Sugarella

Would be easier to demo this but I'll try to explain: Make sure the cake board underneath your top cake is totally clean. It helps to cover in fondant, smooth and trim roughly, then set the cake atop a turntable which is smaller in diameter than the cake board, so you can reach underneath the edges. (Or an inverted bowl usually works well too.) Smooth again with excess fondant hanging down past the cake board, then trim the bottom edge with a knife sitting flat against the underneath of the board, using the board as a guide, so your fondant ends up being cut flush with the perimeter of the board. Smooth that bottom edge once again very gently in a down-ward only motion. Smoothing upwards will cause that bottom edge to curl back up and you'll get your crumbcoat all over the place. Finally, wipe off the underside of the cake board to make sure there isn't any buttercream hanging around down there. Place a flat spatula on the cake that'll be the bottom tier, holding it flat the the cake surface with your non-dominant hand so that the tip is resting in the middle. With your dominant hand, lift the top tier from its pedestal over to the bottom tier and position it in place with your fingers underneath, one side already resting on the tier below, and lowering the side with your fingers down as far as it can comfortably go without smooshing anything. When it's in the right spot, bring the spatula up to meet the cake board and let the cake rest on that, slide your fingers out, then let the spatula down with the cake on it. So now your 2 tiers are in the right spot, but have the spatula you're holding sticking out between them. Finally, slowly and gently pull the spatula straight out. It might get some buttercream on the top, but that part won't touch your fondant so it's fine. And pulling the spatula out might pull that part of the fondant away from the cake slightly, but you can just touch that part back to the cake with your finger. But it's important to do that step slowly. Hope that makes sense. That'll give you a clean bottom edge all the way around that doesn't need any decoration to cover the gap between the tiers, because you won't get any gap that way.

Beating (or kneading, for that matter) anything with flour in it will start the glutens in that flour releasing and incorporating into other ingredients, which helps build structure. But going too far means you'll release too much gluten and end up with a gummy cake.

These looks terrific! Thanks for sharing.

I think perhaps a demo is in order. It'd be much easier to demonstrate stacking tiers without messing them up than it would be explain it. Unfortunately I don't have a digicam and I'm not doing a wedding cake 'til late next month. Any takers out there for a demo?? Otherwise, I guess I could borrow a camera for that next month. The dowels should not stick up out of the cake, they should be flush with the cake. Reason being, the tier above will rest on them and the underside of the cake board will touch the tier below, giving it some grip when you go to move it, or if someone bumps it after it's set up. If all the cake board is touching is dowels it'll be very precariously balanced on them, which is not a good idea. About wooden dowels.... I'd like to change your mind about that. Wood can leave a sawdusty taste in the cake, and can also create mildew inside the cake. Those Wilton dowels made for cake decorating are a culprit, so try to switch your dowels to plastic, or better yet use a support system that has plastic dowels that work with the plates. And definitely NEVER use dowelling that comes from a hardware store. Those are a pressure treated (ie: chemicalized) wood product. They're not pure wood carved down, they're sawdust and glue treated with chemicals to make them compact and hard and keep their shape. Definitely not a food safe thing to be using. Yes, dowels cut all the same length will ensure a level cake above it, but it also creates problems with stability because you do want that cake board to be touching the tier below for grip. See note above. Instead, make sure the bottom tier is totally level to begin with, and your dowels will invariably end up the same length that way. You mentioned putting in a central dowel and pulling it out to measure..... do you put that one back in its spot? Shouldn't do that either; it's an engineering thing. No matter how many dowels you put in, a cake will settle and try to rest all of its weight on the centre one, which will inevitably result in a tilt. Then the weight on the lower side will start pushing those dowels outward, and you'll end up with a leaning cake. Instead, place dowels all around the perimeter but not in the middle, and the weight of the tier above will be evenly distributed amongst all of them. Hope that makes sense.

Oh, ok..... just making sure. Based on your photos of your own cake there I can see you know a thing or two. Very nice looking cake. Although I do have to admit the first part I saw was that creamy swirly base and thought..." Oh WOW OMG !!! ...." and then I realized it was the stand. Heehee As far as preferences, I do prefer firmer cakes for weddings such as pound, butter, or other denser cakes like carrot, just because they're easier to handle and easier to transport, and will hold their shape under fondant and heavy decorations easier.

