THURSDAY, JULY 24, 1997 AT 9 PM ET IN THE KITCHEN CONFERENCE ROOM -- CAKE DECORATING WITH DOLORES777 AND PWD SUGAR.

'THE MOST UNUSUAL CAKES WE HAVE BEEN ASKED TO DO AND WHY' 

HELLO KITCHEN THIS IS THE CAKE DECORATING CHAT HOUR WELCOME TO ALL NEWCOMERS TO OUR LIVE CHATS! WE ARE CHATTING ABOUT CAKE DECORATING..9-10PM EST... ...HOPE YOU ALL ENJOY. FEEL FREE TO JOIN THE FUN...

DON'T FORGET TO TURN ON YOUR LOG TO RECORD OUR CHAT TONIGHT: TO DO: AT THE TOP OF YOUR AOL SCREEN OPENING MENU, CLICK ON <<FILE>>, SCROLL DOWN TO <<LOG MANAGER>> CLICK ON OPEN LOG...... AND SAVE-AS ---ANY NAME ...CAKECHAT.LOG (ETC) IN A FOLDER (DIRECTORY) TITLED CHATLOG... AFTER YOU EXIT AOL YOU CAN USE ANY WORD PROCESSOR TO OPEN AND READ IT.

WE ARE TYPING IN CAPS AS REQUESTED. THIS MAKES IT EASIER FOR YOU TO FOLLOW WHAT THE HOSTS OF THE CHAT HAVE PREPARED FOR YOU. YOU CAN EASILY TAKE IT INTO YOUR WORD PROCESSOR LATER AND CHANGE THE FORMAT OF THE TEXT.

This was one of the busiest chats we’ve had. I know its hard to read it all. But at least, we do eventually post it here. 

MORE ANNOUNCEMENTS: Wilton has a web site - finally: http://www.wilton.com It is really a pretty good site too. It looks to me like they will be adding more. Good to have their information and recipes, their advise will be a great help and asset to all of us.

FROM LAST WEEK'S CHAT, Pwd sugar has shared her 'drizzle' cake photo with you. You can view this - go to AOL CHATS/Chat on 7-17-97

ICES: Every week for several months, we have been adding comments, help and suggestions concerning the upcoming convention. You can gather all this on a NEW text file if you like. Just use your copy/paste function of your computer. COPY, then PASTE onto a new page in your word processor. Keep adding all comments until you have a compilation of them all. see below at end of this chat...for this week;s comments.

LOGGING INFO: On AOL/our 'Discuss Cake Decorating' you can LOG all this info. TO DO: As above....turn on your LOG, only use the <BOTTOM> section of the LOG screen. You cannot view this file until after you exit AOL. Do all newcomers to our chat know about our cake decorating area here on AOL? If not, this is the path: Log on AOL, Use KEYWORD Cooking Club, choose Cook's School (in the spice rack or the bottom-right scroll box. Then choose Cake Decorating Online, from here, choose Discuss Cake Decorating.

EARLENE'S PART:

THE MOST UNUSUAL CAKES I WAS EVER REQUESTED TO DO ARE AS FOLLOWS

There are the grooms cakes that are 3-d shapes such as a hamburger, pizza, armadillo, prairie dog, casket (the groom was a mortician and he requested this cake) and cowboy boots. I have two next weekend that are on the different side. One is to be like a life size detailed snare drum and another like a 2D tree. Laying down but sculptured not just a cut out shape. These are sort of normal unusual request for my business. It does take some time to figure out just how to make the pieces to scale and assemble them. Usually the stands are consturcted from wood by my husband and all the little parts are made from gumpaste and painted as needed. I think the hardest request I had to do was a 3D train engine. All of those parts that are under the engine had to be made from gumpaste and hung from the board holding the cake for the engine. To figure out the size, shape and scale all of the pieces. Then they had to be assembled and attached. This was a real challenge. Then I had to make the tracks, rocks and etc and everything had to fit together just right. I really do not ever want to do that particular cake again.

