Place cookies in box and surround with more packing fill. Add enough fill so that the cookies don’t shift.

1. The preliminary scketch

A week before the day of the shower, I started all my prep work…..which included:

making the flowers, out of gumpaste

*making modeling chocolate and kneading in all the colors I would need
*making the umbrella out of gumpaste
*baking the cakes
*making the buttercream
*making simple syrup
*kneading all the fondant colors I’d need
*buying chocolate cookies and liquor
*cutting and covering my bottom board
*dying bamboo skewers green with vinegar and food color

I did a little each day. I had to fit that in between my regular job and family-care duties.

2. The night before, I had filled and stacked the cakes, so they would be ready for me to carve, first thing. The top cake is a lemon cake with raspberry buttercream, and the bottom cake is chocolate cake with mocha-toffee buttercream. All the cake layers are soaked with simple syrup; the lemon was soaked with lemon syrup and the chocolate, soaked with Kahlua syrup.

I prefer to use buttercream as a filling in sculpted cakes….it sets up firm and makes carving a cinch. Mousses and jams and curds don’t set up enough and are also very slippy-slidy. When you are carving out a cake, you don’t want your layers sliding around on you.

Here is my top cake…..I baked off two 8 inch rounds and 1 10 inch round. Cut them all in half and filled. Ready to carve!

5. Next it’s time to put a layer of buttercream on there, for extra smoothy goodness

I snapped the pic with one hand as I was holding the pastry bag in the other. Not easy. I like to use the giant pastry bag with the giant tip for applying icing….makes for less work later.

6. Ok, here’s a pic for folks that wanted to see that “paint masker thingy” in action.

Tried to snap a pic myself, but just couldn’t muster up the co-ordination. Luckily, Amber, the front deli counter girl, took a pic for me. I hadn’t meant for her to include ME in the pic (Gawd!) but I wanted more of a close up of Mr. Smoothing Tool. Oh well, you take what you can get. See that I have my sketch on the reach-in behind me….along with all my other wacky magnets. Hey, I like to decorate my workspace…..Notice I hold the “paint masker thingy” by the bottom when I am smoothing the sides. If I don’t, and hold it by the handle, it tends to kind of bend. I hold it by the handle when I go across the top. See how nice and smooth? I

At hardware stores also know as “Paint Guard”, “Trim Guard”, “Paint/Trim Guide”… usually runs about $5 – $20.00 based on size.

8. Here it is all carved out…..mmm….more cake scraps…..into the garbage they go…

With a layer of buttercream. I didn’t use the “paint masker thingy” on this one because of the curvature of the cake. I just piped the icing on and then smoothed it out with my offset spatula as best I could. After I refrigerate it, I will do the final smoothing.

9. So now I’m waiting for my pots to set up. Time to do some other stuff like:

• “Cuiz” [Chop Up via Food Processer] my chocolate cookies to make the “dirt” for my pots.

• Start dusting my flowers and leaves with luster dust to add a little depth and realism to them. For this project I just made “whimsical flowers” in that they really aren’t any particular flower….they’re just cartoonish and colorful. Well, the roses are, well, roses…..gotta have a few roses. In the background there

• You can see sort of how I did the gumpaste umbrella. I happened to have a dessert cup at home that was well suited for it. I filled out the top with gumpaste and added “ribs” with gumpaste, then put some saran on the top of that and put a gumpaste disk on it. I then cut out the rounded parts between the ribs…..and voila….umbrella! This was the first thing I made because I wanted it to have the maximum amount of drying time. Now if I were really smart, I would have made not one, but two or even three umbrellas because stuff always breaks. Always. No matter how careful you are. Especially in a commercial kitchen…..not only do you have to worry about yourself but everyone else too. I make more flowers than I need because I always manage to break quite a few. But, as it was, I only made one umbrella since I was so cocky and sure of myself. Turns out I was lucky……this time!