I noticed this was your first post (Welcome to eG!) and also noticed you titled this, "Must be stackable and must taste great." Uh -oh. You don't stack wedding cakes in the sense that the weight of one tier ever rests on another. You use internal supports for structure; otherwise there isn't a cake out there (save an overcooked fruitcake - ick! ) that could even support the weight of other tiers above it. What type of support system do you plan to use? It should be strong enough to support stacked jello! As for recipes....well, I'm sure we've got tons you'd like. But the most important question to ask is, what is your friend serving for dinner? The cake should complement the others foods served, not work against them. Any ideas about which flavours she's leaning towards?

Are your clients actually this food savvy? Mine aren't. The very first cheesecake I made was the RLB's cordon rose with the apricot chunks inside. I thought it was perfect. Some friends thought it was perfect....others thought it was too soft, but nobody suggested it was undercooked. Now when I make this style I do warn that they're meltable at room temp and some people specifically request that. Try marketing them as New York (if you do pastry crusts), Firm (the standard), and Soft (for people like us) so clients can choose. I bet you'll get more orders for your preference than you think.

I don't know about organization, but it does speak volumes about their lack of hygiene.

Thanks sanrensho & Tweety .... guess I'll just have to keep my eyes open for them.

I use Silicon Plastique made by Culinart. It's foodgrade rubber and comes in either a mixture for a solid compund or a thick pourable one. Both set up within 1/2 hour to 2 hours and are freezerproof and somewhat heat resistant. http://www.culinart.net/silicone.html Edited to say : "Ooh....I see they make it in liquid, now, too!"

Which silicon mats are you referring to? I've never seen these. I use a pastry board for gumpaste but I could think of a billion uses for these if they're cheaper than silpats. I assume they're oven-safe? Can you bake on them??

Brilliant! And better than any Valentine's dinner I've been treated to.

^^^ No offence Sadji, but to me that chocolate pudding cake looked like a heart with intestines wrapped around it. Ugh!

Well now I've seen them! Thanks for posting.

I'm so glad you started this thread. I kept seeing COLD TURKEY: THREE WAYS up top each day, but I figured it was an older thread that'd been bumped back up. I'm embarrassed to admit I assumed it had something to do with Thanksgiving leftovers. I've been smoking for about 19 years now, and I'm only 33. I've quit probably 30 times, sometimes using the patch, sometimes nicorette, sometimes zyban, and most often trying cold turkey. I've even read Alan Carr's book borrowed from a friend. I've tried quitting on my last cigarette, and I've tried quitting by keeping cigarettes close by but a nuisance to go and get. All of these things have been somewhat helpful, but I think a combination of them will help me be successful. I HAVE to quit. I've had very poor circulation for years and it's really affecting my health. And in April I'm moving into a building where I won't be allowed to smoke. So I have to have quit by April. I'm ordering the book and reading it again (note: for anyone wondering ....he convinces you that you don't actually like smoking, and you actually believe it) and I'll be using zyban with the patch, and keeping one cigarette in the trunk of my car so I won't go into panic mode. And as far as food is concerned....I'm a bit scrawny anyways so I welcome weight gain. But if I document that it'll probably read an awful lot like the PMS thread. Hehehe . But maybe I'll finally grow that ass I've always wanted. Plus I'll save $2600/year. I'm not ready right this moment, but I'll be back, that's for sure. Thank you so much for starting this.

Heh heh.... They're made in Cornwall, England, that's why! Make sure you get the 1/8" double thick boards though because they also make plain cardboard ones that some places sell. I never saw your cake.... I saw a bunch of photos that someone else took but yours wasn't one of them. There's apparently a bunch I haven't seen. Oh well.

Now I'm confused. Does bleaching break down the protein or gluten too? Otherwise, what difference would it make, bleached or unbleached, save taste or quality considerations?

Geraldine doesn't refer to them as cornish cakeboards on her site; she lists them as "1/8" double thick boards." You can't insert a sharpened dowel into these because they are masonite; there's nothing for the sharp tip to go into or latch onto. The stress free supports really will be enough, provided you use the appropriate sized rings and number of supports for the tiers. For getting large sheets of fondant even, roll it out on a low table, something you can easily walk around, and bend across so you can reach the middle easily. A very large square coffee table works great for really massive sheets; otherwise a regular table is fine, but it helps to be up higher than usual. (You up higher, not the table.) Roll it onto the acetate using a very heavy rolling pin to start....one of the ones with the ballbearings in the handles. Plop the big pile of fondant in the middle and just punch it down with the rolling pin until it's flat enough to start rolling. Then start rolling by pulling towards you, not rolling away, and keep working your way around the table until it's getting to be about the right size. Then rub your hands across it lightly to feel for thick or thin spots. Then finish the rolling with a regular weight rolling pin. And definitely get help for inverting it! You were at Cakewalk? Which one were you?

