Cakes 1 Exam

This test marked the end of level one. It was not easy, but it went pretty darn well! Basically the task was to make a plain genoise cake, slice it into three even layers, put jam between each layer, ice the cake with vanilla buttercream, and decorate it with marzipan roses and a marzipan plaque on top and slivered almonds around the bottom edge.

The cake was simple enough and mine came out very nicely. The buttercream was a bit harder. I don't know what I did, but I completely destroyed a batch of it, so I had to remake it. Luckily I had time and the second batch came out perfectly. The marzipan roses and leaves were easy enough. We only needed to make one but I had time to make a second little bud. The plaque was made already, but we had to write "Happy Birthday" on it. That could've gone better. The thing was just so small and it's so hard to write with chocolate anyway (at least it's hard for me). Compiling the whole thing went very well. The jam between the layers has to be held in place with a dam of icing, which is simple enough. The crumb coat was simple enough, since it doesn't really have to look nice. Then the icing proper was hard to do, but I obsessed over it a bit and it came out really well. I'm not totally happy with my icing rosettes on top, but they were fine and the marzipan decorations hid the worst of them.

So, here's what the chef said about my cake: The sides were smooth and straight and the top edge was pretty much perfectly squared off, as good as any professional cake place would do. (After this, everything else could have been terrible and I still would have been happy.) He said my rosettes could have been finished off slightly better, but overall were good, and my marzipan roses were very nicely made and the edges of the petals were well thinned. He was surprisingly nice about my sloppy writing (though he did say that parts of it had gone a bit wonky). The dam of icing was the perfect width and cake was well filled. He said the taste of the cake and icing were good as well (after the icing disaster, I was very happy to hear this!) The layers, apparently, were not cut perfectly evenly, which I'd been afraid of because I had a little trouble cutting it straight. But that's really the least of things to go wrong. I'm very happy with what the chef said and how my cake came out!