On Saturday, February 10, my mom and I took a cake decorating class at the Institute of Culinary Education. It was really fun and we learned how to make modeling chocolate, swiss meringue buttercream, and chocolate covered strawberries. We also learned how to pipe different shapes and how to work with fondant. The most fun part was decorating cupcakes using all those different techiques.
Modeling Chocolate
To make modeling chocolate, you melt the chocolate (we used white) over water and add corn syrup. Then you mix and spread out thin to harden. After about 2 hours you can color it and shape it into different things. Ours wasn’t set enough to use in class but we saved it to use later. We wrapped in in saran wrap and put in the fridge. Then on Sunday, we softened it up a bit, rolled it out and cut out fun shapes to put on top of our fudge brownies…we didn’t think the fudge brownies could get any better but they did!!
Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Swiss meringue buttercream is like regular buttercream but much lighter because it has egg whites. To make it you mix eggwhites and sugar and then heat over water till the mix becomes very liquid. Then you put in the electric mixer and beat until very stiff and cool. Then you switch the mixer’s attachment to a paddle and add in butter that has been cut into small pieces. You mix that on low until the butter is all incorporated, then you add vanilla. You can also add color if you want. We split our frosting into two batches and colored one blue and then one green. Then we practiced different ways to pipe the frosting. We made stars and flowers, rosettes and shells and different types of borders. Lots of fun and, just being honest here, I am a lot better than my mom.
Chocolate – covered Strawberries
To make chocolate for dipping strawberries or other fruit, you melt 8 oz of your chocolate of choice over water, and when it is melted, stir in 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil. The oil helps the chocolate counteract the moisture in the fruit. Then you just dip away. The instructor also showed us how to use cocoa transfer sheets. They are sheets of plastic that have cocoa patterns on them. You put them on the chocolate-covered strawberry while the chocolate is still melted and then, once the chocolate has hardened, you peel of the plastic and the pattern stays. (In the picture below, the white dots are a result of a transfer sheet).
The Cupcakes
Not much to say here except that we decorated cupcakes, using all our new techniques, including fondant. Fondant is sort of rolled sugar: it looks really cool (you can wrap cakes in it our cut shapes out, but I didn’t love the taste. ) Anyway, here are some more of our “masterpieces.”
