Friday, September 17, 2010

Playing with my food again-episode 2

Last weekend, I escaped and went to stay with a friend for the whole weekend.
I went to my good friend Jodi's house and we played with our food again.
You can see where Jodi and I have played with food before, here.
http://mariesegal.blogspot.com/2009/04/playing-with-my-food.html
A few people that know me, know that I have envisioned myself for years as a cake decorator. Must have been in another life time.
I watch the pastry shows and all that.
LOL!! Clay is so much easier, I have a whole new respect and awe of cake decorators.

I also have all these great tools that I can use in cake decorating and pastries, I just know I can. Extruders, texture sheets, molds, rolling cutters, cutters, and various others I can not think of now! LOL!
So why not give it a try right?
So good to have someone with the tools we might need also and who I have so much fun with when we are together, Jodi.
We started off Friday night, I got there later than I planned and Jodi had already baked various cakes, cupcakes and bought some fondant. We ate some dinner and discussed our attack plan.
We gathered tools.
I brought the ones I wanted to try.
Here are some of them, all Makin's tools.
I was so happy I brought these green tools. They do not stick to the fondant, and everything else does!!















Jodi had the food colors
















and sparkling sugar and food grade sparkling powders.









Similar to pearl-ex and glitter ;-D

We wanted to start right away, but both of us had had a long week and if anything, we might be getting smarter as we get older, har har har!!
The next day we had to go pick up the chocolate fondant at Pila's Pantry in Norco (there is also one in Temecula).
Pila's Pantry
http://www.pilaspantry.com/
1670 Hamner Ave. #6
Norco, Ca 92860
951- 371-3957

The fondant prices were outstanding too. And it tasted good.
Lauren helped us, gave us a few secrets, and was just a very sweet girl and a veritable wealth of information.
What a great place, I can see myself getting lost in here for a couple many hours ;-O Oops I did.

OMG! And the chocolate fondant tastes like tootsie rolls. As Madi would say "mummies".

After we got back from there, we started right in making things.
We washed and dried all of the tools. Water, I found out from Jodi, breaks down fondant. They had to be completely dry.
We took a sheet cake and cut out little 3" diameter individual cakes, so they would be bigger than a cupcake and more surface area to work on.

Crumb frosted first and then a layer of tub frosting from the grocery store. This was totally about the tools and embellishments and less about making the best tasting cake in the world.
Neither Jodi or I consider ourselves pastry chefs, and as far as working with fondant and making goodies for the top I am a rank beginner and she a has a lot more experience  than I, but we are both beginners.
But we both have tons of enthusiasm and are willing to try things.

We thought we would try molding the flowers and leaves first.


Pinch off a piece of fondant, less than you think you might need, roll into a ball and place in to the flower you want.
Fill the mold.
The fondant does not stick to these molds, your hands yes, but not the molds.






Having a perfectly smooth cutting board is key here and if you do not have one you can use a marble tile from the hardware store.
Turn the mold over and press it down on the cutting board.







Pull the mold back quickly(think waxing, or pulling the tablecloth off the table full of glasses, quick and deliberate) and the fondant should come out of the mold and stick to the cutting board. You want it to stick to the cutting board.








Clean up the flower around the edges with one of the green tools. They have many different tips, 3 tools, so find the one you like. I prefer this knife like one and would push the excess from the edges to the flower, if the edges weren't clean.
Use one of the those small metal cake spatulas to get it off the cutting board or this spatula P47 will work too.






You can use a single edge razor blade to cut away the excess.
Cut into the edge and pull back the razor blade to remove the excess.
The leaves are pretty easy to do this with. The flowers have more curves so you have to take little "bites" with the blade.
The fondant does stick to the blade, a lot!
I had to clean the blade with water many times.





Jodi started painting this flower with thinned down food coloring. Almost water color looking.
We used Gel food coloring. You can get those at Pila's too.









Now with this one she used these powders (looks exactly like Pearlex) and mixed them with a little vodka (Seagram's 7, we didn't have any vodka, LOL) The alcohol evaporates and the powder stays. These look gorgeous on the fondant.






Cover the whole flower. You can see the food coloring one in the background.
These we let dry for a while, this will probably depend on your weather and humidity.






When it was dry, I brushed with a little gold powder with my finger just to accent the lines. I applied it the same way I do on the beads and hearts.
Cute eh?
We made a bunch of leaves and different size roses this way!










I mixed up some light pink fondant and extruded  the edges.

We took one of the little frosted cakes and started adding the edges.











I used these two dies and the stainless steel extruder, OMG, this extruder is made for precious metal clay and it is so much nicer than my all time favorite extruder.
The clearance in the barrel is very tight, so there is very little clay or fondant ;-D left in the barrel. The ends screw together very smoothly too and it is very easy to clean because of the short barrel. Nice, very nice tool.



I used the one on the left for the top edge of the cake.
What a great way to make edging, I felt like I was a pastry chef. LOL!!! It looked very good.
Click on the pic for a bigger view.







