Wendy DeBord

I can't pick out favorite desserts-I love em all, they all have a place! But the thing I most love about fall and baking is the wave of baking books that are released in fall............

Goodness, it never occured to me that someone would be refering to eating it as is. Thanks Chocophile.

Wow, the moisture dripping down as you described Fernwood, seems very strange indeed. At first I wondered if you underbaked your cake. Now I'm wondering if by chance you put it in a very confined area where it created steam with the different temp.s contrasting? Was your climate neutral.....was it raining or do you have your air conditioning on high? Decorating I might shake some xxxsugar on top, or make a sugar drizzle. Whipped cream goes well with just about any cake and I typically offer it with a chiffon plus fresh fruit.

I would suggest the reason for the denser and flatter cake was how you handled the batter differently because there was more volume of it. The recipe it's self would not be the cause for this, you can easily mulitple a cake recipe by 2 and not have any baking science go wrong nor need to make any leavening adjustments. The science should be fine. What typically might happen to less experienced baker when they multiply recipes is they under develop or over develop the product. "Under develop", example: not whipping your egg whites enough, not creaming your butter and sugar long enough, leaving lumps of flour in your batter because you were scared to continue folding. "Over developed", examples: you beat your whites until they were dry/too long, or when you added your flour you mixed it into the batter so well you developed your gluten making a heavier cake. I hope that made sense.....I explained it well enough? It's a very very very rare recipe that can't be multiplied.

Did you click on the item to view it? They post a photo of almost every item and I think the photographs are pretty accurate. Mainly high volume places use pop-ons or grocery stores. Alot of Mom & Pop bakeries use them also as cheap way to decorate a lower priced item....or mainly products that appeal to children. Theres an assortment of different sugars, pop-ons, gum paste, picks, etc.... Some items aren't edible like a plastic bunny head you'd use on a Easter bunny cake. Some items are 3d -some aren't, some are rather detailed some aren't, the photo will show you.

I haven't used Nestles, to compare it to Bakers, but I've never experienced a poor taste when using Bakers brand...yet alone "vile".

You'll find colored fondants from Pfeil & Holing. There at http://wwwcakedeco.com Although I believe the high color consentration does effect flavor even with purchased fondant, you might consider starting with a chocolate fondant for taste. Definately plan on adding additional flavor to the fondant. They have an incredible assortment of cake supplies.......nicely done seasonal catalogs too. Make sure you get on their mailing list. I've bought several things from them and I've always been very pleased with their quality. At x-mas time I alway purchased their gum paste holly leaves and berries to garnish trays and bouche de noels.........the price and quality on that item is a steal. I'm just thinking as I'm typing.........I don't know how your going to roll and place fondant that large.........then when you get to the end where your pressing your pattern/tread I think it will have started to loose shape from the weight of it. You'd definately need someone skilled to assist you. Hum..........anyone see something similar at one of the top decorators sites. I'd check our Mikes Amazing Cakes for insight. If you did buttercream, could you create a tread mold using silcone, fill with frosting, freeze then apply that in pieces to a cake? Possibly just piping out a tread pattern to acetate then lightly chill, attach to the tire and that should get you flat edges for your tread...........

Could you pipe it in flexipans, freeze it raw, then unmold and bake as usual? Or I had been thinking they could do a partical bake, freeze to release and continue baking. Or....why not, if you bake it in a flexipan wouldn't you get feet on the top as it expands during baking (this is my best guess)? I don't know, it just seems damn impossible to get consistant squares piped out. Even with a square pastry tip or using a form when you lift up, it alway effects the sharpness and thickness of your corners. I can't pipe a perfect square with-out going back and fussing with it.

I can't recall tasting Schokinag but I can respond to other products. I've switched to buying E. Guittard's line of chocolates. BUT I have to add that I won't be staying with their white or milk. Their semi (as noted by Steve Klc) in many previous threads is their best chocolate and a really good value but the white and milk are stictly average to poor. I wouldn't want to reccomend to my boss changing to them for white or milk-you'll regret that. If I could, I'd buy Valrona (although I've never worked with it, only tasted it). I can reccomend Flechlins high end chocolates are all very good and great to work with.

