Edible Building Project... a side-bar...

I know, I know... I've been a lazy slacker and haven't posted in forever... but here is a fun thing!
Victoria, Xan and I made the entire city of New York for a wedding gift for David and Kirin... here's the tale...

It started about a decade (or more) ago when Victoria made the comment to a very young (probably not-even-shaving-yet young) David that when he got married, he'd have to let Victoria make his wedding cake. Fast forward a bunch of years to this last Fall when David says to V, "Hey remember when...? Well, it's time!"

Next came the conference calls about flavors and textures (White Cake, cannoli filling with minichocolate chips, Italian Merange Buttercream frosting... you know the usual) and then, to the local delight of our neighbors and friends, all of the experiments!

Victoria, a true food artist, made sample cakes to find the right 'crumb'- the right 'loft'- the density, the right... well you get the idea. Then she wanted to answer the question of what the best combination of buttercream/filling would work... like a mason fitting the last keystone block into a perfect arch, we experimented with tweaking cake/filling/buttercream recipes until at last we had all of the things we needed to know for this adventure.

This is one of the samples
The stars are all made from chocolate... completely edible and so much nicer than fondant!

All of the actual baking/construction for this project took place at the grandmothers house on Long Beach Island (about 2 hours away from the City) and we arrived with Mixer/Pans/tools/whatknots/ etc. and totally co-opted the kitchen (and half of the house).

Here's V making batter...
and the assembled layers of cake (waiting for decoration)...

Now, you understand, that there was easily ten hours that passed between pictures? One of the special challenges we had was discovering that we were working in someone's retirement house that only had an 'appetizer' oven... too small for even a standard cookie sheet! Everyone of the 7 pans of batter had to be walked to the neighbors house to bake...

While all the baking was happening, we started making the chocolate decorations for the cake...

a neat process where you actually draw with melted, colored chocolate on parchment, peel it off and place it smoothside out! Here is the drawing for the Ferris Wheel at Coney Island:
and here is Victoria, adding the chocolate to the back of it...

We made about 230 different chocolate mini-sculptures over the next two days...
with buildings, and trees and bridges and statutes and taxi-cabs...
and then laid them carefully on to stackable bakery trays for transport to Brooklyn...
Ultimately, we had 5 bakery trays filled just with chocolate parts!

Then came the Italian Merange buttercream phase... once you start a batch of this silken smooth buttery goodness you cannot not pause, slow down or ever stop without ruining the whole deal...
Victoria was at the mixer while Xan and I put the filling inbetween the layers and flipped the layers together (ready for cover)...
This is enough cannoli filling to satisfy a bakery for a week...
and here it goes...
Once we had all of the layers stuck together, we spent the next few hours delicately mixing colors and transforming the pristine white merange into a palate of outrageous color!

Here is the ocean and Central park (bottom layer);
Didn't Victoria make the best waves? Next was the 'Sunset layer' (second tier):
and, last but not least, the Night time layer:
This was done at some ridiculously late point in the day and early the next morning we packed the van with all of the parts and moved the whole show to the restaurant in Brooklyn...
The next step was assembly (a short four hour process) that started with fitting all the cake layers together...
cutting the 'legs' that fit into the little plywood furniture we built for each of the different layers... there is some math involved in keeping a giant cake from self-destructing y'know!

Then stacking it all...
but it's practically naked! Now while Xan and Victoria added the taxicabs, statues, trees, and buildings...
I took the parts of the brooklyn bridge and the Wonder Wheel and put them together with royal icing...
and then we all got to play together getting the city to 'pop-up', like a children's story book, out of the table top...
until, after about four full days, we had a cake!

The Wedding was a great deal of good fun! Heartfelt toasts and music performed by friends were were awesomely talented and food and more food and CAKE!

Blessed Be!

Bricks and Mortar... graduation to the next phase

There are a couple of flaws in the brick work, especially on the original end wall of the building... These are the natural result of floods, minor earthquakes and building owners with sledgehammers banging holes in the house over a period of many years...

On the 'raw brick' side of the wall we have made the old bricks flow, one into the next, with an apparent ease... but this is the side of the wall that was finished with a smooth coat of masonry cement that has cracked and weakened as it has been pushed around.

I interviewed anyone who would still talk to me about mortar patching in this situation... in the olden days we used to use something called "webpatch" (nothing to do with internet security) but I am assured that the product has not existed for at least a decade... it was a great product- high adhesion mortar with fibers added for extra strength- and had a duce of a time finding it's current incarnation.

The Problem:
Create a visually intriguing patch that will add strength to the stressed brick wall and will still be somewhat flexible (in case of new shocks)
First you have to re-create the good stuff... after toting the wheel barrow upstairs into the Lounge, I put together a recipe of 80 pounds of mortar with 1 pound of polyester short fibers and a gallon of acrylicploymer binder/waterproofing (that was the only Thing on the shelves that I could find that had the right chemistry) and mix it carefully...
The stuff ends up very stiff but if you keep slaking it (mixing it back up again) every couple of minutes then it has a long 'open' or working time... BUT! you have to keep slaking it or it all seizes up and that's the end of your work day!

Next it was 'simply' a matter of grabbing a board full of the good stuff and stuffing in the cleaned out cracks and crannies...
This is the cleaned out Crack (or is this a cranny?)... and this is what it looks like with some new goop in it...
Doing the repair work for about 600 square feet of wall took about 5 non-stop hours of rocking good fun! (Then I got to do the rest of it the next day...)
Look! All better! I was just about to float a smooth top coat over everything (old and new) to make a smooth wall like all of the new sheetrock when I actually looked at what was in front of me... I kinda liked it... Now that Victoria is right here it was so easy to call her over and say "Hey, look at this with me for a minute?"

Victoria came upstairs and before I could express an opinion and ask a question blurted out "That looks very cool! Can we leave it like this?"

Obviously, I married the right human! Blessings abound...