We covered the seams with flowers and leaves. We used a little frosting to attach those ones on the bottom.
And placed the rest of the flowers on the cake directly to the frosting.
All in all, we thought we did a great job and were ready to tackle some more at this point.





I have never had so much fun playing with my food, and at my age... geesh!!
I tell you, I think we did a great job with the tools made for clay. Guess what?? these are now cake tools for me, too.
YES!! Chef.

18 comments:

  1. The cake is great!! I suppose its natural to be a natural cake artist when you are such a wonderfl clay artist!!

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  2. Thanks Carol. Not true, I stink at cakes. If it hadn't been for the molds and the extruder...
    Ever hear of Cake wrecks?

    Making an apperance soon!
    http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

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  3. I'm so glad you girls had such a great and creative time! The cake is too beautiful to eat ;-) Did you eat it? pearl ex for cakes, how funny! Oh yeah, cake wrecks :-( thats why i never make any cakes again,hahaha!

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  4. That was the best part of the whole weekend Donna. We just hung out and played, visited craft stores and cake decorating stores, stayed up late, ate mass quanities, mojitos (OMG I love these), laughed at our work, laughed at nothing,slept in, we did work hard though. I had the best time.
    The cakes were good, I ate so much over the weekend that I brought them home for the family to eat. ;-D I felt like I was covered in sugar every day, LOL!!

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  5. oh jeez louise, or should i say gee marie!

    you are amazing. when you teach like this, i am the most eager student.

    but i also came by to tell you that you are a great cheerleader. and to thank you for that!

    have a fun weekend, please.

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  6. Well look at you! playing with your food! I can tell you had a great, great time, and Marie, you are a very talented cake decorator!

    Hugs Lisa

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  7. Hey Marie, are you doing dessert for the family feast at SC. It looks too pretty to eat though.
    You and Michael, with his chocolates, would really wow everyone. See you soon.

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  8. The cake looks amazing - there is no way I could have eaten it or allowed anyone else to eat it after that :D

    It does look like clay molded flowers doesn't it? Gorgeous. I use all my kitchen utensils when painting - trouble is I don't always get it all off in the wash - even though I think I have. My daughter asked why she had purple onions in her curry the other day. Oops.

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  9. Gorgeous cake! What a nice weekend you had!

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  10. Oh WOW!!!! Marie that looks like so much fun! I love that you play with your food!

    I don't know what that means I was on the blog of notes...
    Maybe I'll have to sign out to sign in and see it
    : )

    Much love to you Marie!
    PAttee

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  11. Wow. How inspiring!! And what a great friend you have. And Marie, I´m so happy you´re playing. Don´t ever stop doing that. Big hugs and a lovely weekend to you from Norway!!!

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  12. Oh, I'm so jealous jealous jealous! This looks like tons of fun. PLUS, it's art you can EAT! See, this is where vampyre fangs come in very handy. The better to tear into cakes with. (not necks, cakes) It's gorgeous!

    So interesting about the vodka tip! Betcha had a lot of fun with that one!

    XOXO

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  13. I think it's SO cute. You did a wonderful job - and such patience, I might add! Too pretty to eat! It truly is fun to play with food! Theresa

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  14. Famous my dear dear Marie,,, of course you will never be far from my heart... but I've gotten so much span from this... I don't how you get this "Blog of Notes" I'm not sure it's a blessing ...

    BUT YOU will always be close to me~:)
    Love~Pattee

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  15. OMGoodness you are just too gifted. What is it you can not do. lol
    This cake is lovely! Sounds like you had a wonderul time and I am so glad you shared it with us.
    Now I am hungry for something sweet!....
    Thanks honey for all the prayers for me and Gary
    Love
    Maggie

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  16. LOL Marie you were so right! LOL well hmmm famous...
    I couldn't understand what you or others meant because every time I went to blogspot.com it would bring up my page... so finally tonight I googled blogs of note.... and WOW I was shocked to see me there!

    Thank you so much for giving me the heads up!

    I hope you had a good week-end~
    Love ~me

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  17. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! I WANT TO PLAY WITH YOU!!!!

    Sister Marie! I want to make an order. Will you please make me a miniature cake, not the edible kind. The clay kind. Will you please make me a miniature clay layered cake with decorations? A teeny tiny one. That will be my gift to myself for not eating cake while I fix my cholesterol level. I shall pay for it. CAKE!!!!! I miss cake!!!!!! TSUP TSUP TSUP! I LOVE you. I have not been visiting much lately.

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  18. Well, Marie, you just Take the Cake!!! That is toooooooo pretty to eat! Which would work for me.
    Clever you. **kisses** Deb

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I am so glad you stopped by. Please leave your words of wisdom. I look forward to them and I so enjoy reading them all.
Live to love, Love to create, and create to connect.
Marie

www.mariesegal.com
www.clayfactory.net