The most unusual cakes I was ever requested to do were all done for that same church anniversary each year that I did that really huge cake for.

The one we talked about a couple of weeks ago. One year the theme had something to do with "get on board". He wanted a train that had an engine that would really smoke and a coal car that had a train whistle inside that he could control. The church was celebrating their 7th anniversary so he wanted 7 freight cars (all different) to scale and a little red caboose. I got out my sketch pad and spent one whole day in my car with the doors locked down in the freight yards just drawing those train cars, engine and etc. My husband cut out the individual boards and attached wheels purchased at the miniature train store in town underneath the boards. He made a container to be the front part of the engine that would contain powdered sugar and attached a hose and a compressed air tank with a foot pedal that he controlled to make the fake smoke. Then I just had to finish constructing the engine and ice and add the detail. The coal car had a model train whistle installed inside so it would really whistle and the coal was made from royal icing little pieces and scattered on top of the whistle. The rest of the train was constructed from cake and iced and decorated to resemble the freight train cars. Another year the theme was " I want that mountain". He wanted a mountain constructed with a church at the base of the mountain. People were to be coming out of a tunnel in the mountain and going into the church continuously. That cake we built with chicken wire and paper mache with icing over the top of that. 20 years ago I didn't know as much about constructing that type of cake from real cake. Now I know that I probably could have don 2/3's of that cake with real cake.

Another year the theme was patriotic and he wanted George Washington to really talk on the top of this cake. He set up a small projector to shine directly onto a white dummy head with a white wig. When that projector was running it did look like he was talking. The cake was built around this with red, white and blue decorations and completely concealing that projector. I had to be very careful not to cover that hole where the face was projected. He wanted it so well cancelled that people could not figure out how it worked. Another year he wanted the ark of the covenant done life size. This was way more cake than was needed so we decided to do this totally out of fake cake. Wooden dummy again was used to construct the basic shape. Then this was totally covered with royal icing and decorated. That is a huge cake to cover with royal icing. This is where I really learned the difference in royal icing made with meringue powder compared with that made with egg whites. We finished it and it was time to deliver the cake. It wouldn't go through the door. My usband took the door off of the hinges and it then went through with 1/2" to spare. LOL When they were finished with the cake - I was asked to remove all of the icing from the wooden shape so it could be reused for something else. The icing that had been made from meringue powder was very powdery and was very easy to remove. The icing that had been made from the fresh egg whites was another story. That icing was hard and the projecting decorations were chiseled off and the flat icing had to be really scrapped to remove it from the wood. Another year he wanted the battle of Armageddon to be fought on the cake with toy soldiers and small charges of gun powder going off. Needless to say that one was fake too.

NOW BACK TO SOME UNUSUAL WEDDING CAKE REQUESTS I have a friend in Michigan who was requested to do palm trees and pink flamingos on a wedding cake this last summer. She sent me a picture and considering the request she did a really good job with this cake. I was requested to do a pink cookie monster bride (with veil) and a Big Bird groom on the top of a wedding cake many years ago.

So you never know just what is going to be requested of you next. I think that is the part that keeps the sugar art challenging.

Most cakes are routine. Bake the cake, ice it, decorate it and deliver it. Hectic but not to creative.

So once in a while it is nice to have something that makes you think and use your creative skills. 

DOLORES' PART:

DO YOU ALL KNOW....we CAN share our cake pictures here on AOL....in the 'Cooking Club Libraries'/'ACSII Text Files'.

TO DO:

--------->>>>THE NEW WILTON 1998 - is here!!!!!!!!! You can go to my web site to order it. I already have all the info ready. It has more pages this year. They have MUCH new merchandise...They have LOAD of new cake ideas. Really nice ones I must say. First time I have ever seen them add so much! $7.99 plus $3.00 postage. Here are more of the NEW items: Dunkccc: Mickey mouse, what a cute idea!
AS I MENTIONED LAST WEEK, I did a giant cake for 'the' Mr. Coors once (owner of Coor's Brewery)...lets think of some neat cakes...and you can share with us too...would you like us to leave some time for this?

