fondant, achieved
Aisha canceled out of dance practice yesterday, so I was able to get home earlier than I might have otherwise. (I was running late as usual getting to Ashley's class, arriving with only 20 minutes to go. I considering skipping it entirely, but am glad I didn't both because I did learn something even in those 20 minutes [and it was nice just to move] and because I didn't end up doing any dancing later.) I took a nap, got up about midnight, and got to work.
I tried out Michelle Foster's fondant (MFF) because I wanted an alternative to marshmallow fondant (MMF) both for a different flavor and also so I could omit the gelatin without having to buy the more expensive vegan marshmallows. (Funnily enough, however, her recipe calls for glycerin, which I've learned may be animal-derived, plant-derived, or synthetic, so... I haven't yet looked into vegetarian alternatives for this ingredient, or learned which brands are plant-derived. The Wilton pre-fab fondant seems to be vegan, so maybe their glycerin is as well. Anyway.) I subbed agar powder for the gelatin and... I think it came out okay. I'll know for sure when I get home later and start playing with it again. The biggest problem at the moment is I'm a dork who didn't strain the agar/corn syrup/etc. mixture before adding it to the powdered sugar, so there are some chunks that'll have to be removed when I get to the kneading/rolling stage.
The author advised against using a hand mixer, saying a KitchenAid is best. I don't have a KitchenAid, or any other type of stand mixer. I went to BB&B the other day, to see what varieties of stand mixers they had for less than the $299 a KitchenAid would cost. The salesman gave me a long lecture on the merits of the KitchenAid stand mixer (his mother has been using hers for 40 years) and suggested I just save up and buy the best. Yeah. So... I did the mixing by hand. This seemed to work out okay. The biggest challenge was pouring additional powdered sugar into the bowl with one hand while stirring with another. (Another challenge was when I ran out of powdered sugar and had to run to the store in the middle of the mixing process.) The flavor seems okay, but taste test will be later.
After slapping the fondant into the fridge, I shook the edible flowers out of their packets, picked through them to find the prettiest ones, dipped them in simple syrup and sprinkled them with caster sugar. The sugar clumped. I did not sprinkle, or dust I should say, evenly. I'm not sure why the sugar-dusting is necessary, really. I think it'd be cool to just dip the flowers in syrup and let them dry without adding a dusting of sugar, which kind of disguises them. So I'll see if that's doable, or maybe re-try the sugar dusting since I know I did it wrong.
After setting the flowers out to dry, I attempted to make another frosting recipe using the three egg yolks left-over from yesterday's mousseline buttercream experiment. This was a recipe from the old British book of sugarcraft. Ho-my-god. So much fail I don't even want to get into it. I messed it up royally. But I poured the resulting whatever it was over the 6" cake anyway. From this I learned that I actually probably do want to do ganache/ganache-like glazed for the cakes. Since they'll be covered over by fondant anyway, why go through the stress of spreading a frosting on when I can simply pour it? So the chocolate cakes will have white choco ganache and peanut butter (and maybe choco) ganache.
And somewhere in there, since I decided yesterday (or some day) that it might be nice to make a lemon cake with minty lime buttercream*, I also attempted to make a citrus-mint simple syrup. Used my regular sugar (unbleached, so has a hint of molasses) rather than the caster sugar, though, so I think the flavors didn't quite come through.
So, I fell asleep around 4am, got up briefly at 5:15am to turn off my alarm, and finally woke up around 6:40am. Too late to let the fondant come to room temp and attempt to apply it to the 8" cake. So I was a bit sad about that, but I talked it out and dad listened and then I had to let it go.
I brought the 8" cake into work today anyway, for taste-testing and to get it out of the fridge (because I'll need the space). Am kind of dreading what ROG and LeRoi will have to say. (I also brought in the sugared flowers. Even though the cake is kind of a frankencake and the icing's all sloppy--since it was meant to be just a crumb coat--that doesn't mean I can't try to pretty it up some. So, hopefully once the buttercream gets to room temp, I'll be able to smooth it out a bit and scatter some flowers over the top [and take a photo, etc.])
Next up on the list of things I've never tried and now need to: vegan white chocolate ganache (white chocolate made from scratch, essentially, using the cocoa butter I ordered from Chocolate Alchemy). And then there's baking [making the real cakes, buying apricot jam/cherry jam/whatever for fillings, hitting the florist shop for the real decorative flowers, etc.], picking up the table and tablecloth I'm borrowing for the occasion, and then all the details of the savory items. [Since I've got a lot of cucumbers at hand, I'm wondering if those can be added to the tomato/mozz plate.])
I have tomorrow off from work, so that'll give me two-ish days for prep. And I have Monday and Tuesday off from work, so that'll be two-ish days to recover. I'm really tired right now, but this project doesn't seem impossible. So this probably means that fatigue has made me delusional.
~~~~
* I'm trying to not use chocolate in this recipe, but every now and again the notion of combining lime curd with white chocolate, a ganache for the filling, just calls out to me. Like I was sitting here just now, and I was reminded of some chocolates that Queen B's best friend--The Marquis we'll call him, for reasons that would be obvious if you knew him--made for her, which were white chocolate filled with lime curd, so I know the combo works. So maybe I should stop resisting it. And white chocolate isn't chocolate anyway. The only thing they have in common is cocoa butter, after all. So maybe it won't be too similar if the bottom cake has a cherry-chocolate thing going on, and the second cake has peanut butter-chocolate, and the third has citrus-white chocolate, and the fourth has apricot/almond/chocolate. I mean, anyone who doesn't like chocolate or white chocolate will be SOL, which is what I was trying to avoid. But...
