Exam Week

I have just delved into the void that is the first day of exam week and emerged alive. That being said, I won't be posting this week because I most likely won't have time to take pictures. But before I disappear back into the void, I'll show you pictures from the last few days.

Keeping with the Christmas season, we made swiss rolls. The Chef gave us creative reign while stressing the need for us to use up random bits of chocolate decorations. A really neat decoration was created by putting bubble wrap on top of tempered chocolate.

Bubble wrap is so useful

In our textbook is a picture of a swiss roll with a mix of light and dark fillings. I wanted to recreate it. I decided to use up some leftover chocolate buttercream and flavoured white swiss buttercream with passionfruit. I didn't realize how much buttercream I had layered on the cake and ended up having to try to scrape half of it off which made the final cross section a little messy looking but it still worked.

Start with chocolate lines

I used S's leftover mango swiss buttercream on the outside and then topped it all with random pieces of chocolate. :P

We also made purse cakes and let me say one thing: fondant is not my friend. It was my first time working with fondant and we got very little instruction. Working with the fondant in general wasn't too bad, but trying to get clean corners was painful! I ended up with wrinkles and folded edges. The best part about these bags, however, was that we got creative reign once again. Some of the bags were awesome! One girl did a zebra print with bright pink and brown.

Cut and fill the cake with chocolate buttercream

Drape the fondant overtop

Try to make nice corners, unlike these ones

Starting to add details

Magically it's done!

We made fun of V's cake and called it a whale purse. It's too bad she didn't keep that tail on. :P

Thursday will be marzipan day so I took home some marzipan over the weekend and practiced making roses.

Making petals

Put all the petals together to make a rose!

Today we had to bake all the cakes we will be working with this week and let us just say that the dish situation looked overwhelming. The poor dishwashers...

It looks like a Christmas tree...of dirty containers

Only four more days. Out of the giant list of things we have to do, I only dreaded two things: getting all the cakes baked on time, and pies. Since the first one is now behind me, it should be mildly bumpy sailing ahead until Friday, aka Pie day. Until then, my friends, stay warm! And check out the Christmas bake sale at the Market place this week if you have a chance. :)