I'd make the recipe as is. The flour quantity could be/should be perfect, it doesn't raise any red flags in my head. I don't have a ladyfinger recipe sitting in front of me this second but thats what it seem to be. Are you supposed to pipe this batter out or bake it in a pan? You can use ap. flour with-out dire consquences. You'd have to do a side by side taste comparison to really notice the difference. Don't 'beat' the flour into your yolks........just incorporate it and stop your mixer.

Cool order! If you buy black fondant it will be the darkest black I think you can get, mixing your own will take a ton of paste........anyway, first thing that comes to my mind is I would actually make the tire treads 3d. Either by applying fondant to the base or indenting the sides after it's covered. Then I think I'd try to make a couple scuff marks on it to look more real, maybe a stone embeded into a thread.... I think you could also have fun with your cake board. Either choosing a paper with a cool design (for more detail interest), painting on the fondant covering the board/base or make a tire impression into the fondant covering the board (like it just rolled onto this board and landed there). Can't wait to see some photos of how this turns out for you!!! It sounds fun!

Absolutely, I mulitply recipes all the time, all day long. I can't recall the last time I had a negative problem multiplying a recipe. The answer is "YES" you can double your yellow cake recipe with out any problems or adjustments. When you multiply recipes you have to understand the techniques/methods of baking. So when a recipe tells you 'beat until light and creamy, 5 minutes beating on medium speed.' you have to forget times and make adjustments. In a large bowl a small quantity will beat very quickly but if your mixer is over filled it's going to take longer to reach 'light and creamy". Follow? Just as a recipe will tell you aprox. how long the recipe takes to bake in a 9" pan: If you tripled your recipe and baked it in a 12" pan it's going to take a long time to bake because the pan is over full. If you baked that triple amount in a larger pan say a 18" pan, the batter would be thinner and bake in less time then the deeper amount in the 12" pan. Some pastry chefs adjust their oven temp.'s and when you bake something larger, deeper-you bake on a lower oven temp. And when they bake a small item they bake it quicker in a hotter oven. I personally don't change my temp. times (rarely) because I don't find it makes that big of a difference-from years of my experience doing so. I multiply recipes that are in conventional cup measurements and recipes in weights. I don't think it makes any difference. The only rule is make sure your math is correct and you multiple every ingredient and don't forget something.

Nightscotsman, I made cannoli tonight. Previously I'd discovered a bit of cream cheese in the riccotta made it smoother and I was excited over that find. But tonight I followed your lead and used some mascarpone instead of the cream cheese, thats a great tip! Thank-you!

The "frosting" that I like with a flourless chocolate cake is whipped cream. Maybe a 7 minute frosting if you can handle the sugar hit........... I think you'd be better loosing the flourless chocolate layer. It makes a great dessert but not a great wedding cake. Take into consideration who will be cutting this. A flourless chocolate cake would be a nightmare if cut by the wrong person who doesn't know how to and hasn't the patience to do so. I believe that gifts should be what the person wants/likes not what you want them to like. Same thing goes when making cakes for others. I'd start from the beginning again and ask this bride what she wants as a total package/goal, whats most important to her. Some brides don't care what something tastes like as much as it be decorated how they dream of. Some don't care about decoration and only focus on flavor..........your bride sounds like they belong in the first example.

This is my favorite cookie to decorate. Eaten with-out the sugar frosting, it's a pretty plain uninteresting cookie. You have to use a good quality emulsion or oil to flavor your frosting. I've lost track of who published this, I believe it's from Pillsbury. Shortbread cookie: 2 1/3 c. flour 1/4 tsp. salt 1 c. butter 1/2 c. xxxsugar 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract Frosting: 2 c. xxxsugar 4 to 6 tbsp. heavy cream 1/2 tsp. your favorite emulsion (I use lemon)

I've left my decorated cookies out uncovered for 3 or 4 days at the most. Good air flow around your sheet pan is important for even drying when you use darker colors. As I wrote before, they do not dry all the way thru making a hard icing. White chocolate is a fine alternative provided you don't need a true white. I'm not personally crazy about the taste of coating chocolates which will give you true white. It's not easy to mix certain colors with white chocolate and for limited use it's sort of expensive to buy in seperate oil based colors. Holding your chocolate at a nice piping temp. can be a challenge..........too warm and it runs so fast you can barely control it. Fondant dried well and lets you stack your cookies ontop of each other. The bottom line is personal preference combined with cost and convience.