10. Ok, time to roll out some terra cotta colored fondant!

Dust the table liberally with cornstarch and roll away. I’ve done this so much I can just eyeball how much fondant I’ll need to cover a certain sized cake. When rolling out fondant, waste no time from the time you’re done rolling til you get it on the cake, because it starts drying out right away. Drying out means yukky little cracks, and me no likey little cracks! So I race to fridge, retrieve cake, and cover it quickly. Then I take my trusty little pizza wheel and cut the excess away. This excess will get kneaded back into the remainder of my fondant so that I’ll have enough to cover the other pot.

11. So I take the rounded pot out of the fridge, and, after washing my hands like a surgeon, I use the warmth of my hands to smooth the buttercream out so I have a perfect surface on which to cover with fondant. I tried using latex gloves for doing smoothing, but they are too much of a barrier to my body warmth. I need that warmth to lightly soften the buttercream for the proper smoothing. And here we have a nice smooth surface for the fondant.

Back to the fridge it goes to set up while I roll out my fondant…….and here it is covered, with the excess trimmed away. Notice that I trimmed off my plastic wrap quite a bit before I covered it. Otherwise I would have gotten into a wrestling match with it and the fondant.

Back to the fridge they go to stay firm while I take me a little breaky.

12. Ok, break time over! Back to work! My next step is to turn my pots over. I will turn the larger pot over first. I slip my offset spatula underneath the saran wrap and lift the cake off, and set it aside on the table. An important thing to note: If I’d used a mousse, curd, or jam filling, I wouldn’t have been able to do this so easily. With a refrigerated buttercream filling, the cake doesn’t flex at all as I lift it. I managed to nick a little of my polyfoil covering with my spatula when I went to lift the cake. Nuts. Oh well, I’ll cover that with a flower later.

I melt some white chocolate and smear some in the center of my board. I need to anchor the bottom pot so it doesn’t slip around.

16. Once that’s set, I flip over the top pot, and place it on my bottom pot.

Voila! Now, I really have to make sure that the top pot won’t slide around, so I stick a few bamboo skewers down through the middle and through the cardboard til it hits the bottom board. I use the side of my needlenose pliers to pound the skewer down through.

17. Now starts my very favorite part of this whole thing…..details! I figured that using my silicone lace impression molds will make great detailing on the pots. Here’s the one I’m going to use to detail the bottom pot:

I dust the inside of the mold with cornstarch……..then roll out a quick piece of fondant, and roughly press it in:

Then I place the top piece of the silicone impression on top, and roll it like crazy with a rolling pin. With the top part of the impression still in place, I pull off as much of the excess as I can.

Then I remove the top piece, and pull all the ragged edges back in……

18. Then I brush a little water on the back of the piece, and adhere it to the pot. I keep making them until the pattern has gone all the way ’round.

I use a different lace mold to make a pattern on the top pot.

19. Now it’s time to do the rims. When I did the lace impressions around the pots, I used fondant, because I needed the stretchability of it to conform easily to the shape of the pot. A little stretchiness in this case is good. But when it’s time to do the rims, I don’t want ANY stretching going on whatsoever…..

I want uniformly thick and perfectly straight strips, so for this I’m going to use modeling chocolate, which of course has been colored the same color as the fondant. See the neato embossing on my strip? I found that little embossing wheel at Seattle Pottery Supply, believe it or not, and it was cheap too. The embossers are interchangeable and it came with about 10 different patterns! I rolled out my strip, then embossed the pattern twice (one next to the other) then used my pizza wheel to cut nice straight even edges. I made two top strips and two bottom strips….the bottom strips are just plain.

These pots are going into the fridge for a while while I work on the other details.

20. Gotta make the baby! First I start with a styrofoam core. The reason for this is for stability and less weight. There was a time in my career when I thought I shouldn’t use ANYTHING that wasn’t edible, but talk about making life hard. I’ve made things out of solid modeling chocolate, but they were very heavy and hard to support. Then over the years, I realized that people really don’t eat the decorations anyway (except for a few overzealous kids), so I decided to reduce my chocolate expenses and weight by using styrofoam to bulk things out more and more.

