Damn Fine Dummy Cake

Today was a Long day. It wasn't long because it was awful, it was long because it was, well, long. You don't hear about it often, but I have a management class at 8am most mornings and then I have pastry in the afternoon but today, just for kicks, I agreed to assist my chef with a recreational class at 5:30. The class was called, "How to Make the Perfect Birthday Cake" and I thought I was only going to stay for an hour or two but I ended up staying till 10:30 to help out -- it was a bit of a mess! Needless to say that after a long day of school I'm verra tired but also verra excited to show you my very first finished "dummy cake"!

Yesterday I lied to y'all about the type of "lace" that we learned to pipe. Evidently it is not called cornet lace but instead called cornelli lace.


Remember the cornelli lace?

Personally, I don't care about the name, I just love the way it looks -- very modern and yet retro and fun, all at the same time. So I decided I would do the cornelli lace all over the cake...


And I'm thrilled with how it turned out! It was a little tricky to do on the sides of the cake but I got the hang of it and I was actually able to do the whole thing pretty quickly. I like it so much that the cornelli lace just might decorate my final wedding cake that we begin to work on tomorrow when we start to create the gum paste flowers that will also decorate our final cake.

Before I drift off into dreamland, I just want to show you the other thing I worked on today, chocolate plastic bows and roses. I didn't end up using them on my cake but I made them just for practice purposes. Also, you will have to excuse the appearance of the plastic, it was very warm today in our kitchen and so the plastic was heating up very quickly and getting all finger-printy and gross! The roses are kind of a tricky thing to create. Our chef says that pastry chefs and God are the only ones who have the skills to create life-like roses and I think I'm still working up to flowers that really look real but I will get the hang of it eventually...


Chocolate plastic bow on my cake


Chocolate plastic rose