Over the years I've gone thru a couple different styles/techniques......... I used to use the hot knive technique (thats what my Mother did/ thats how I followed) but I didn't like the color changes I'd get when using that techinque with a darker colored icing. When it came down to shaped cakes or cakes with intense details going over and over one area with heat darkens the color enough to make inconsistant colors. I also occasionally had too much water build up on the cardboard base which weakens the stength of the cardboard. Then I learned (from a great decorator who does volume) to base coat, then refridgerate. Then you come back with your second coat on a really cold cake and it smooths out like silk. Except occasionally I'd get one area that defied my goals of perfection because I'd put the frosting on too heavy or too thin which changed the way that the icing reacted as my spatula hit it (like sticking). Then I tried the upside down method (I read at a cake decorating site). My first several tries worked well. The concept is you spread your icing on a parchment circle, place the cake upside down on that. So you'd have an even perfect layer of frosting when your re-invert this cake. Then you smooth your sides. Freeze the cake until the icing is very cold, then you re-invert and peel off the parchment, your suposed to get perfect top edges. This technique didn't work for me because I was impatient with freezing and or I'd have a multi layered and filled cake and the act of turning it over meant I needed to begin with a frozen cake or risk shifting layers as I inverted it to start. I also found I needed to go back and fix something or another so the frozen cake wasn't an advantage. Then someone taught me to use huge bladed spatula. I think it's what's used for spackling drywall. I've stayed with this now for several years and think it's the fastest most accurate method for me. I used to use any sized spatula leaning toward smaller ones. Having a large spatula means you only have to hit your sides or top with one pass. If you have a small bent handle spatula you must pass at least twice and that allows you do get off vertical on each pass. So, I pipe on my frosting, then I get my sides vertical with the large spatula first pass around on the turn table, then I do my top getting it level.........then I do go back and take off any access frosting (scrapping it up with my large spatula). Last pass I'm then smoothing my edges where I took off the excess and re-checking my angles that I'm 'sguare' both on my sides and top. I've given up on the smooth as glass surface that the hot water gives you, although it's nice the color and water issues are more of a hindrence for me. I can come pretty close with a large spatula............but of course thats taken me years to get there. Regardless of which method you choose to learn with, I believe using a large spatula is very important and so is a smooth frosting to begin with (as KarenS mentioned before me). Edited to add: * After re-reading your question it seems like bubbles in your frosting was the problem. I find that first mixing up my batch ....if I let it sit for a while either in the cooler or not, then I go back on low speed and give it a couple turns in the mixer, that gets out alot of air bubbles. They got there in the first place by whipping on too high of a speed for too long. Oh I remembered another one......some people swear by using a paper towel (plain with no embosed pattern) over the cold iced cake. They feel they can smooth down any perfections that way. But I've not found that to be accurate personally.

Can you post us a link to the place where you buy these caramels, please? I'm curious who makes them and what they look like.........I've never come across caramels this sensitive before.

Your quantity is a hard to determine factor (as written, you need to see the size of those pots). You want to fill the pots enough so it doesn't look skimpy, yet expect that they won't finish it (scrapping up the bottom of the pot). Your going to have waste with this dessert, no way around it, also waste with the items being dipped. The more pots to fill the more fondue needed, wasted. You could strain the ganche and use it in other applications at a later date if food cost is really tight. As for the pineapple acid bath to control sensitive fruits from darkening.........I also use orange juice. I learned it from Michel Roux's book where he uses a combo of lemon and orange juice when making banana mousse. It's a wonderful tip........I really don't like fruits that have that heavy lemon taste and using other high in acid fruits does the same thing as the lemon....with-out as much taste impact (I think).

Classic french macaroons are the only cookie that I can think of where you do this method (air dry before baking). It's an important part of the process of making these.