Don't sweat this cake. If you can do a cake for 350, you can do a cake for 700. The only differences are that your bottom tiers will likely be larger than you're used to covering, and that you may need to invest in better supports than you're already using. The best way to construct anything large like this is to: a) use the stress free support system http://www.earlenescakes.com/newringsupportset.htm It's a bit of an investment but they're steel and they lock together....you could probably do 20 tiers with these puppies with no worries. b) use cornish cake boards under each tier http://www.creativecutters.com/LISTPRODUCT...&subcat=7&who=3 These are a paper thin sheet of masonite covered in foil, and you couldn't bend them if you tried. Use them under all tiers except the bottom one.....for that you'll want to get a 1/2" thick masonite board from home depot or somewhere. Both Geraldine Randlesome and Earlene are terrific and very honest businesswomen and you'll have no problems ordering from either of them. For covering the larger tiers in fondant, use the method of rolling out onto an acetate sheet and inverting. I can give you more pointers on that if you're not used to it, but you've probably heard of that method. For transporting, move it in pieces, no more than 2 stacked regardless of size, and assemble on site. Transporting each tier individually is preferable. Don't use a central dowel at all.... it's not reliable. You'll just end up with the dowel tearing a hole through the side of a tier if you have to slam on your brakes while moving it. If your customer does end up ordering this as one big cake, you should charge a slight premium for the difficulty factor of engineering this thing. The cornish boards will cost more, etc. so you'll want to factor that in. I wouldn't charge extra for having to rent a larger vehicle though.... if you take the order you should be able to deliver it. And just make sure the bride knows the display table has to be strong enough for her to jump up and down on; otherwise it won't support the weight of such a big cake. Don't want the reception hall providing a flimsy card table!! Good luck!!!

^^ But at least those people are intelligent and have a sense of humour. Then you get ones like: "I have always hated liver, my husband hates liver and our kids have always hated it too, so I made this liver recipe and......." Now those people are stupid! And then they wonder why they didn't like liver this time.... again!

Diva, I think I may have seen that same 60 minutes you were referring to, or a show just like it. I remember the story tracked south american-born migrant farm workers thoughout farms in the US, particularly one man and his two single digit aged children. His children worked right along with him, all day every day, just so the 3 of them combined could earn enough to pay for their food and lodgings with any semblance of a paycheck left over. I too would be glad to eliminate chocolate if this is the case, and of course want to learn more. The only way to end these practices for good is to stop enabling them.

Nothing to be defensive about.... I'm 100% self taught too. Sure, it would've been nice to go to school and learn all of these things instead of figuring it all out on my own, in much less time and with a much lower financial investment I might add, but learning is more about the student than it is the teacher, in my opinion. A passionate, driven student can learn anything without paying someone else to tell them the information. Some cooking institutions turn out graduates who are still inept in many areas, simply because the student wasn't as passionate about learning as the teacher was about teaching. Having said that, many of the very best pastry chefs did go to school, because getting that formal education was part of their plan for learning and an excellent foundation to build on. Being educated in something correctly by a knowledgable teacher has greater value than figuring it all out on your own in the long run, simply because you will end up knowing it all so much faster, and how to do things correctly, I think. There are plenty of things I still don't now that the educated professionals here do know, and we should all look to them first and foremost for guidance. I wrote the above blurbs about basics simply because I haven't seen them printed anywhere like that, and thought it'd be more useful than not for others to have them handy. Your experiences with baking without incident may have a bit to do with your location. Florida has temperate climates and is close to sea level like a good portion of north america, so your variables in these areas aren't as extreme as someone at high altitude or in a dry or very frozen or damp climate. Some people in these areas can't get anything to turn out the way the recipe suggests it will. In addition, some of the ingredients available to you may have less variables than what's available elsewhere to someone else. Different brands of flour and sugar weigh differently, well, all brands of different ingredients do. The brand of cocoa you use might have a similar level of alkaline in it to what the recipe writer used; the cocoa someone else is using may not. Sounds like you've had some pretty good success with your baking, so if it's working for you then stick with it. I still think weighing is always preferable, but I can't convince everyone to go out and spend $100 on a proper scale before they bake the next time either. But for anyone having a really troublesome time with their attempts at baking, starting to measure by weight is one of their easiest ways to eliminate an awful lot of problems. Edited to correct coca into cocoa. Definitely don't bake with coca!! !

