Wendy DeBord

Hum...........maybe I'm not totally sure I understand..........to me the issue doesn't seem like your having problems with your buttercreams stability so much. In too much heat, nothing holds up great. Thats part of the reasoning why some people use frostings that contain shortening and xxxsugar verses french buttercream. Real butter melts at a lower temp. then shortening. When I've encountered a wet (that word used because I can't think of a better one) or soft buttercream I wouldn't have been able to get the fondant holding onto the sides of my cakes as your photos shows yours does. The weight of the fondant makes the buttercream slide off the cake, literally. The only corrections I see that could happen are: more supports internally and a cooler room or cooler frosting. By the way, your cake is absolutely adorable!! I REALLY like how you designed it to represent a brick castle yet it remains totally feminine and frilly, you also have the crown feeling happening.......that's really excellent design imo!!

If you look at my blog on page 7, I did beehive cakes as centerpieces for each table.........that might give you an idea.

I'm glad to see others love this pastry, galaktoboureko. Everytime I make it, no one else seems quite as thrilled with it as I am. I can eat the whole pan of it myself: breakfast lunch and dinner until it's gone..............It's right up there in my top 10 favorite desserts.

I was really pressed for time this year. I had only had this week to prepare for 500 brunch guests...........while I was accomplishing my regular duties. I didn't do any fancy decorated cakes, at all. I pulled some royal icing flowers out of my cabinet and slapped them on my cakes helter skelter. I had to round out the rest of my buffet with easy fast items, like cookies and cookie bars. Oh, I also do coffee cakes and such.......but thats just normal stuff. My chef had requested (months ago) I do a shoe themed table..........I sweaked out just enough time to make some rough shoes this week, but I never found time to make something to place them on. I almost forgot to put them out this morning and just stuck them on my shelf as is. Earily on, my manager asks me if so-and-so can have one of my chocolate plastic shoes after the party. Fine. Then less then an hour later she comes back to me to tell me some older women actually took a shoe on her plate and took a bite out of it. Then about another hour later the second shoe of that set disapeared............... What's with these people.............sheesh, you don't eat the flowers on your table do you? We hovered over the second pair of shoes for the rest of the event so I'd have something left of my display and to give to the women who politely asked for them.

Thanks for showing us this Annie. I've always wondered about this stuff. I hope you'll tell us how it tastes, can it be refridgerated on the cake, just how flexible is it??? Can you cut it with a cake knive or should you peel it off the cake before eating?

I believe that was done by Michael Laiskonis currently at Le Bernadin. Host emeritus here at the eGullet Society's Pastry & Baking Forum.

Thanks guys, now I know the web does work. No one can defend what that person did. No one wants their work stolen in that way. I'm hoping you'll put a huge watermark across the front of your photos.........cause there are several shots of your work I'd love to print out and study. Don't you hate the fact that book stores carry vertually no decent books on decorate/decorating cakes in their baking section? At the most you can find Colettes books and Brauns, but anyone who's into decorating, already owns those. It's frustrating to buy books thru other sources because they usually don't have a return policy available. So I find the net the best book store in the world. Now we have the best decorators limiting how long you can view their photos on the net..........I hate that, I can barely focus before the shot is gone.

I do love to print out other peoples work, I value those photos as I do published books I've purchased. I only print out the best examples and I try to learn from them. Just as I would from a published book. I think that's fairly common, and personally I see nothing wrong with doing so. I do understand what you refered to with someone taking your photos and putting their name on them. Thats totally wrong! It's a shame that many top decorators have to resort to preventing others from being able to click on their photos and print out their work. Certainly I do respect those decorators decisions..........personally I feel it's a shame. I try to live thinking most people are good and refuse to let a few bad apples ruin how I feel toward people as a whole...........and I'm hoping that you might feel that way too. I do wonder how many buyers shop cake decorators on the net. I'd sort of bet that the majority of visitors are other decorators. I believe most people buy from references and word of mouth about a local decorator. I think that putting up a website is partically putting your work out there to share/compete/get acknowledged and that's good because we all benefit from that. I think the skill level of cake decorators has grown enormously since the advent of the internet. Prior to it, we all counted on books and the snails pace of their releases kept most of us growing at a snails pace too. I really hope you will continue to share with those of us who want to learn from you.

