Thursday, February 14, 2008

Wedding Cake book, Claudine's cake

My selection from the first book of the Martha Stewart Book Club., the first book is the Martha Stewart Wedding Cakes and it is a amazing book. My favorite cake has always been the Damask Cake that Wendy Kromer made and was first in an issue of Martha Stewart Weddings. My variation is just a single layer.
First for the pattern I searched my house. It wasn't to hard since I have drapes, pillows, table linens, wrapping paper and craft supplies that have the damask shape on it. But I could not find one that was simple enough and small enough to reproduce. So I took the picture in the book and placed it on my scanner and made a copy, then I took a layer of the cake and did a little photo-shopping and then made multiple copies. In the book they recommend wax paper over the image. I taped the images to the back of sheet pans and then covered with wax paper.


The shapes were made by piping royal icing around the edges and then letting them dry a little.

And then filling with royal icing flooding. I should have made the flooding a little more fluid, it didn't settle perfectly. I then let them dry for a few days until nice and hard.


The cake is chocolate with a layer of Chocolate Bavarian cream and a layer of Bavarian cream. (that is the best part). Covered it with Almond-Vanilla Buttercream and then colored the fondant and covered the cake. In the book Wendy Kromer recommended that you use a artist pallet knife to lift the shapes from the wax paper. The artist knife was perfect! It was thin enough that it could slide under the royal icing pieces and none of them cracked. A great tool to add to my collection. The cake was made in a 9x9x3 square pan and a 9x9x2 square pan. I should have measured the damask and realized that the cake would be to short and not wide enough. Oh well, I made do and I like how it turned out.

and the inspiration cake by Wendy Kromer also found on page 187 in the Wedding cake book




Now which one will I make next?

Claudine

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why don't you try something a little bit more difficult next time? Seriously, I don't know what could be more challenging than the Damask cake, other than maybe one of the cakes that uses over 100 different piping tips!

Beautiful, beautiful job, Claudine!

Kenn said...

Absolutely amazing. I love the step by step photos.. perfect. I have to say, I believe my selection will be a bit less complicated! The chocolate damask is just beautiful. Martha would be proud of you!

Anonymous said...

It is a beautiful cake!!! The pictures of the process is a step beyond the book. Thank you!! On another note...I was wondering, does the royal icing make out of chocolate? How about the fondant, how did you get it to that color? Is it store bought that way? I want to do the Cherry blossom cake in a smaller proportion but wondering how do I get the fondant to be chocolate color? Any suggestion would be greatly appreciate it. Kudos Claudine for taking the first step in MS book club!!! Thank you.