Archive for the ‘Food And Drink’ Category

Wedding Cakes – Discover the Benefits of Event Management Companies

Saturday, December 17th, 2011


Organizing a wedding includes decorating the wedding hall, buying cakes, designing invitations and much more. It is not an easy task to plan for a wedding event in a single day. Be it a small or a large wedding, you cannot plan an event if you don’t have enough time.

If it’s too big a wedding or you don’t have enough time to organize an event, you can always get the help of event management companies. These event management companies take complete care of organizing your wedding event for a nominal cost.

If you want the most stunning designs for your wedding cake, you have to decide on the design well ahead of time. First and foremost, you have to decide on the size based on the number of guests for the event. You can visit various cake store design catalog and decide on one that fits your needs.

Following that, you have to determine the cost. Fondant cakes are more expensive when compared to the regular ones. If you are planning on picking up in person, you can save the cost of the delivery. Moreover, don’t just go by the appearance of the cake, make sure that you get to taste it. An important tip may be to learn the ingredients of the cake and take care not to have ingredients that may result in potential allergies.

Wedding cakes are sold in a variety of styles, shapes and colors. If you simply walk into a cake store without preparation, it is very hard for you to choose a design. If you want to have a unique cake for your wedding, you would probably have to choose from higher cost cakes that have intricate designs like molded shapes or hand-made cakes with vibrant colors.

Never rush into a purchase decision. Step into several stores and check out several online cake stores and decide on one that best fits your budget. If you are planning to hire the services of an event company, it is better to leave the buying activities to them. The company will have experts who will be able to buy the perfect cake for your wedding. Some companies even take in the likes of the guests and make the purchases accordingly.

There are plenty of aspects you have to look for before taking up the services of event organizing firms. Determine the experience of the company in event organizing. Find out how fast they can plan your special event. Figure out the various wedding services offered by the company. Determine the cost of the service. Compare the cost of event planning at various companies and decide on the one that offers high quality service at a lesser price. You can even check with your friends and family to get recommendations about event organizing companies. Find out whether they will be able to do just one particular service that you are looking for. For instance, you can even check whether the company will help you out in buying wedding cakes.

By: Autumn H. Diaz

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Wedding Cakes – Current Trends For Wedding Cakes

Sunday, September 18th, 2011


Are you getting married and planning your wedding? One of the questions that you will want to ask yourself is about your wedding cake? There are so many options available from traditional wedding cakes, cupcakes or no cake at all. The trend in wedding cakes at the present time is the stacked like a pyramid cupcake wedding cake. How many delicious flavours, colours and combinations can you come up with or can your caterer? Why not have a whole range of flavours: Simple vanilla/yellow/white cake, but frosted with Nutella, Strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese, Black Forest, Oreo cupcakes, Mocha Caramel, Black Sesame cupcakes, Ginger cupcakes with lime icing or Lemon cupcakes with lemon icing and filled with blackberry butter cream. These cupcakes will make a statement with your guests and they will have fun figuring out the varieties. Perhaps you want to package one or two of the varieties for guests to take home, I would recommend the Black Sesame or the Vanilla with a flavoured powdered sugar dusting- you do not want to pack up anything that will require refrigeration. Remember to keep the cupcake stack refrigerated and bring it out just before serving. This will ensure that the cupcakes are kept cold and are considered food safe for your guests to consume.

Black Sesame Cupcakes with Matcha- Cream Cheese Frosting.

1 1/2 sticks (170 g) salted butter
1 1/2 cups (340 g) sugar
3 tablespoons black sesame paste
1/4 cup (35 g) black sesame seeds
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 1/2 cups (310 g) flour, sifted
1 1/4 cups milk

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring or tossing them constantly, until they are fragrant, about two minutes. Crush the seeds with a spice grinder so that they are small like the consistency of sand. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add the sesame paste and seeds, eggs and vanilla and beat until combined. Gradually beat in the dry ingredients, then the milk, and beat for a couple minutes.

Fill cupcake tin and bake for 16-18 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.
Matcha-Cream Cheese Frosting
Makes enough for about 24 cupcakes

1 8-oz (200 g) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 stick (55 g) butter, softened
2 tablespoons whipping cream
1 cup (125 g) sifted confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons matcha

Beat together the cream cheese, butter and whipping cream until creamy. Add the sugar and matcha and beat until glossy and smooth. This recipe is from Anjali-Delicious Coma out of Los Angeles. We hope that you will enjoy these cupcakes.

By: Brenda M Phillips

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Stacked Wedding Cake Construction – Tiers for Fears

Friday, May 13th, 2011


That day you’ve secretly feared since you started decorating cakes is quickly approaching. You’ve been asked to make a wedding cake – a five tiered, stacked wedding cake! And it’s for your sister’s wedding!

As you go over designs with your sister by day, you dream about the cake at night. The cake in your dreams is taller than any cake you’ve even seen. As bride and groom pose for the cake cutting ceremony pictures, you look on as each tier slowly sinks into the one beneath it, and just as your sister and her new husband smile and begin to slice their first piece of cake, the force of gravity and the domino effect take hold and the cake implodes.

All four top tiers sink into the bottom tier, turning a once majestic beauty into a giant pile of fondant covered cake rubble! (And then you wake up, covered in sweat, only to realize that this dream could actually become reality.)