FWED, the thread I'm linking here covers how to get that look in your chocolates in detail.

Yes, you can paint on metalic colors.........they look fabulous. You don't mix the coloring into the frosting. You let the frosting dry then apply the metalic 'dusts' (edible dusts) on top of the icing. Sometimes I mix my dusts with alchol and sometimes I prefer to dust them on dry. If they are painted on wet, the color will be smudge proof. If you dust them on they can be smudged. If you apply it wet, you can't cover a large surface area evenly in tone, best to use it dry for large areas. Also it's hard to use a stencil with a wet application because it wants to bleed under your stencil. Plus you need to be careful not to have your brush too wet or that can melt down your frosting. I get my dusts thru wholesale sources but theres alot of cake decorating sites on the web that sell them. I know http://www.sugarcraft.com stocks them.

Welcome to the eGullet Society For Arts & Letters Assaporare! Your photos are fine..........no one can compete with Patricks photography..........so don't worry. Seeing your work and everyone elses really adds a great deal to our conversations.

Maybe I'm not totally following this, but it seems to me the problem lays with what your using as your top layer, the curd. Typically curd isn't used as a finishing layer on tortes because of the reasons you sited. So basicly you just need to re-work it alittle. If you mold it wrong side up as mentioned I'm not aware of any mirror or high gloss finish that won't be dulled by assembling that way, nor would your curd retain it's shine. Upside down assembly works great if your freezer area gets a beating, that will protect your cake top from dents or scratches, as would keeping them in your ring or pan while frozen. You can assemble tortes upside down but the nappage or mirror still gets put on last when you have it right side up. You can do a gelatinized glaze as your top layer that you can freeze the assembled torte on upside down, but it won't be a high shine. Why not pour a clear mirror glaze over your curd to seal it?

Welcome MightyD, relax were a freindly group. I'm glad you joined us.

I particularly like your choice of red to match your raspberry flavor and the speckled spray reminds me of real reaspberries. Very well done, I can taste them just from their looks.

Wow, truely fabulous Sharon! Really impressive work! I wish your photos were slightly larger though...........I'm struggling to see the fine details..........I don't want to miss a thing but theres parts I can't make out that I wish I could.

I'm struggling to give you an answer............so much depends upon your group of people, how conservative or not they are. Roughly for the Friday night, if there not eating sweets until 9:00 pm I would plan very light. Probably 1 to 1 1/2 pieces per person. BUT will people want to take some home? I've seen that happen, where they don't want to eat late at night but think nothing of grabing 2 or 3 items to eat tommarrow. Sat. night I'm with Pam R, I agree that 3 pieces per person should be generous. I don't want to scare you, but just tell you something I've seen thats pretty standard. I've seen caterers deligate waitstaff to tray up the hostesses pastries or candies because they are dealing with their own food product. I've seen waitstaff hord items (steal) boxes of candy and only put out a percentage of what the host provided instead of all of it. Plan on the waitstaff eating too, in your quantites, they'll eat more then a average guest. In the end it will all balance out. If you baked too much people will love to take some home, if you didn't bake enough the ice cream bar will satisfy everyone. Don't stress yourself too much. Get done what you can and then let what will be, be.

I'd definately only make cookies that I knew were his favorites. To me that's what I'd long for, a taste of the familar, a taste of home. Theres not too many cookies that should be a problem.......... I'd avoid chunks of chocolate that might melt (but chocolate chips stand up to heat unlike couvetures)........but not too much else. Even if the chips in the cookies melted the cookie will taste good if you individually wrap it so it doesn't melt down into a block of cookies. I love warm cookies and warm chocolate, oowie and goowie. Assuming this is a typical male who's list of favorite cookies would probably be: chocolate chip peanut butter oatmeal raisin chocolate Make him whatever he likes and not what someone else thinks he'd like. That will impress him.