I pat out a disk of flesh colored modeling chocolate, and place my styrofoam ball in the middle.

22. I’ve been so good about taking pictures at nearly every step! But here’s where I fail you…….when I get “in the zone”……meaning that I’m so intent on my little details….I sort of forget about the camera! Here’s what I did in between this picture and the next two:

• made the baby’s shoulders and neck and arms out of modeling chocolate
• sprinkled my cookie dirt inside the pots
• dusted the centers of my flowers with luster and color, made the calyx’s and mounted them on my green skewers
• rolled modeling chocolate onto a skewer to form the umbrella stem
• made the bottom banner and wrote on it
• made the baby’s flower bonnet

I modeled the baby’s neck and shoulders, then stuck that right on the top pot. Then I cut the skewers that are coming out of his head to the right length and pushed it down through the neck and shoulders.

I placed the arms and formed the hands. I stuck my umbrella stem through the arm and down into the cake so there would be adequate support……but darn, I wasn’t watching carefully, and the skewer came out of the side of the pot because my angle was a bit off. Oh well, I’ll cover that up with a leaf. At least you can see where the umbrella stem is on the skewer. On top of the umbrella stem is a little half dome of modeling chocolate, to support the gumpaste umbrella. I dab a bit of melted white chocolate on that, and stick the umbrella on top. Now all I have to do is place my flowers, mount the banner, and put his little bonnet on.

And here we have the finished product. It’s sort of hard to read the banner….it says, “May Showers Bring Adorable Flowers”. One thing I always seem to to do…..I’ll shoot the picture of my finished cake and I’m always tired…..so I’m too lazy to find a good backdrop. Then I curse myself later when there’s that yukky kitcheny background. God, in one picture I took, my cake had a dirty mop bucket behind it! All I can say is, thank god for Photoshop……I can always “fix” it later.

It took me 8 hours to put this together and that’s not counting all the prep I did the whole week prior. I don’t think a whole lot of people realize the time that goes into this stuff…..and it’s also why you don’t see it very often.

Anyway, the girl that’s getting the baby shower has NO IDEA this is coming. Surprising her is going to be the best part!

CUTTING & BAKING

No Fail Sugar Cookies Recipe (NFSC)

I prefer to make my cookie dough fresh for each order. Less storage in my freezer and they are soft and ready for rolling. I really like the recipes you will find at cookie cutter websites. They tend to be less butter/more flour ratios that are great when you don’t want a cookie that spreads or crumbles, which is crucial for decorating cookies.

Cookie doughs tend to get drier and tougher the more you roll it out with flour, so I avoid that completely by only rolling my dough out onto baking mats (Silpat). Don’t use parchment or wax paper, as they crease easily and stick to the dough. The goal here is a flat cookie of uniform thickness. Baking mats stick to your counter surface well, allowing you to roll out the dough easily. They don’t require any flour, so you can re-roll scraps over and over without waste.

Do not risk breaking the tender cookies after removing from the oven. Keep them on the trays until they are completely cool to the touch, about 20 minutes or so. Now get ready to decorate!

MAKING ICING & DECORATING COOKIES

5 Tablespoons of meringue powder

6 ounces (3/4 cup) of warm water

1 teaspoon of cream of tartar

1 kilogram (2 lbs 4 ounces) of icing sugar (also known as “powdered sugar”)

(Do note that even a drop of oil or grease will affect this icing, sometimes causing it not to set hard…so clean all your tools beforehand.)

In mixer bowl, pour in the warm water and meringue powder. Using a hand whisk only, mix 30 seconds until frothy. Add the cream of tartar and mix for 10 more seconds. All all the icing sugar at once and put the bowl on the mixer with the paddle attachment. At the slowest speed, mix for 10 minutes until the icing is stiff, thick and creamy.

