I Can Be All Pretty-like, Too

My Maelstrom cake was many things, but I don’t think anyone would call it pretty (I did get "cute" and "adorable, especially the drowning guy" from classmates, though). So, just to show I have balance and all that, the other project I completed Friday was the bonus "make a pastillage box" assignment.

Pastillage, essentially sugar concrete (edible, though), dates way back and really came into vogue when Antoine Careme, arguably the first celebrity chef, started making ridiculously detailed showpieces with it back in the 18th century. I love learning how to do things that have that kind of lineage, even though, nowadays, instead of cornstarch and gelatin, we use gum tragacanth.

Still, the general concept and method are the same: mix, knead, cut and shape, let dry, glue together with royal icing et voila!

Ah! Zut alors, my box, it so pretty and petite and white and not one sea monster in sight! See! I can be dainty!

And inside, there are no surprises! No sharks! No doomed vikings! Boring, yes, but if you need some dainty pastillage, let me know. I promise I will deliver it cephalopod-free.

Maelstrom of Doom... and Buttercream!

Yes, it’s okay. You can laugh.

This is my final cake project for Sugar Momma’s class, the "individual cake." And yeah, it’s a bit rough, but I have to say I’m just tickled about it, and Chef had a good laugh when I brought it up to her for critique. [Update: I got my grade in the class overall, an A-, but a 9 out of 10 for this cake... in contrast, the shagadelic blue and white buddy cake Legolas and I did got a mere 8.5 out of 10]

The assignment was to layer, fill and stack three tiers of sponge cake, finish with buttercream and any decorations we wanted that expressed a theme of our choosing. I figured, I’ll have the rest of my career to make fussy flowers and ruffles of white fondant for demanding customers. I’m going to make a cake I’d want to have.

Several classmates asked me if I was going to do a pirate cake. Jeez, I’d hate to be pigeonholed...

Instead, I was inspired by my longtime yearning, always sharper in the summer months, to visit the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway. They are amazing geologically, with lots of places to hike, and just offshore in the cold northern Atlantic waters is the original Maelstrom, sometimes called "the Charybdis of the North." Yes, nasty, nasty currents that can warp into actual whirlpools when conditions are right.

Plus, while I like pirates well enough (hello!), I really, really like Vikings. A lot. Besides, as Dr. Virago and I learned on the Isle of Man, "a viking is a pirate until he arrives somewhere he wants to be."

And I figure, if you’re going to do the Maelstrom, not just some rinky-dink whirlpool, but the freakin’ Maelstrom, you can’t go halfway. You’ve got to have a kraken, some sharks, skeletons and doomed vikings. What kind of cake would it be without doomed vikings?

Oh, and it also totally had to be upside down with a big hole in the middle.

Both the Divine Chef M, who saw the start of the project, and Sugar Momma, who returned from the World Pastry Conference for the last two days of class, gave me this look like "well, this will be interesting" when I showed them the sketches we had to do in advance.

Here’s a shot where you can better see the depth of the maelstrom, which extended about halfway down into the cake. You can also see one of the things I was really, really happy with: the texture on the skin of my giant evil purple octopus. Chef’s first comment when I brought the cake up for critique was "I thought it was supposed to be a giant squid."

"It’s still a cephalopod, Chef," I replied. (The giant squid proved too difficult to model in the humid weather.)

She gave me a long look and smiled slightly. "Ah. Cephalopod. That’s a good word."

The decorations themselves were not difficult; aside from the buttercream, it’s all modeling chocolate. The two big challenges were the engineering aspect of balancing the cake stack and ridiculous humidity. I had a really nice spiral on the prow of the boat, for example, but it collapsed, so I wound up ripping it off and squishing what was left into a vague horsehead shape.

The bottom tier is a 6" four layer sponge cake. The middle is an 8" four layer sponge cake with the top cut off at about a 20 degree angle, with a small well for the bottom of the whirlpool. The top tier is, again, a four layer sponge, this time 10" across, cut off at about a 30 degree angle with the center entirely cut out.

I was very happy with my modeling chocolate decorations until it came time to apply them. Usually, modeling chocolate is like Plasticine as you work with it, but then hardens to Tootsie Roll-like consistency. Not rock hard, but fairly stable. Well, Friday being the day before summer break, they’d turned off the air conditioning and it was a nasty humid summer day, so everyone’s things were melting. Poor Legolas' calla lillies were literally wilting and sliding down the sides of his cake until we propped them up with toothpicks.