TESTING FOR DONENESS REGARDING FLOUR BASED CAKES Many cake recipes in books, in almost all magazines or those you google off the 'net will almost always having baking directions that read something along the lines of this: "Bake until cakes begin to shrink back from the edges of the pan, and a cake tester inserted into the centre comes out clean." WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! Oh, where to even start correcting this mess?! Ok, here goes: "Bake until cakes begin to shrink back from the edges of the pan....: Nope. Totally wrong. Cake batter expands with the heat of the oven, as I'm sure you've noticed. If, in the same heat, the batter is expanding then all of a sudden starts doing the opposite and shrinking, that means you are overbaking your cake! and reversing the chemical processes that allow for proper baking. A cake when it's finished will still be firmly clinging to the sides, and will only start shrinking back from the sides when you take it out to start cooling. Heats expands, cooling contracts. Or burning contracts as well, as they case may be. "a cake tester inserted into the centre" Wrong again. Don't insert the cake tester straight down into the centre for two reasons. First, you might have used a flower nail in the centre (see previous post) and of course that part'll be done as it's touching a heat source. Second, the top of your cake is exposed to air and it will form a slight crust, and that crust will invariably clean your cake tester off when you pull it out, especially if you insert it straight up and down. Instead, test the cake on a diagonal going from the middle of one side from the top to the middle of the other side to the bottom, going through the centre axis of the cake. Test 2 or 3 times in different directions and this will give you a good guage as to the doneness of all spots within your cake. Inserting it on the diagonal makes that slight top crust less likely to clean the tester off on the way out. "a cake tester..... comes out clean." Also wrong. You want your cake to have a nice moist fluffy crumb, so you want that same moist fluffy crumb to come out clinging to your cake tester. A clean tester means a dried out cake. You want the crumbs to be moist, but not wet. Scrape them off the tester between your thumb and forefinger and rub your fingers together. The crumbs should roll into a moist ball the same way fresh bread will, not smear between your fingers or feel wet at all. Although it's true you don't actually need to use a cake tester and can learn to guage doneness based on how the cake looks and smells, it really is a handy tool for anyone not used to baking cakes to get used to what that look and smell should be. Eventually you may become confident enough to not have to use it, or you may never, and that's fine too. The best cake tester to use isn't those thin metal spikes that are commonly labelled, "cake tester," it's a good old fashioned bamboo skewer like the kind you'd use for shish-ka-bobs. The thinner ones are better. The absorbant bamboo when inserted into a hot cake will attract the moisture of the crumbs, and they'll cling to it a lot easier than they'll cling to a piece of metal. So there it is in a nutshell. Hope somebody finds the info useful. You hear from so many people that they don't like scratch cakes or so many recipes are always dry, etc., but this common misinformation is exactly why, and people with less experience just end up overbaking.

