were around so that I could iron out any issues with their help. There was plenty of hustle and bustle as we all hurried around the room gathering mixing bowls, ingredients and whatever else we needed to mix up our cakes. It was a bit of a monster cake and my little arms were exhausted from all of the mixing, but got there in the end.
With our dishes washed up and put away it was time for a cake icing demonstration by Deirdre. She explained some of the basics to us before starting and then proceeded to cover a dummy cake in almond icing, followed by sugar paste. She explained some of the more common mistakes made and how to avoid these, and if that fails how to repair them. It was then our turn to cover our own dummy cakes with sugar paste. I have covered a fair few round cakes with sugar paste and so opted for a square 'cake' so that any problems I came up against could hopefully be addressed and rectified with help from the professionals. My first problem came in the form of uncooperative sugar paste that decided it was going to roll out into a most ridiculous oblong shape. Rolling round two proved a better success and I was ready to cover my 'cake'. Two sides worked out perfectly as I had guessed but I encountered some problems smoothing out the excess on the remaining sides. A little bit of help from Deirdre and I had a pretty decently covered 'cake' and board bar a few cracks on the corner edges, but sure we can live with that on our first attempt, right?
Sugar paste covering on 'cake'
All of that hard work done and it was time for a lunch of homemade soup and bread and a delicious salad. As we munched away Evelyn was busy running around taking our cakes out of the ovens. The demonstration cake she had made was also conveniently ready and so she sliced it up and handed it out. Warm chocolate cake, nommy! With our belly's full it was time to head back to our work stations for the afternoons demonstrations.
Embossed Swag
Deirdre demonstrated how to make petal paste and then in various stages throughout the afternoon she showed us how to make and assemble swags and petal paste daisies. While some patience is needed with a few basic tools and some practice these would make the perfect decoration for any celebration cake. Mine weren't perfect, but I was very pleased with my finished daisies and delighted to finally have the basic knowledge required to use the many cutters and embossers I have bought over the last year. I see a lot of flowers and butterflies in my future.
Petal Paste Daisies
