sounds scrumptious and fun, boomer. is mo going to be helping you? or is it a surprise?
That sounds very delicious boomer....
Look they even have a Marzipan book
Why not a sheet cake? This would give you lots of room for artistic work as well as room to cater to both adult's and children's tastes.
Oh, I'm sure Mo will help me. Mo loves to cook. We cook a lot and he's really pretty good at it.
Oh my gosh! Look at those marzipan cows! I was thinking of maybe some little rabbits for the garden.
Really, I ought to send a bunch of marzipan to my brother and tell him to shape it and send it back. He is an absolute wizard with clay. No kidding. He can make the most wonderous things. (He used to draw all of my comic books when we were kids too.) Such a loss to the art world that he's wasted all these years in the Army.
Bring me the marzipan...I will act as a sample consumer. Er, I um, mean consultant.
I thought about a sheet cake -- actually two single layer cakes side by side, but like I said on the other thread (oh my) I think I'll make one carrot cake and several individiual dirt cakes.
I'll probably end up with way too much but I'll bet I can pass it out amongst the guests.
I bought ready made marzipan today. I hope it turns out to be good stuff, it wasn't as expensive as I feared it would be.
I decided to try the "no cook fondant" recipe on the site buterflynet sent. It looks pretty easy (and doesn't call for 8 cups of sugar). It looks like both edibles store well so we'll probably start playing with this stuff tomorrow to try to get a feel for it.
As we get into the taste testing phase I'll let you all in on the results of my test kitchen!
boomer, at the food channel they have a show called
"sugar rush" and yesterday they made incredible cake
decorations from fondant in most vivid colors.
"sugar rush" is a daily show, around 8 or 9 pm.
Cool! Thanks CJane. I'll see if I can find something about the show online!
I found the Sugar Rush episode on line and they had a lot of great tips for working with fondant! Thanks again, CJane.
I wish they would have had some photos - I am always amazed at what can be done with sugar. I saw a sugar cook off on the food network one time where people were blowing sugar like glass. It was so amazing.
That is one of the things I love about baking - it allows so much room for whimsy. I plan on just having fun with this since I am no great sculptor. I'm sure Mo and I will create an unusual garden in cake and in fact!
boomer, I am sure your cake is going to be a master piece,
just don't forget to take pictures!
I love "Sugar Rush" and yesterday they showed some other
sugar sculptures they attached to each other with a bit
of heat from the blow dryer - quite interesting.
Ha! I've had daydreams of callin up Will Vinton to see if he will stop by to help me with the cake.
In my dream I call him up and say - but you're right here in the city. You could help me. I thought the whole Phil Knight thing was crazy.
But then I realize that Will Vinton and gang are not going to come and decorate my cake.
<sigh>
It will be okay.
Test kitchen experiment #1: No cook fondant.
The dough was really, really sticky and I had to add a lot more sugar to it than the recipe called for. I'm guessing that's why they said "roll it up and coat it with something" instead of make your shapes and have fun.
Still, we did have fun. We started easy making big flowers to use a decoartion in the mud cakes. I'm letting them harden up a bit and then we'll see how it goes.
I think I'll try a cooked fondant for anything more intricate.
Marzipan rules!
Oh man that stuff is fun to work with and just what I needed to distract myself this afternoon.
Out of one $5 package I got 3 jumbo watermelons, 4 big pumpkins, a dozen zucchini and almost 50 carrots.
And one black glob (thanks, Mo!) that I might be able to make a bunny? out of.
We really had fun with the marzipan. He wouldn't taste it though.
I think I'm going to ditch the fondant idea for this cake but maybe still practice/play with it for future reference.
Maybe I'll make coconut grass......
Or graham cracker gravel with carrot slice pavers.....
Or pineapple pavers!....
Or black glob marzipan pavers!....
It is kind of fun to make something that looks like something else where everything is edible.
Combine the black glob with some rock candy to make coal and diamond.
Or make an oil derrick and have a gusher.
Or a black cat.
I just saw some Tom and Jerry episodes from the 40s. You could make some
really non-PC characters....
One other idea, might be too fancy/ non-thematic and might be hard to find the flowers this time of year...
For my wedding cake I candied pansies and violets (edible!). It was super-easy and looked great. I'd have to review to be sure but what I remember is painting on egg whites and then coating with super-fine sugar.
There are a few other kinds of edible flowers, too. Nasturtium, maybe?
The fondant flowers were for the mud cakes though... I don't know if I could convince kids to eat candy violets!
I'm thinking sugar cookies might just do the trick. I was going to use straws as stems and attach the flowers then stick them down in the mud cake.
On the cake itself I think flowers bigger than watermelons might ruin the scale.
Although my zucchini and carrots are a bit.... ummm... Kongish? in comparison to the watermelons and pumpkins. But who cares?
I'm thinking my fondant flowers could probably be disassembled to make pavers or a mosaic or something. They taste really good (sweet!) (I like sour, or better yet, savory, more than sweet) and the colors are nice they just aren't sticking together too well.
nice, nice. i love the idea of flowers on straws! looong straws every which direction. wee!
the black glob....hmmm.....maybe you can have an oil pipeline going through your garden....and some spillage....an ecological disaster cake! wouldn't that be lovely...
Obviously the black glob is destined to be dinosaur dung.
"Coprolite" is the technical term.
What, you don't like my oil pipeline?
Dak--
One of my strengths is thinking like a five-year-old boy. Dinosaurs trump oil every time.
Now if you want an oil well--or an oil sheik--on your birthday cake....
