Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Adventures in Candy Clay and Cheesecake

So it's been awhile.  I've never been very good at keeping these things up, so I apologize for that.

Part 1:

Not a lot of baking going on over here lately.  Interning at Rosebud Cakes on Saturdays has been taking care of my baking cravings, I guess!

Recently, however, I was asked to make a birthday cake for the daughter of a coworker of mine.  In a stroke of luck, Rosebud happened to have a spare cake of the exact size and type I needed, which they were not going to use...so I managed to save myself some work in that regard and was thus able to concentrate on the fun part: Decorating!


The technique of using candy clay, aka "Chocolate Dough" (a combination of chocolate and corn syrup) is one that I had toyed with on my own, and they use it all the time at Rosebud because it is so easy to use, versatile and tasty.  My time there inspired me to make the topper for this cake out of the stuff.


I didn't take any photos of how I actually constructed it, but I used this video for reference.  For the lily-pad, all it took was rolling out the clay, cutting out the shape and thinning the edges.  The Frog's birthday cake was candy clay covered in melted chocolate.

The cake itself, I should mention, was chocolate with chocolate Bavarian cream filling, and the frosting was essentially a white chocolate mousse.


All done!  One of these days I need to sit down and practice my piping.  There is always so much anxiety when it comes to that part.

***

Part 2:

Two-Bite Cheesecakes!


These little guys might not be very pretty, but I think they're rather cute for a first attempt.  Cheesecake covered in white chocolate and topped with a white chocolate mousse drizzle.


These guys were difficult to dip, because they kept losing tiny pieces in the chocolate which made it kind of lumpy for later dippings.  Next time perhaps freezing them briefly would help keep them whole...although that would make the chocolate solidify even sooner, so it'll be important to get the timing right.


Yum!