I'm going to post some very basic info for those of you who feel you are totally inept when it comes to baking. Likely you are not inept at all, but as stated earlier, standard north american recipe books don't really give the best information for optimum results. I'll specifically talk cakes here, because that is my greatest srength. 1) You should disregard the baking times given. All ovens vary, and extreme weather conditions and altitude also factor. When it's done it's done. More on how to test for doneness later. 2) As already stated, disregard the cake pan size it says to use. Just make the cake the size you want it to be. It'll still bake.... it'll just bake differently. Don't have a bundt pan and want to make a bundt cake? Fine. Just bake it in what you have..... but if you make it as a regular cake treat it as a regular cake, and if you make it as cupcakes treat it as cupcakes while baking. 3) Disregard the baking temperature given. For flour cakes, flourless tortes and cheesecakes, the optimal baking temperature is 325. Always preheat your oven. (Those 3 points were a matter of opinion based on experience. Others may disagree.) There are 2 main things to do first: 1) Convert any recipe you'd like to try to weights, and buy a kitchen scale. Not a cheap crappy scale like the kind you get at walmart....a really good scale. I would recommend this be the first piece of equipment you buy, before replacing or buying new pans and before getting an expensive mixer. It is essential to weigh ingredients rather than measuring them with cups and spoons. Make sure the one you buy has a TARE feature on it, which will allow you to reset the reading to zero so you're not including the weight of your bowl! Be aware though, some baking books' recipes were actually developed using the measuring method rather than by weight, which can cause varying results after you do conversions. So, in my opinion, it's generally best to stick to recipe collections that were developed by professionals. Those recipes would have been tested using weight measurements, even if the book happens to list only the cup measurements. And also be aware, there are just plenty of truly shitty recipes floating around out there. Seems just about anbody can get a cake book publishing deal without truly understanding the chemistry involved in baking. So if you've tried recipes in the past that were a total flop, this might be why. 2) Make friends with your oven, and learn the idiosyncrasies of your particular oven. Probably 100% of home ovens are off calibre, meaning they'll be a different temperature inside than what the knobs read, and they'll have some spots that are hotter than others. Going off calibre most often happens when you originally had the oven delivered, but can happen each time you move it to clean behind, which is why they tend to get worse over time. Think of it in the same sense as a piano going out of tune each time you move it, and needing a professional to come in and retune it. Ovens aren't as sensitive as pianos in this way, but they still do it. You can hire a pro to come in and recalibrate your oven, which will be costly and will likely only last until the next time you move it, or you can go to a hardware store and pick up an oven thermometer, which'll be $5 or so. Most designs will clip to the rack and face forward, so you can read them through the window with the door closed. Turn the oven on to 300 degrees and walk away for 20 minutes. When you come back, read the temp on the thermometer. It might be anywhere from 150 to 450 degrees, so adjust the knob until you get it to read 300. If yours reads 300 from the get-go, good for you. But it likely won't. Keep the thermometer in there every time you bake something. In the meantime, make yourself up a batch of sugar cookies. I recommend sugar cookies in particular because they're thin and quick to do and are especially delicate and sensitive to hot spots, and you can use them to test your oven. Roll them to 1/4" thick and lay them on a baking tray, preferably a tray that is a big as the whole inside of your oven, if you've got one. Bake the whole tray until they are all done, even if some spots burn while others are taking forever. When they're done, take them out and see where some spots burned. They might have burned all around the edges and the middle of the sheet if fine, or they might have burned on the left while the right is fine, or burned only in one corner, for example. These are your hot spots, and the areas you want to avoid placing delicate baked things in in the future. If you have to place cakes in one particular corner of your oven all the time, so be it. The areas where the cookies are perfectly golden brown on the edges and pale in the middle are the spots that are exactly 300 degrees, just like your thermometer is reading. Finally, eat your cookies.

Looks like you've got the most important piece of equipemnt.... the Yoko Ono ass apron. I happen to want one. Badly. The flower nail is now what we're all using instead of those gadawful heating cores one used to have to buy when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Those things left a giant hole in the cake about about an inch an a half in diameter. Gah. Flower nails are for cake decorating, and are made of stainless steel, or aluminum coated in stainless steel. Same material as a good quality cake pan. They're placed flat side down in the pan with the pointed end sticking up, then you pour your batter on top of that. What they do is conduct heat evenly to the middle of the cake, so it starts baking at the same rate and temp as the cake near the sides of the pan, so the heat eventually radiates throughout the cake from the centre and the sides, not just starting at the sides and trying to make its way to the centre. When the cake is baked and cooled, you just turn it over and pull the nail out. You can get them at any cake decorating store....they'll be about 69 cents or so. Maybe Wendy or someone can post a pic of one so you'll all know what you're looking for, but anybody in the store will know exactly what it is. A very very useful tool for baking cakes evenly. You'll want to use one, right in the middle, for cakes about 10" to 12" in diameter, as a general rule, but you can use them on smaller cakes too. You'll notice some batters seem to require it and some don't, but using one all the time won't hurt anything. If anything, your cake will just be done quicker. For anything over 12" diameter I use 3 of them, placed in the form of a triangle sitting about halfway between the centre and the sides, so again, the heat would be evenly distributed through the cake because of them. Hope that makes sense. You'll especially notice you'll need them if you start using 3" high pans, as recommended in the cake pan thread. Because the pans hold more batter which'll take longer to bake, even heat distribution is more critical than it would be for baking a short cake in a short pan. Nope, not at all. I still don't own one. All I have is my electric hand mixer with the little beaters and a stand mixer, and for many years all I had was the hand mixer. Sure, the KA will be very handy for anybody, but cake batter is best mixed on lower speeds so as not to develop the gluten in the flour, so a little hand mixer on low speed works just fine. Remember, pastry chefs were doing all of this stuff long before electric kitchen tools came along, so you can still do all of it. I've even made meringue buttercreams during a power outage just using old fashioned muscles, and it suprisingly didn't really take that much longer than doing it with a mixer. I kid you not.