Half and Half Wedding Cake

For my first order as an official business I was asked to make a 4 tiered wedding cake in a half and half style. This is that one side of the cake is white and the other is chocolate. The common explanation of this is that the white side is for the bride and the chocolate side is for the groom so they are often called bride and groom cakes. However, my couple described the white side as the dress and the pleating come down from the dress .

Maybe the pleat is from the dress

I was asked to make 4 different flavours of cakes, the bottom layer was a 12" rich chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache and crumb coated in ganache. The next layer was a 10" lemon cake which was filled and coated in lemon butter icing. The 8" layer was a vanilla madiera cake covered and filled with vanilla butter icing. Finally the 6" top layer was carrot cake covered and filled in vanilla icing.

I had to get the timing of the baking correct so the cakes tasted at their best at the wedding on Saturday, so I had to bake most of the cakes on Wednesday with the exception of the vanilla which I made on Tuesday. This put quite a lot of timing pressure on me because for wedding cakes I like to double ice to get a much better finish on the cake. This means that the cake needs to cook, cool then be covered in the first layer of sugar paste. Ideally this is left overnight and then coated in another layer of sugar paste. Again ideally this is left to dry and then the cake is decorated with the piped detail. However, as you can probably guess, there wasn't enough nights to do this so I tried to spread things out as much as possible by doing things early in the morning and as late as possible to make the days longer.

Each of the cakes, for the top layer of sugar paste, was covered half in white sugar paste and half in chocolate paste, to create the half and half look. The chocolate paste is more difficult to work with so I only did 1 layer of this rather than both, it's also more expensive and the cake would have a structural problem if the bottom layer wasn't one piece.

I hand piped, using royal icing, detailing on the white side of the cake, this is the first time I've done this and I haven't yet done the diploma on this but by the end of October I expect to much better at this particular skill.

On the chocolate side I carefully covered it in chocolate ganache and left a little drip over the sides. The problem with the ganache is that it never dried solid so it got everywhere, it was very difficult working with the dark chocolate on the pure white icing.

I then dowelled up the cakes, again the first time I've done this but it was very straightforward and the cake seemed to hold very well and stuck the bottom 2 layers together and the top 2. Finally I edged the cake with some white beading and created a pleat down the joins.

Top and bottom prepared

On the top layer of the cake I attached the bride and groom topper and carefully made the pleat come right out from the dress on the bride.

I dipped some strawberries in ganache and left these to set and then the car was loaded up.

Car packed and ready to go

I had to get the cake 2 hours across country, which was rather nerve racking and made us think about future car choices!! But it made it in one piece, I then put the cake together and stuck the strawberries on.

Fully assembled cake

Overall I was fairly pleased with the cake, as always there are many things that I'd like to improve on but for a first attempt I thought it came out really well. There are things I've learnt and things I'd change but all I can hope is that it was perfect for the bride and groom.

Chocolate Side

White Side

Paul Hollywood's Bloomer

This week for my bread recipe I wanted to make something from the master of bread himself, Paul Hollywood of course. I found this recipe on the BBC food website, as usual, and it was featured in his recent series "bread". Found here. 

As usual the first step is to mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Paul is unusual in that he says to keep the salt and the yeast separate, instead of butter he uses oil and instead of warm water he says cold is fine. Mix everything together to form a dough and then knead it for 5-10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic. 

Smooth, elastic dough ready to prove.

Leave it to prove for around an hour until the dough has tripled in size. 

After proving, tripled in size. 

Knock the air out of the dough and then shape it into a "bloomer shape" and place it on a baking tray. 

Shaped loaf

 Leave it to prove for around an hour, until it's doubled in size. 

Proved loaf.

Sprinkle with water and flour and then cut some slashes in the top. It is now ready to go in the oven. 

Ready to be baked. 

Cook it in the oven, this recipe states you should start at a higher temperature and then lower it for the final 10 minutes. It also says to place a tray full of water in the bottom of the oven so that it produces steam. I'm not sure what this is supposed to do but I didn't notice any difference. Once it's cooked leave it on the rack to cool. 

Cooled and sliced

The outside

The verdict: whilst the loaf tasted nice it wasn't anything special. The loaf required slightly different ingredients, which is fine, but it didn't add anything to the flavour. It was very easy to follow this recipe, I knew exactly what I needed to do and it produced a good loaf. This is a good recipe for us as it doesn't contain any dairy products, which is good for M&M. However, the loaf isn't a very practical shape for us so I would like to try this in a loaf tin. Next week I'll find a new recipe to find.. any others people know of?