Sweet Celebrations: The Art of Decorating Beautiful Cakes

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Basic Guidance

EQUIPMENT

RESOURCE GUIDE

ABOUT CAKES

Crumb Coating

Basic Cake Recipes

Classic Yellow Cake

Lady Baltimore White Cake

Spice Cake

Chocolate Fudge Cake

Carrot Cake

Almond Cake

Hazelnut Cake

Icings, Fillings, and Washes

Basic Buttercream Icing

Chocolate Buttercream Icing

Basic Buttercream Filling

Flavored Buttercream Fillings

Cream Cheese Buttercream Filling

Chocolate Buttercream Filling

Mocha Buttercream Filling

Orange Buttercream Filling

Lemon Buttercream Filling

Raspberry Buttercream Filling

Chocolate Mousse Filling

Royal Icing

Washes: Simple Syrup

Working with Sugar Dough

COLORING

HANDLING SUGAR DOUGH

STORING FLOWERS

EQUIPMENT

Basic Flower Instructions

Spray Flowers

Pansy

Iris

Violet

Calla Lily

Roses

To make the buds

To make the petals

To make a calyx

Additional Decorations

Ribbons

Bows

Loop Bows

Piping Techniques

Basketweave

Nantucket Weave

Cornelli

Dotted Swiss, Pearls, Writing

Leaves

Dragging Pearl Border

Looping m or u 64

Lily of the Valley

Swags

Specialty Cakes

Antique White Tiered Wedding Cake

Baby Block Cake

Balloon Cake

Box Wedding Cake

Cornelli Heart Cake

Calla Lily Cake

Fairy Tree Cake

Gift Box Cake

Hatbox Cake

Lily of the Valley Cake

Marzipan Fruit Cake

Peach Rose Wedding Cake

Potted Iris Cake

Ribbon Cake

Shaggy Dog Cake

Handbag Cake

Shopping Bag Cake

Stack of Books Cake

Straw Hat Cake

Sunflower Cake

Teacup Cake

Thatched Roof Cottage Cake

ROUND CAKES

Clown Cake

Basketball Cake

Globe Cake

Index

Metric Equivalencies

Preface

I will show you how to make beautiful cakes that people will ooh and aahh over. It takes practice and artistic skills to create many of the cake designs I will share with you. You will need some special tools, time, and patience, but the results will be spectacular.

I have been in business for over twenty years. In that time I have, with the assistance of my able staff, created some wonderful cakes. When I first started creating specialty cakes, I worked by myself while my children were at school and my husband worked. Not only was it a real expression of love for the people for whom I was baking, but I got the added satisfaction of accolades from others. And that is essentially why you want to do your own cakes: not only do they show that you care, but you have taken the time to create a gorgeous presentation that you will never find a bakery. Some of our cakes are so beautiful that they are placed on the table in lieu of flowers!

For the most part, I never remember what I ate for dinner or lunch on any given day, but I do remember a spectacular dessert. A cake that you spend time creating, not just a dessert but the centerpiece of the party, is unique. I think that’s why I love doing specialty cakes so much. I hope you will, too.

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and those people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey

—JOHN RUSKIN

Cascades of bright flowers against white frosting.

Introduction

When we married in 1949, Ben and I were both students. He had returned to college from World War II in the Pacific, and I was working on getting a teaching degree. We were too poor to have a wedding reception and we didn’t even have a wedding cake. I graduated and became an elementary school teacher, learning domestic skills while working full-time to support my husband through law school. When Ben became a lawyer, we moved to suburban Long Island, where Ben opened a law office. Although I taught in the local school district, I increasingly cherished the relief and relaxation that homemaking brought after the stress of days in the classroom. I found myself becoming more proficient as a cook and a baker, and such skills served me well when my daughter Ellen was born, followed thereafter by Amy and Janet.

As our daughters grew, Ben, who was avid skier, taught the girls to ski with him. We found ourselves migrating almost every winter weekend to the Catskill Mountains where Ben and our daughters enjoyed their sport at Hunter Mountain Ski Area. My birthday is in January, and as a surprise for one birthday, Ben bought me a fetching, fashionable ski outfit, skis, poles, boots, gloves, and a booklet of tickets for ten ski lessons with a professional instructor. With great trepidation (and Ben tagging along), I accompanied the instructor to the small slope where I was supposed to learn to ski. It looked like a precipitous mountain to me. With great courage, I turned to my husband, asserted myself, and said Ben, I’m wise to you! You have a new cutie somewhere and you’re just trying to kill me. I kicked off the skis, threw away the poles, and hiked down the slope to the lodge, where I spent the rest of the day while Ben and the girls skied. The next day, while they skied, I remained in our little house, cooking and baking, and my family relished the goodies lavished on them as the result of my not being a skier.