Well, we'll see.
I tried out Michelle Foster's fondant (MFF) because I wanted an alternative to marshmallow fondant (MMF) both for a different flavor and also so I could omit the gelatin without having to buy the more expensive vegan marshmallows. (Funnily enough, however, her recipe calls for glycerin, which I've learned may be animal-derived, plant-derived, or synthetic, so... I haven't yet looked into vegetarian alternatives for this ingredient, or learned which brands are plant-derived. The Wilton pre-fab fondant seems to be vegan, so maybe their glycerin is as well. Anyway.) I subbed agar powder for the gelatin and... I think it came out okay. I'll know for sure when I get home later and start playing with it again. The biggest problem at the moment is I'm a dork who didn't strain the agar/corn syrup/etc. mixture before adding it to the powdered sugar, so there are some chunks that'll have to be removed when I get to the kneading/rolling stage.
The author advised against using a hand mixer, saying a KitchenAid is best. I don't have a KitchenAid, or any other type of stand mixer. I went to BB&B the other day, to see what varieties of stand mixers they had for less than the $299 a KitchenAid would cost. The salesman gave me a long lecture on the merits of the KitchenAid stand mixer (his mother has been using hers for 40 years) and suggested I just save up and buy the best. Yeah. So... I did the mixing by hand. This seemed to work out okay. The biggest challenge was pouring additional powdered sugar into the bowl with one hand while stirring with another. (Another challenge was when I ran out of powdered sugar and had to run to the store in the middle of the mixing process.) The flavor seems okay, but taste test will be later.
After slapping the fondant into the fridge, I shook the edible flowers out of their packets, picked through them to find the prettiest ones, dipped them in simple syrup and sprinkled them with caster sugar. The sugar clumped. I did not sprinkle, or dust I should say, evenly. I'm not sure why the sugar-dusting is necessary, really. I think it'd be cool to just dip the flowers in syrup and let them dry without adding a dusting of sugar, which kind of disguises them. So I'll see if that's doable, or maybe re-try the sugar dusting since I know I did it wrong.
After setting the flowers out to dry, I attempted to make another frosting recipe using the three egg yolks left-over from yesterday's mousseline buttercream experiment. This was a recipe from the old British book of sugarcraft. Ho-my-god. So much fail I don't even want to get into it. I messed it up royally. But I poured the resulting whatever it was over the 6" cake anyway. From this I learned that I actually probably do want to do ganache/ganache-like glazed for the cakes. Since they'll be covered over by fondant anyway, why go through the stress of spreading a frosting on when I can simply pour it? So the chocolate cakes will have white choco ganache and peanut butter (and maybe choco) ganache.
And somewhere in there, since I decided yesterday (or some day) that it might be nice to make a lemon cake with minty lime buttercream*, I also attempted to make a citrus-mint simple syrup. Used my regular sugar (unbleached, so has a hint of molasses) rather than the caster sugar, though, so I think the flavors didn't quite come through.
So, I fell asleep around 4am, got up briefly at 5:15am to turn off my alarm, and finally woke up around 6:40am. Too late to let the fondant come to room temp and attempt to apply it to the 8" cake. So I was a bit sad about that, but I talked it out and dad listened and then I had to let it go.
I brought the 8" cake into work today anyway, for taste-testing and to get it out of the fridge (because I'll need the space). Am kind of dreading what ROG and LeRoi will have to say. (I also brought in the sugared flowers. Even though the cake is kind of a frankencake and the icing's all sloppy--since it was meant to be just a crumb coat--that doesn't mean I can't try to pretty it up some. So, hopefully once the buttercream gets to room temp, I'll be able to smooth it out a bit and scatter some flowers over the top [and take a photo, etc.])
Next up on the list of things I've never tried and now need to: vegan white chocolate ganache (white chocolate made from scratch, essentially, using the cocoa butter I ordered from Chocolate Alchemy). And then there's baking [making the real cakes, buying apricot jam/cherry jam/whatever for fillings, hitting the florist shop for the real decorative flowers, etc.], picking up the table and tablecloth I'm borrowing for the occasion, and then all the details of the savory items. [Since I've got a lot of cucumbers at hand, I'm wondering if those can be added to the tomato/mozz plate.])
I have tomorrow off from work, so that'll give me two-ish days for prep. And I have Monday and Tuesday off from work, so that'll be two-ish days to recover. I'm really tired right now, but this project doesn't seem impossible. So this probably means that fatigue has made me delusional.
~~~~
* I'm trying to not use chocolate in this recipe, but every now and again the notion of combining lime curd with white chocolate, a ganache for the filling, just calls out to me. Like I was sitting here just now, and I was reminded of some chocolates that Queen B's best friend--The Marquis we'll call him, for reasons that would be obvious if you knew him--made for her, which were white chocolate filled with lime curd, so I know the combo works. So maybe I should stop resisting it. And white chocolate isn't chocolate anyway. The only thing they have in common is cocoa butter, after all. So maybe it won't be too similar if the bottom cake has a cherry-chocolate thing going on, and the second cake has peanut butter-chocolate, and the third has citrus-white chocolate, and the fourth has apricot/almond/chocolate. I mean, anyone who doesn't like chocolate or white chocolate will be SOL, which is what I was trying to avoid. But...
Well, we'll see.