But wait! This nightmare does not have to become reality. And no, you won’t have to add therapist bills to your cake budget to get through your big project. These sorts of nightmares are normal for first time wedding cake makers. Beyond a healthy amount of butterflies, you have absolutely nothing to fear if you follow these tips.

Stacked Wedding Cake Construction 101

Unlike wedding cakes with tiers that are separated by plates and pillars, the tiers on a stacked wedding cake appear to rest directly on top of one another. This is just an illusion since the cakes actually rest on a system of hidden pillars and plates. To stack a multi-tiered cake without plates and pillars is a very risky proposition with the weight of each cake.

Stacked cakes of more than 4 layers need some sort of support in the form of plates, spikes and/or dowels to keep the upper layers from sinking into the lower layers.

So whether your wedding cake will be stacked Victorian style (graduating round tiers) or ? la chic with fondant covered gift-box style tiers, here are the basics:

To create a perfectly constructed tower rather than an experiment on the effects of gravity on cake and icing, you can either use a purchased set of cake plates and spikes, or you can build your own system using cardboard cake plates and dowels.

To build your own system, pick up some 1/4-3/8-inch round cake dowels (or other food safe wooden dowels) and a hammer (yes, even if you flunked high school Woodshop) and follow these tips:

1. Plan the dowels’ placement by centering a cake plate the size of the next cake to be placed on top of the bottom cake, and then marking the spot by pressing down gently on the plate.

2. Within the boundaries of these markings, insert four evenly spaced dowels. Insert the first dowel straight down through to the bottom of the cake and mark the dowel even with the top of the cake. Pull out the dowel and, using wire cutters, cut off at the mark. Cut three more the same height. Then push the dowels straight down into the cake in the places you marked so that they form a square inside the circle. (Be sure the dowels are perfectly even with the top of the cake for the best support.)

3. Place your next smaller tier on a round cake board of the same size, and then place it on top of the bottom tier. The dowels will prevent the top tier from sinking into the bottom tier.

4. Measure the next set of dowels from the bottom of the bottom cake to the top of the top cake. Cut the dowel at an angle to taper the end and cut it so that it is just slightly shorter than the height of the two bottom cakes. Insert the dowels tapered end first straight down through the cake. When the dowel stops at the first cake board, give it a firm tap with the hammer to break through the board down to the bottom of the cake. To prevent the hammer from landing in the icing, place another small section of dowel end to end with the measured dowel to hammer it into position.

5. Finally, ice over the little blemish to hide the tip of the dowel, and your tower construction is finished! You can rest easy knowing that your wedding cake is stable enough to withstand the forces of gravity. No more nightmares!

These stress relieving tips are courtesy of “Cake Decorating Made Easy!” Volume 2, which is available at http://www.CakesMadeEasy.com.

Finally, here’s one more tip:

Not all cakes have the buoyancy and mass needed to support the weight of multiple cake tiers stacked one on top of the other, even with the support of cake plates and dowels. So for the wedding cake of your dreams (not nightmares), use a tried and true wedding cake recipe such as a fruit cake, butter cake, dense carrot cake or any of the wedding cake recipes in “Cake Decorating Made Easy!“

By: Samantha Mitchell

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Homemade Cake Recipes and Wedding Cake Recipes From Scratch

Monday, April 25th, 2011


Making wedding cake recipes from scratch is not that difficult. Take it from me. I have been doing this for over 25 years now. The very first of my homemade wedding cakes was a carrot cake recipe and it was from scratch. Homemade wedding cakes are the best. The only time I EVER used a mix was in a high volume situation. It was exclusively the white wedding cake recipe that was slightly time consuming, and the chefs insisted upon my using their mix. If you have ever worked in a professional kitchen then you know how those head chefs can be at times, it is more about saving money and time, but for me it is so much more about quality. I did manage to sneak in all of my homemade fillings though.

Whether you are a professional pastry chef or an amateur baker making homemade wedding cakes for friends and family, these tips may help.

Tips

Try to stick with a simple homemade recipe such as one that does not require a lot of fancy steps. A dump cake recipe is a good choice. I know it does not sound so delicious but dump recipes basically have one requirement and that is that all ingredients get dumped into the bowl at once and mixed. And that is it. What could be easier than that? One of my best and most frequently requested cake is chocolate buttermilk dump recipe. Have all of your ingredients measured out and at room temperature before you start the process of putting it all together. Making a wedding cake if taken in steps is just a matter of multiplying your favorite homemade recipe and baking them off in larger pans. Fill the cake pans 1/2 to 1/3 full. You can fill a pan a little more if using a lighter batter a little less when using a heavier batter. This is the part that you will need to judge as you gain experience. Always grease, flour and put parchment or wax paper along the bottom of the pans. Always let the cakes cool completely before covering and storing. You will need cardboard circles to put under each cake for support when lifting and moving the cakes. You need to decide how many layers your cakes will be before baking, you can bake each layer separate or cut your cakes in half to make two layers. (It depends on how deep your pans are and how much you fill them as to how many layers you get out of each cake.) For wedding cakes I prefer using a two layer cake with one layer of filling because it keeps the cake a little more stable. But you will need to figure out your preferences.

By: Lorelie Carvey

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