Because Hunter Mountain is the best ski area within a reasonable distance of New York City, it is very popular with city ski enthusiasts. Among them are a substantial number of chefs from some of the city’s best restaurants and hotels. When the kitchens close on Saturday night, these chefs drive up to Hunter, catch a few hours of sleep, and are on the slopes early on Sunday. Ben got to know many of the chefs on the ski slopes. One day I asked Ben to inquire of the chefs whether they could recommend how and where I could learn to advance from a good home cook and baker; I wanted to become a professional pastry chef. As luck would have it, one day on the mountain Ben asked André Soltner (then the chef/owner of Lutèce, one of New York’s premier restaurants) where I could study to become a professional pastry chef. André told Ben that living in the village of Hunter was retired chef George Keller, who had worked in some of New York’s best restaurants. George, with his wife Lisa, was operating a modest guest house in their home. André suggested that we approach him to see if he would take me on as a pupil.

Edible gold leaf was used to gild this elaborate cake.

Neither Ben nor I knew the Kellers, and our introduction to them was almost comical. Having learned of the location of the Kellers’ guest house, Ben took me to meet them one morning. Ben knocked on the door, and it was opened by a short, rotund gentleman who spoke with a French accent. Ben said, Monsieur Keller? George said, Oui. Ben said, Professor, I want you to meet your pupil, pulling me forward from where I was hanging back in embarrassment. George said, I do not want zee pupil! Just about that time Lisa Keller came to the door and she and I began talking together while Ben continued to spar with George verbally about the benefits of taking me on as a pupil. Lisa Keller and I quickly took a liking to each other and soon it was three against one. His protestations that he could not get zee butter, zee eggs, flour, shortening were quickly fended off by our promises to bring all the needed materials with us from the city. Finally, with Lisa’s and our persuasion, George agreed to take me on as a pupil.

Thereafter, when Ben and our girls went to ski, they would drop me off at the Kellers’ guest house where I worked in the kitchen all day with George and Lisa. When Ben and the girls came off the mountain, they picked me up and took me home. George was a wonderful, talented teacher. I learned quickly from him, but because my daughters were always figure-conscious, they ate few of the goodies I was creating. I found an outlet for my productivity by supplying five restaurants in the Hunter/ Windham area with desserts every weekend while my family enjoyed the skiing.

Sadly, I must report that wonderful George Keller passed away a few years ago. Lisa Keller and I remain the best of friends, and when Ben skis at Hunter Mountain these days, I visit with Lisa.

Time flew by and our three daughters completed college. They all obtained challenging jobs in New York, leaving Ben and me rattling around in our then too big house in suburbia. At that time, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, underwent a mastectomy, and was put on a course of chemotherapy, which required me to travel to New York City three times a week for treatment. The chemicals made me sick and nauseous, and I lost my hair. One funny aspect of the ailment and treatment was the assortment of glamorous and often comical wigs that Ben and my friends bought for me. I wore them, sometimes changing color and style several times during any given social occasion.

Ben found it depressing to see me traveling to the city for treatments and feeling sick and weak from the chemicals. He had been practicing law for twenty-eight years and suggested that it was time to retire and follow our daughters to the city. It was convenient for my medication, and we would also have the added benefit of seeing the girls more often. In 1980, Ben sold his law practice, we sold our house, and we moved into New York City.

Once there, I again got the benefit of Ben’s relationships with chefs, because a number of them allowed me to come into their kitchens to work (without pay) with their pastry chefs to polish my culinary skills. It was not play, and I worked many long hours in pretty hot kitchens with some wonderful masters of the pastry arts. I am and will be forever grateful for everything they taught me.

By that time I was an accomplished baker, and at a social evening, I ran into an old friend, William Greenberg Jr., who owned four bake shops in Manhattan. He told me that he was frequently approached by customers who wanted grand, romantic, floral wedding cakes, but that he didn’t do that sort of thing so he had to turn them down. William said that if I would learn to do such cakes he would refer them to me. Beyond that, he said that until I established an inspected, licensed facility in which to produce such cakes, I could use his premises after hours. Excited by the prospect, I enlisted William’s help in finding a teacher from whom I could learn to make the sugar flowers with which to decorate cakes. (I would not and could not use real flowers to decorate, because many are poisonous and most flowers are fumigated and sprayed with insecticides.) With William’s help, we found Betty Van Norstrand, who had magic hands. Betty created exquisite sugar-dough flowers, and she agreed to teach me the requisite skills.