For larger jobs, use a 10″ or 12″ minimum size of piping bag, so you don’t have to keep refilling it.

Keep a damp cloth on your workstation to clean dried icing from the tip occasionally.

Stay within 1/4″ from the edges of your cookies. Allow to dry for 10 minutes. This stiff outline will hold in your wetter thinned icing when you flood the cookie’s surface. Don’t leave the outline unfilled for longer than 15 minutes or so, as cracks tend to appear as it dries. Now thin your icing (see next paragraph below) and continue with a clean piping bag.

The consistency you are looking for for flooding (filling in) your cookies with icing can be compared to white glue, yogurt or cake batter. It should be runny, but not thin or watery. Icing that contains too much water can appear translucent, take much longer to dry…and even worse, darker/bright colours may separate and appear “crystallized” after drying.

Dip a soup spoon into your icing bowl and watch it drip back into your bowl. The drizzle should disappear into the icing within 3 to 5 seconds. If you shake the bowl from side to side quickly, all visible lines should disappear immediately and the top will be smooth and uniform.

****HINT

You may notice that your icing has lots of tiny air bubbles in it. For this reason, I like to make my icing a day ahead of decorating…to allow all those bubbles to rise to the surface. If that isn’t possible for you, let your thinned icing rest at least an hour, covered with a damp cloth. When you return to it, you will see that the surface is covered in bubbles. Using a spatula, carefully mix the icing for a few seconds by hand and many of these bubbles will disappear.

As they always say, add a single drop of colouring to your icing at a time. A little really goes a long way and it is MUCH easier to go darker than to return to a lighter hue. If mistakes happen, add a bit of your white icing and mix again. For small batches that are too dark, a few drops of Icing Whitener does seem to help a bit. As your icing sits, the shade will darken slightly. If you are trying to achieve a very dark or bright colour, tint and let it sit for an hour or two. You’ll be surprised at the deepened colour when you return.

Shake the cookie softly from side to side for 3 to 5 seconds, not lifting it from your work surface. (Gently and quickly…kind of like scratching a lottery ticket!) The icing will settlle and smooth out. It should be thick enough that it does not risk dripping over the sides. If it does, you are shaking it too roughly OR your icing may be too thin. Add a sprinkling of icing sugar to your batch and try again.

Voila! A perfectly iced smooth cookie. Carefully lift the cookie without tilting it and place it on a rack or tray to harden for 12 – 18 hours before continuing. A flooded cookie will dry from the outer edges inwards, so it’s good to have at least one extra cookie in your batch so that you can “test” the stiffness of your icing after a day. As it dries, you’ll notice that the outer edges lose their glossiness and are slightly paler than the middle of the cookie

The smaller the cookie, the faster the surface will dry. A 4″ cookie dries nice and hard in 18 hours. You don’t want to add decoration on top, especially anything coloured, until the base is dry to the touch…or you can risk denting the background and bleeding the 2 colours together.

The possibilities for designs are endless. You can use superfine sugars to detail areas, attach gumpaste flowers for a 3-D effect and even paint on edible powders with a bit of extract or alcohol. Here, I’ve finished the Wedding Cake cookie with the names of the bride and groom, piped a little border in stiff icing along the base and decorated with 3 tiny dried gumpaste flower cutouts.

Let the decorated cookies dry for a full 24 hours (from the time you finished the background flooding) or an extra 12 hours after additional decorating, before you package or stack the cookies to travel. (I don’t recommend stacking these cookies, as the bottoms of cookies often scratch the icing below during transportation.)

Keep your cookies out of direct sunlight and in a cool room for storage. They do not like humidity at all, as the cookie will become softer and moist. I do not freeze my cookies, but I hear that some people are successful at it. They keep nicely wrapped individually for 1 week…10 days at the most before butter starts to get a rancid taste/odour.