Monday, January 18, 2010

One Day at a Time



We're still working on the competition cakes and we're down to the wire with just Tuesday left to work on them. Today we rounded off our sphere cake and then coated it in buttercream so that the fondant will have something to adhere to (pictured at right). However, draping fondant onto a sphere is a tricky thing — especially for first-timers like us. I think our first attempt wasn't half-bad, but the surface began to show little cracks so we decided to redo it.

This sounded like a good idea until our second batch of fondant didn't quite mix right. It came out with the consistency of frosting instead of doughy. At that point, we decided to call it a day and try again tomorrow. If the draping doesn't work a second time, we'll improvise with a fondant band around the center and beading to cover the rest. Then, we'll just have to color the top and bottom spheres (relatively quick to do) and paint four fleur de lis around the center band.

Our other accomplishment of the day was painting the masks and twisty ribbons. Margaret airbrushed (with some help from chef since it was his equipment) several of the ribbons while I painted three masks with edible gold dust. We did a bunch of them in case something breaks — gotta be prepared with a backup!

We're starting to feel the pressure of a time crunch, but I think we can pull off the rest fairly quickly. It will be a lot of time-consuming work but we can adjust the design if simplicity is needed. We are supposed to meet at the school at 5am (OMG!) on Wednesday morning so that we can arrive in Conroe, TX around 8. That will be a long day, but I'm hoping at least one of us (hopefully us!) will walk away with a medal and some prize money.

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