I personally would make the same items for Saturday as I did for Friday, since you won't have overlapping guests. I'd let my serving platters deside for me how much of what goes to each party according to how I layed out the design of my pastries. I like to make patterns verses put a couple of each item on one tray in non-patterned assortments. I may arrange my items so they look like a big flower on the tray, etc... What your serving them for dinner does play a role in how much desserts you'll need. Are they eating dinner right before Friday nights event too? Lets see..........you have listed 12 items plus the decorated torah cookies no? In my experience, children will mainly eat the ice cream bar when given the choice. Most children eat what they are familar with, so anything they haven't tasted before or seen before might not get touched by them. Is your group the type of people that eat everything they put on their plate or the type that take one of everything they can jamm on their plate whether they will eat it or not?

Well after thinking about somethings previously mentioned by others............I do agree that the Chinesse rarely approach baked goods from the same mixture of ingredients us westerners do...........and I bet I've got this wrong thinking they used puff pastry as I know it. If you think about it, theres alot of doughs that can give you that same layered look. My kolahcky dough or a cream cheese dough can duplicate that layered effect. I think I'd have to taste this dough have more information. I highly doubt they are blind baking these tartlets. That would be a pain. I imaging the weight of the custard retards the rise in the center of the dough (as it does with other similar items). I haven't had a chance to read thru everyones custard trials...........but certainly theres been some published recipes on this item to learn from, no? Even if the recipe varies from one recipe to the next, is there no similarities between crust recipes? What's the typical crust recipe look like, can you post one? If you take a recipe for the crust and give it a couple of turns with a rolling pin, that should reproduce the layering you see that mimicks puff pastry.

I beleive the type of crust your seeking is made from puff pastry. Most people purchase it in the frozen food section of your grocery store, but it certainly can be made at home.

Just a note to everyone. Since we do have another thread very similar to this can we reserve this thread for desserts other then plated ones......and place our plated dessert photographs in this thread? Thanks!

The closest thing in Herme's book that I found is on page 91, Lemon and Hazelnut Macaroon. It consists of a nougatine macaroon for the top and bottom layer, sandwiched in between are a layer of lemon mousse and a layer of flakey hazelnut praline. Clearly not the same thing as Drewman posted. I have a question Drewman...........do you put unsliced cakes out on buffets? Or were those cakes left uncut for photographing?

Patrick I got the same exact results when I made that (over a year ago). I can't see how anyone would have more left. What I did was, make a second batch and piped the whole batch into sticks. Then my finished cake looked just like the photograph, completely full of meringue sticks.

There is no right or wrong on baking all from scratch or using mixes. I've personally been very upfront about my use of and experiences with mixes. Inexperience and or prejudices effect what we personally like, many people have never really been exposed to a good scratch cake or a good box mix. Both can be equally good/great or equally bad. I believe the only way to really determine what's best is to do a blind taste test using multiple people comparing multiple cakes. Theres tons of misconceptions about both scratch cakes and mixes and people claiming they can taste or detect things that most people simply can't. I've done fairly extensive taste testings to find out what people in my area like and want. In many cases the boxed mix won over my best scratch cakes. The reasons sited had to do with texture and moisture. I think people expect all cakes to be light, open crumbed, moist and spongie like a box mix. That seemed to be the most important factor. Taste which you'd think would be the most important factor really wasn't a huge issue, BECAUSE people thought all of them tasted good........they thought the hallmark to judge all cakes against is the texture you get with a box mix, which is the dominate cake people are exposed to. Anyway, that we get people baking is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The more you know the more you might want to know. We've done some "best of" recipe testing here and I'm not so sure some of the testing has been completed. Have you all read this thread: here. I still don't own a perfect yellow cake recipe. I've got a darn good white cake (look here).........but in blind taste tests I can't win over a mix. Anyone who claims they their scratch cake is better then a mix, I challenge you to post your recipe in the appropriate "best of" thread and offer it up to everyone to test bake. Prove to everyone that your cake is the best, better then any mix. If not...........I think your posting based on prejudices's more then fact.

I think you'll find alot of bread bakers have this or are well informed about them. Have you done a site search? There should be info. in the Pastry & Baking Forum on it.