Monday, May 11, 2009

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!