Most cake decorators use icing, pastry tubes or bags, and a decorator tip to create icing flowers, as I did in my early years. This method simulates petals but they are too thick, and have no resemblance to real flowers. Sugar-dough flowers however, can be made botanically correct, with petals as thin as and the exact shape of real flowers. (Often they cannot be distinguished from real flowers.) With sugar-dough flowers, the cake can be exquisitely decorated and yet be completely edible, decorations and all. In order to make my flowers botanically correct, I would go to the florist and buy one single bloom of whatever flower I wanted to create. I’d take it home, study it, and then take it apart petal by petal to note the configuration and shape of each petal. On assembling each of my sugar-dough blossoms I created a flower almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

My real introduction as a professional creator of exquisite cakes came when my daughter Amy asked me to make a wedding cake for her friend who had a small takeout food shop on the West Side. Ben and I delivered her cake on Saturday afternoon; it was scheduled to be placed in the cooler for her Sunday wedding. The bride-to-be was so taken with her flower-laden cake that she put it in the display window of her shop. As luck would have it, one of the people passing by the shop was Lauren Berdy, who was chef for society caterer Donald Bruce White. Lauren came into the store and asked where the cake came from, and she and Donald started ordering several cakes every weekend. People who attended their catered receptions began to inquire about the cakes, and soon my cakes were showing up in some of New York’s finest hotels. When the hotel banquet managers saw the cakes, they began to order directly from me, and my business literally blossomed.

I have had the good fortune of continuous help and support from my husband, Ben. Beyond his long, successful law practice, he is a carpenter, plumber, auto mechanic, cabinet maker, electrician, photographer, machinist, cake architect, tennis player, and skier. My cakes, however huge, never collapse, and it is Ben’s design that is responsible. He also has the intuitive ability to recognize and highlight the innate talents of coworkers. A prime example of this is one of my mainstays, a young man named Richard Harris, who Ben says is so capable that he can do everything, thus freeing Ben for more tennis and skiing! With the help of Ben and Richard in planning and creating structural support, my cakes have been successfully flown, fully decorated, all over the world from Japan to Saudi Arabia and all points in between. My only restriction in air-shipping cakes is that there must be a nonstop flight from New York to the destination.

My business is a custom shop that has no walk-in customers; we create only cakes that have been ordered in advance. Customers come to our office, where they view pages of cake photographs to determine the style of cake they prefer. I always seek client input because the occasion for which they are ordering a cake is so important and personal to them. This way they get exactly what they picture, whether it is a color or type of flower, or even the reproduction in sugar or marzipan of an object, pet, or person they want to feature. Although the majority of our cake orders are for weddings, we regularly create cakes for corporate functions and occasions, reproducing logos, letterheads, themes, buildings, or whatever else the customer wants and needs for a planned reception.

An architecturally accurate and edible creation.

A fantasy of white feathers and flowers.

My personal rule that I do not duplicate cakes has had some exceptions, primarily for TV soap operas. When I have been asked to supply bridal cakes for such shows, we have had to make duplicates, because often a scene including the cake will be shot over a period of several days, or even weeks. In order to preserve the continuity of a scene (which in its final form may take only a few minutes of TV time), the cake must appear to be unchanged.

One memorable incident in one of the soaps involved a woman with a murderous grudge against the bride. During the ceremony, she sneaks into the reception room where the cake is on display. The villainous character plants a bomb in the cake, intending that it explode and kill the bride and groom when they made the ceremonial cutting of the cake. Because the explosion had to have exactly the dramatic effect intended, the studio ordered nine identical cakes. They blew up six of the cakes to make sure the scene was precisely as they wanted it. Then the script called for the cake not to explode when the bride cut it, but after the reception, killing a guest who threw himself over the fiancé to protect her. I phoned the prop man to complain that the death of the fiancé cheated me of their potential wedding cake order!

Another interesting TV cake incident involved an older man from Texas who was about to be married to a beautiful young woman. In the script, he insisted that he wanted a Texas-size cake. The outside prop man described his problem, and we devised a creation that consisted of three segments, the first of which was a three-tier cake with columns between the tiers. In the taped scene, this cake was presented to Mr. Texas, who rejected it as not being a Texas-size cake. We then placed the next segment beneath the first three-tier section so that the cake was five tiers high.