Cartoon Cake Workshop

These pictures had been sitting in my edited post for more than a week.... and another 2 days of re-uploading before it finally made its way here.

I attended a cartoon cake workshop a few months back at Sugar Inc with Anna Chan. It was a weekday afternoon and I took half a day's leave just for the workshop, as a treat for me to have a break from my hectic work. Located at the ground floor of a shop unit at Jln Bukit Ho Swee (near iong Bahru MRT station), this small little unit offered more than what it seems to be able to deliver. It is fully equipped with the essential equipment and cookware, that makes my heart beat (excited) as I entered the worksop, knowing I'll be in for a learning session!

The class is limited to 8 in a class so that Anna can gave more attention to each student.

She first did a demo on the sponge cake.

followed by the frosting...

A demo showing how to make Italian meringue buttercream. This was one of my reason for attending the class.

That's Anna, showing us how to do the outline. Melting the chocolate for the outline of the cartoons (using melted chocolate to draw the picture)
And colouring the cartoon picture with melted white chocolate tinted with food colouring.

The frosting was the most difficult part of the hands-on session. No matter how many layers I frosted, I still could not get a smooth, evenly layered frosted cake. I always tend to leave some cake crumbs behind... >_<

That's Anna's work! See how smooth is her frosting.

Other classmate's works. :)And mine! :) To be honest, I thought that the technique and concept of the transfer chocolate method is rather simple. It involves the drawing of the design you like with dark melted chocolate, and "colouring" with tinted melted white chocolate. Let it set in the fridge and transfer to the cake. I thought I could apply the same method if I use gel for the filling but according to Anna, it is different. :(

But of course, there are still certain techniques that you may not know without learning hands-on, such as having to fill in the white chocolate in the outline fully without any gaps so that there will be no breaks when it hardens.

Overall, it's a fruitful session and immediately the following day, I made a buttercream cake for my best friend, by trying to apply when I've learnt. (sans the cartoon!). Will show it in my next post.