My thin modeling chocolate pieces, like my great white sharks (one of which is visible in the top photo), viking shields and sail, felt like soaking wet paper towels and drooped and tore at the slightest tension. The thicker pieces, notably the longboat and mast, were mushy and couldn’t support any weight. I tried in vain to get the mast to support the sail, but it was too humid and our 10:15 finish time was about two minutes away, so I doomed the doomed vikings a little more and cut halfway through the mast, then cut a gaping hole in the sail and let it all droop down as if the ship was already sinking.

Above is a close-up of what everyone agreed was their favorite bit: the drowning viking. Chef's comment on that was that she loved it, but even more, "I love that his shipmates aren't even trying to save him. They're not even looking at him. They're just sort of going 'onward!'"

Can you tell she has little kids at home or what?

My friend Daria looked at the drowning viking for a long time, finally shook her head and said "You just had to take it to the next level, didn't you?"

If I’d had more time, I would have mended my hammerhead shark (its head ripped off when I tried to lift its soggy, humidity-soaked body off the foil where it was laying), I would have smoothed out the buttercream sides better and gotten that damn mast upright and supporting the sail, but I had a lot of fun doing this one.

Knowing it wouldn’t survive the drive home, nevermind the 800-mile drive I’ll be making this weekend to spend some time visiting my friend L in Georgia, I gave the cake to one of the women who works in the hospitality office who has a big family with a lot of kids. Remarkably, the cake survived being carried halfway across campus in one piece.

Oh and yes, in case you’re wondering, I did in fact have the only cake with a drowning viking. Or a cephalopod. Or upside down. Here’s a shot of some of my classmates’ cakes awaiting critique:

That's Legolas' cake in the middle (go Team Color Fiend!), Mandilicious' tea party cake on the left and Daria's always perfect, always dainty butterfly cake on the right.

Cake-opalooza!

Monday and Tuesday were the team cake project days, with Legolas and I once again working together. Monday went well enough as we made tons of roses, rose buds and leaves (I did all the buds, he did all the leaves and we split the roses between us) and enrobed our three-tier cake in light blue fondant.

Tuesday morning was rough as we disagreed over the rest of the fondant colors (when we’d initially agreed on "light blue background with graphics made of white and shades of blue," I interpreted that as one blue in different degrees of depth. Legolas interpreted it as one purplish-blue, one green-blue, one periwinkle, etc). We had a spat and didn’t talk to each other for an hour or so, but it was a quiet spat so I don’t think Chef even noticed.

We were supposed to do a fondant band border on the bottom of the big tier, but as Legolas started it, he said he couldn’t get the ribbon all around without ripping it so he put it on the middle tier instead. That irked me a bit, since we had to have a bottom border of some kind, but I just kept cutting out the circle graphics. Cut, cut, cut, with all these leftover dots...

Hey, wait a minute...

I suggested we save the little cut-outs and make confetti of them and make that the bottom border. This was a turning point for the cake and for The Spat. Once we started getting the graphics onto the fondant, Legolas was happier and so was I.

Here’s a post-spat shot of the oft-mentioned Legolas, looking like a man who really shouldn’t be around sharp knives:

And hey! Here’s a shot of the finished cake. Chef’s only comment was: "The confetti is a nice surprise. I like it."

And this, by the way, is a shot of the cake design Chef gave Legolas and I originally. She decided to give it to the team that was struggling a bit, and reduce it to three tiers instead of four as she’d planned for us. Seeing our cake, which I think reflected both our styles, can you even imagine Legolas and I trying to do this dainty l’il thing??

And here’s a lineup of all our class cakes. I think everyone did a great job, actually, and several chefs walking past (the day we put our team cakes in the window attracts a bit of a crowd) said these were overall the nicest group in a long time. As I was editing this photo, I realized that two of the other teams did exactly the photo Chef gave them, and two did the exact same design as their photo but in different colors.

Only Legolas and I, Team Color Fiend, talked Chef into letting us change the colors, the flowers (the original photo had weird orchidy things) and even the graphic (the photo had just circles, rings and bulls-eyes of fondant, not our retro shagadelic nuttiness). And then there’s the confetti. Hey, I think it works.

And I have confirmation other people think it works... today, for Grand Buffet, they pick two cakes to take down to the dining hall to use as showpieces. Team Color Fiend’s was one of them.

Tri Again: Training Log Catch-up

As I sit here, finished with classes and waiting for the pool to open for its afternoon session, it occurs to me that I'm not one but two weeks behind in posting my weekly training log for all the world, or at least three of you, to see.

It's not that my training fell off, it's just that the switch to being an A.M. student has messed me up big time in every way, so some things just slipped through the cracks. But keeping me honest, here's a quick recap:

Week Six

A difficult week, to put it mildly. The week I really regretted getting the whole crazy idea of doing another triathlon into my head. Also my first week of waking up at 0430 every morning. That's just not right.