I wanted to add: I really like the place where you've chosen your design/cookie cutter from. If I recall correctly a couple of similar sites actaully have step by step photographed steps on how to make and decorate cookies. The frosting I suggest in my previous post will crust over when it drys, but it will remain soft underneath. If you use purchased fondant to frost, that will dry firmer similar to royal icing...but it won't crack your teeth to bite into it. Another point.........you might find it frustrating (if your new to this) to decorate the flower you've chosen because it's a very organic shape to detail. Where as a object with straight lines where your more or less outlining the cookie is easier to produce with good results. Hopefully you have some drawing skills and can follow the petal pattern and detail as shown in the photo. How and when you add your sanding sugar is important too. (Just incase you don't know this) You first fill and dry you main area........only when it's dry can you go back and outline then sprinkle on your sanding sugar. Otherwise the sanding sugar will stick to any wet surface on your cookie. (This applies to any type of frosting you use)

I don't have my cookie file at home with me now- I'll post my favorite decorating shortbread recipe tommarrow. For frosting I don't use a measured out formula, I make it by feel. But even if you've never done this.......its really not hard at all. I start with xxxsugar in my mixing bowl with a paddle attachment. To it, I add flavoring and heavy cream. Theres a brand of lemon emulsion I like alot (but you can't purchase it retail) because it has a very natural flavor to it verses the harsh lemon extract you find in most grocery store baking isles. If you can purchase lemon or orange oil. If you want a plainer frosting use vanilla extract instead. I pour in some heavy cream and mix (over my xxxsugar) and continue adding it in small amounts until I have a smooth good consistancy to my frosting. If I accidently add too much cream then I adjust by adding more xxxsugar. I taste it along the way and adjust the amount of flavoring too. When I use this type of frosting I choose a main color for what I'm going to decorate........sometimes it's just white. I put some of this frosting in a large dish (like a baking pan) so it's about 1" deep with frosting. I then drop/place my entire cookie in the frosting. BUT I only want the top surface of the cookie in contact with the frosting, not the sides and definately you don't want frosting on the back side of the cookie. I lift up my cookie with my left hand and in my right hand I have a metal spatula............as I lift up my cookie the frosting will be smooth across the whole surface of the cookie (much more perfect then spreading it on). Then using my spatula I control the drip/run off of the frosting, and set my cookie down on a tray and let it air dry. Then I go back and add further details and colors. If your nervous to dip your whole cookie (which is the fastest technique) you can spread on your frosting with the metal cake spatula. Verses- using royal icing you pipe on a damn then go back and flood it with thinner royal. Yes, this method seems easier but in fact its a much slower process and I can be almost as exact with my technique as anyone can with royal. My dipping way will have a few spots where the edges ran over onto the side of the cookie. But when you add an outline that totally cleans up the look and you don't notice imperfections. To use purchased fondant I work with it the same way as the xxxsugar icing. I thin it out with plain water instead of heavy cream over a heated water bath, but I still flavor it too taste with the best oil/emulsion/extract I can buy.

I think I'd avoid using sterno...........I just don't think your going to need it because your ganche will remain soft enough for dipping for quite a long time. If you add a little more cream or corn syrup to your ganche that will thin it down as extra insurance for it remaining liquid. (oops I just scrolled down and saw Chocophile said the same thing) o.K..........I'm dittoing Chocophiles response. To use a sterno you must have a water bath underneath...........so your double boiling to protect the chocolate ganche (or any other food too will have this issue). I think the main focus should be on how you present your dipping options. You can arrange them very creatively. You could put together screwers and fan them out into a halfed fruit like a cantelop (put some palm leafs in for design sake). You could lay them out like a sushi plate. You could cut your items into shapes. Like cut your fruits with a flower cookie cutter.........arrange them like standing or laying flowers. Line your serving platter with banana leafs and dye your dipping skewers green. etc........

Personally I don't enjoy eating royal icing on anything. I'd rather eat a fondant or a xxxsugar frosting that's tender and flavored. Then I go with a shortbread cookie as my base to counter balance the sweetness of the frosting. BUT that doesn't really help you.......because what I make is very fragile. I've made several sugar/butter cookies in search of the perfect cookie to decorate to replace my fragile shortbreads. I agree with Momlovestocook, Martha's cookies are pretty good/one of the best for this purpose that I've found. But I hope to persuede you to not use royal icing, instead use something more edible.

I'd opt to bake it the night before, once totally cool I'd wrap it well and leave it on the counter until when it's going to be served. From my experience it depends upon your recipe............I've made a few along the way that weren't my ideal cake and those didn't get any better with age. But if your happy with the recipe you have (and it makes a good moist cake).........it should be fine holding overnight.