Returrrrrn of the FRUITCAKE!

That’s Halloween appropriate, yes? It’s now about 2 months old now, this fruitcake. But it hasn’t reaches full ‘maturity’ until Thanksgiving, which would be the ’ideal’ time to serve it ;)

We learned a little bit about the fruitcake this week. We started a new unit of gum paste, piping and fondant with a new chef, Chef Nicholas Lodge. Google him. He’s famous., No, I’m serious. But anyway, fruitcake gets a bad rap in the US, but it’s still very popular in England and other countries around the world. Fruitcake is served at any and all celebrations, especially weddings. Now, in the US, the couple usually saves the top tier of the wedding cake in the freezer until the first anniversary. In fruitcake-serving countries, the couple often saves this top tier of fruitcake until the birth or christening of their first child. Now, that is not necessarily a year after the wedding, friends. Chef told us of a couple that came into the bakery he worked at years ago and they had been married 17 years and were expecting their first child. They brought in their fruitcake from their wedding to be redecorated. They peeled off the royal icing and marzipan and found the cake to be perfectly fine. They reapplied new icing and marzipan and the couple served it at their child’s christening.

Now tell me, is that crazy or WHAT?! All of the alcohol in it serves as a preservative, and once you cover it with marzipan, it essentially seals it and it could last, well, forever!

But anyway, on to the fun stuff. We actually decorated our fruitcakes that we made that very first week. It was a sweet (ha ha) reunion. Kind of. ;) We covered them in marzipan and we spent the week working to make it look like this:

This is Chef Nicholas’ cake

It’s kind of an older style, but we learned a lot of cool piping techniques, as well as fondant work on this cake.

We learned what’s called pressure piping to pipe the letters and the cupid on the top. We painted the letters once they were dry. Yes, i made extras. Good thing too, my U exploded and my M broke to pieces.
We made a color flow heart and made our own fondant from scratch. We then colored the fondant to match the heart. We used the fondant to cover the cake board that would be holding the cake. We went over it with a damask textured roller to give it dimension. We also made a cupid out of a stamp, with some hearts to put on the board.

We finally added a ribbon and bow around the side. Here is the finished board:
Now for the cake. We had to cover it in marzipan, and then we put on the first coat of royal icing. This is –supposed- to make a really smooth surface, but as you can see, I need a little practice. But it’s not too bad, right?
We ended up putting on another coat, to cover the imperfections. So it ended up looking a little better ;)

We attached the piped cupid to the color flow heart and then attached that to the cake along with the silver painted letters. We piped a ‘lazy’ lace around the heart to finish it.

We then learned to pipe scrolls. The borders on this thing ended up being really fancy! I hadn’t ever really seen anything like it before, but I really liked it. We finished the scrolls on top later with another layer of pink on top. This is also when I thank my mom for insisting on a shell border for nearly every cake I made since I started doing cakes. I was evaluated on my shells ;)

This week we also learned how to make gum paste roses. This was my FAVORITE! And my rose came out really well! I was very pleased with it. It’s quite a process, so I’ll just show you my finished product! :)
And that was pretty much the cake! The rose was set on the side, and there you go!
   

Ta da!!! Not bad, huh? Maybe we’ll save it for the birth of OUR first child!! ;) ha ha haaaa