Sunday 17 June: what I recorded in my written log as a "craptacular 45 minute bike ride." I remember nothing but sweat, pain and hills. Also today, 40 minutes on the elliptical followed by an easy one-mile, 15-minute walk on the track.

Monday 18 June: Pilates in the morning and a 3.25 mile ralk on the track.

Tuesday 19 June: an unintentional rest day due to the fact that I forgot to pack my sports bra and didn't have time to run back home and get it and still get in a workout before doing an afternoon tour.

Wednesday 20 June: Pilates in the morning, but nothing else as I was knackered even more than on Tuesday. Damn a.m. schedule.

Thursday 21 June: I went to an aqua aerobics class with my classmate Mandilicious but only lasted 30 minutes. I was bored out of my mind and couldn't get my heartrate about 80 bpm (it should be 130-155 bpm when I'm working out). So I went to the other side of the pool and tried to do the drills in the books Aquachef lent me.

MotherMaryJosephBabyJesus! I nearly drowned myself. When I maintain "proper form" as described in the book throughout my stroke, my nose and mouth never come out of the water. And call me crazy, but I kinda need oxygen every now and then.

I spent 40 minutes sputtering and flailing about until I gave up on improving my extension and reducing my sizeable drag... but when I tried to go back to my lameass style of swimming, I couldn't! Ugh. I cursed Aquachef's good intentions and dragged my sorry, soggy butt out of the pool, defeated.

Friday 22 June: 3.25 mile ralk on the track.

Saturday 23 June: morning Pilates and a 42 minute bike ride.

Week Seven

Not much of an improvement, but at least I didn't use the word "craptacular" in my training journal to describe any of the sessions.

Sunday 24 June: a 3.3 mile walk around the hills of my 'hood.

Monday 25 June: Pilates and 2.6 mile pack hike with about 25 pounds on my back.

Tuesday 26 June: lame 2.1 mile walk trying not to fall over from morning-induced exhaustion.

Wednesday 27 June: Pilates and a 2.5 mile ralk on the track.

Thursday 28 June: 30 minutes on the elliptical at high resistance.

Friday 29 June: a rest day. Because dammit, I needed one.

Saturday 30 June: Pilates and a "mini bike ride" of just about two miles to see if I could make it down and then up one of two particularly scary hills in my 'hood. This one is scary because it's both very steep and very twisty. The downhill was the first time I've actually felt the back wheel of my bike lift off the road in the first stages of a total wipeout. I wound up riding the brakes, and screaming, the whole way down. Not fun. Uphill sucked just as much. I got halfway before throwing in the towel and walking the rest of the way. Hmm, maybe I should have used the word "craptacular" to describe this ride in my journal.

In any case, despite the fairly lame plateau I'm on training-wise, I think I'm working my way out of it this week. If nothing else, I'm venturing back into the pool in just a couple minutes in hopes of recapturing that manatee-like form that made me the world's slowest but steadiest swimmer.

Pizza is Good for You

Ok, maybe not quite, but if you're planning on making your own pizza dough for your next pie, try this recipe, which allegedly has "enhanced antioxidant availability." Mmmmmm...

Me Likey

Go here. See trailer. Understand why I am suddenly consumed with the urge to run off to Scandinavia. I mean, even more than usual.

Behold! The Flowers of Insanity!

Just kidding. I’m actually pretty proud of this, my first ever gum paste flower work. We had to do a floral spray with certain components (one rose, one two-petal rose bud, one one-petal rose bud, etc.) over about a six hour period.

I started, like everyone else, with a small white log of gum paste that looked kinda like a pillar candle, minus the wick. From there, I rolled, cut, shaped, colored, painted and wired... here’s a process shot that shows various pieces drying either inverted to protect the petal shape or lying on cardboard (the ribbon loops and ends) to keep a rounded shape.

Here’s an overview, close to completion, that shows the whole spray except for the lily. I liked the way my rose and stephanotis (the five petal little white ones) came out the best. Chef seemed to like it overall, though she rightly dinged me on too much yellow in the calla lily center and dreadful hydrangea (the blue ones). Hydrangea were supposed to be the easiest but for me they were the biggest pains. I kept ripping them apart by accident. So if I ever make a cake for you, don’t ask for hydrangea, ok?

And finally, here’s a close up of my rose, which I made white before hearing we had to apply paint to the roses in some way. I wanted to keep it as white as possible, but required components are required components, so after Chef said every flower has a little yellow in it, I decided to hit just the petal edges with some yellow color. I liked it better pure white, but even sullied with the yellow, I’m happy with how it turned out... now I get to make a dozen more for the team project cake tomorrow!