Burnt sugar cake

[RETREVR]

Task:

We have an order for burnt sugar cake a few days from now. The customer was kind enough to include the recipe that she wanted, not to mention some magical cake flour she wants us to use. The chef did a test run. The cake was fine (oddly enough "non-magical" cake flour works fine). However the icing sucked and the chef couldn't figure out why.

Anyway

On the way out of town the chef told me that I would have to do the order and that the icing would be a problem...have fun.

So. I need to review the recipe. However, If anyone has a tried and tested recipe for a burnt sugar icing, I would be greatful. (I always get carmel when I try to burn sugar... or is it the other way around)

Did I mention that the order is actually for several cakes? I will do them in sheet form. I am not sure how big of sheet though. THe chef told me just to flip them over and ice them. So I am thinking that several small sheet cakes will be the deal. I don't have collars for full or half sheet pans anyway.

The notes on the recipe from the customer mention that she wants spun sugar on the cakes. No big deal, I thought I would spin sugar and and drape it on top. The chef said I should just drizzle the sugar over the cake. Did I miss something? I have never seen this done and am sceptical.

Anyway. I thought I would ice the cakes, do a little piping work on the edges, drape the spun sugar and call it a day. Any sugestions on decor or presentation of the sugar?Thanks

[andiesenji]

This is the one I have been using for many years.

It was put up on this web site a few years back and it works quite well.

This one is slightly different and may be easier for your purposes.

Depending on how long it will be between preparation and delivery and serving, you can make spun sugar and drape it over the top of the iced cakes, however if the humidity is high, it is going to weep and collapse unless added just before presentation.

An alternative could be spun sugar "ornaments" formed on parchment paper and packed loosley in a box so the customer could place them on the cakes just prior to serving.

I have done these in the past and put them in a box with a couple of packets of the "Dry-Store" pellets to reduce damage from humidity.

[M. Lucia]

I just made this recipe to great success.

I would highly recommend the icing, as it is nice and flowy when warm and firms up wonderfully.

Also see this thread on my notes, pictures from the above recipe (you may have to scroll to the end).

[chefpeon]

Perhaps some of you spun sugar folks would be so kind as to offer me suggestions on this thread....

[RETREVR]

This forum rocks. Thank you.

The suggestion of making ornaments on parchment is a good one. I am in Colorado, so humidity is usually not a problem. I have made cages using the bottoms of laddles before and they held up very well.

Peon-I saw your thread and have been watching it. I have spun sugar by drizzling over dowels. If you do this a lot, I think the best thing to use is a cut-off wisk.

I am not a pastry wiz. My basic reference is aon older edition of this book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...032927?v=glance It is not the end all book but has enough basic preparations to get me in trouble.

[andiesenji]

Regarding the best utensil for making spun sugar....

If you can find one of the old-fashioned italian pasta servers, the kind that looks like a small paddles with a bunch of dowels stuck into it..... That works better for me than a cut off whisk.

The pegs are at right angles to the handle of the utensil so for someone who is not too tall, it is much easier to work with.

I used to have to stand on an inverted milk carton to get my arm high enough above the dowels to make the really fine spun threads. However with this utensil I can stand on the floor.

Also the wood holds onto more of the syrup so you get more threads per dip into the sugar pan.

I got the ones I use at an Italian market as regular stores do not carry the large ones.

It wouldn't be difficult to make your own. My teacher, back when I was first learing, had a fat dowel (actually I think it was a piece of closet rod) into which he had drilled holes and inserted thin dowels that were about 5 inches long, in a sort of double spiral pattern. He would spin the dowel as he waved it back and forth over the catch rods and would get an incredible amount of extremely fine threads very quickly. You could do the same thing with just a double row of pegs.

[RETREVR]

Update:

I baked the cakes today. Turns out that part of the order is to be chocolate cakes. The recipes are from 1935 and don't seem to be terribly accurate. They were designed to be made in 9" round pans. The customer said to just "go ahead and make them in 9"x13" sheets. Well, problem number one. When you bake these recipes in in a rectangle pan, they end up about as flat as a loaf of bannana bread. This is OK if you are slapping icing on it and serving it out of the pan. We are not.

I tried turning the temp down on the convection. I tried less mixing. I thought maybe the levening should be adjusted. I came to the conclusion that the sheets were just not going to produce a flat enough product.

I had a novel idea: Use the pan the recipe was designed for, regardless of what shape the customer whimsicly decided upon.

So I go with the 9" round in the tuned down convection oven. Still a huge slope.

I now go to a 9" round in the conventional oven. Still a big slope.

Now people. If this was to be a layer cake (as both recipes are written to be) I could simply level them out stack them up and call it a day. These were to be single layer. The rims were about an inch and the center was about 3 inches tall. If you put frosting on shit....you still have shit.

I went to walmart and bought a couple of sweat bands. By the time I get back to the kitchen I look like Bjorn Borg.

To make a long story short: 9" rounds with water-soaked sweat bands around them in a conventional oven= wicked even cakes.