BEGIN TO CREATE: Start with an IDEA. Then list techniques you can do. Put it all together. We constantly get asked to do unusual cakes. The worst thing is having time to spend the necessary hours on just this one cake and the customer's willingness to spend the money to do all this. Customers come into my shop wanting GREAT-GIANT-INNOVATIVE cakes. BUT - as soon as I give them the cost of their creation, they scale it down considerably.

MR. COOR'S CAKE was a 3-tier 14-10-6 inch. BIG - This wouldn't have been so bad. But they were taking it by plane from Ohio to Colorado. The cake was very detailed with royal icing mementos of his life....He graduated from Cornell University, was a pilot in WW2, owns the beer factory and a wine vineyard in Sonoma valley CA....etc. I piped red grapes for the top borders...etc. I put it in an 18-inch cardboard box. It was so heavy they couldn't carry it across airports, so they thought of renting a wheel chair. She sat down and he pushed her holding the BIG cake box on her lap...picture this LOL! The trouble started when the airlines made them cut a 12-inch square window in the box. The entire plane smelled like buttercream icing. They were the highlight of that flight LOL. But the REAL trouble began when they had to transfer to Northwestern airlines from Delta in Texas. Northwestern insisted they buy a seat just for the cake....$300.00+. But they arrived with the cake intact. Mr. Coors said he couldn't stand to cut it and wanted to fly it on over to Sonoma valley to share with his family. They didn't want to tell him how expensive the cake already was and finally convinced him that he should share it with his employees at Coors, which he did. I had made a 9 inch cake similar which he DID take home to share with the family. Apparently they didn't intend to eat cake....they just wanted the art of it all. This is the same thing that happened with the friend who bought the cake for Mr. Coors. I had made him one that never did get cut! It remained in the freezer at work for 1-2 years. This friend - they met at Cornell, were pilots, was shot down in Germany and was in The Great Escape in WW2 (the REAL one, not the movie). He is one of the very nicest people I have ever met.

Pwd Sugar: Now I know what to do when carrying those heavy cakes through the airport and they get to heavy

Just last week we did create another unusual cake for the same people who got the Coor's cake. This time it was for her mother's birthday. She got a 100 serving sheet cake with an 8-inch cake on each side - in back - on SPS pillars and 2 more with no separation at the front. There were 3 cherubs representing her love of music. The back-left cake had a sugar bible to represent her marriage. The other had a fountain cupid to represent grandchildren. The front-left cake had a bassinet to represent birth. The right-front cake had praying sugar hands to represent her devotion to her church. In the center was a 6-inch petal cake with a tall gold angel. In center front was her dog, whom she loves very much. Under the back-left cake was a carrousel and under the right-front was a train---to represent children and grandchildren.

An idea comes from everywhere. Our customer, Janet, chose the items she wanted represented. We chose how and what these would be made from - icing, plastic, etc. We all looked over these items and tried to visualize what the finished cake would be like with them. A sugar bible and praying hands added soft color. This wasn't an especially creative cake, but I wanted to give you some perspective into creating an idea.

Another unusual cake was my daughter Joyce's wedding cake. It is already pictured on my web site. The style was created by both of us. I asked her what style cake she had in mind. Then I gave her suggestions according to the most wonderful techniques I knew. She didn't like stairways, but she did like the fountain. She loved my gum paste dolls...so I made her couple and dressed them to represent themselves. She likes things fine and not too over-done. So I made tiny rosebuds, baby's breath and violets with gumpaste. DragoDan: i have a very interesting cake in September am doing the Guggenheim museum. The Guggenheim museum in ny city
ICES: NEXT WEEK'S TOPIC: Thursday, July 31, 1997 at 9 PM ET in the Kitchen Conference Room -- Cake Decorating with Dolores777 and Pwd sugar. Why should we as cake decorators do the Bridal Shows? Pros and Cons 

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