Gumpaste Flowers & Fondant Basics

Wowie! Its been a while since I blogged.

Last week was exams...which I may say was not as scary as we all expected it to be. The pressure was on...yes forsure..especially when the chefs get together and speak French to one another about your products...you just don't know what they could be sayin! lol...But I made it out alive...and with an A if I may add!

 As for this week,we started the basics of fondant and worked alot on gumpaste flowers.
Roses
Lilys
Orchids
Blossoms
Leaves
Carnations

Every one keeps saying this is my week! But really I do not have that much professional practice in flowers like lilys and orchids, besides it is always interesting to learn new techniques and ways of working. The materials we use as well are different from what I am used to, some more useful others hard to adapt to because of my experience already.

Below are some photos of Chef Mark Seaman teaching techniques and process of how to make and work with gumpaste, as well as make the flowers. We have not yet completed them all yet. Monday we will finish them and put them on top of our 3 tier wedding cake.....

 Here are some of the girls dusting there flowers:)

Oh yes...we started fondant basics as well....and when I say basic..I mean basic!

The 24 week patisserie program only skims on the topic of wedding cakes, which is fine by me, I am here to learn all the other stuff, but I must say I picked up a few tips still from watching Chef Mark put together a 3 tier dummy cake.
 
He taught the class today how to assemble a dummy and a real cake, as well as how to work with fondant and showed some different techniques for borders with molds and stencils. 

Here are some photos of our basic cake...more a dummy for exploration and to allow the class to get familiar with the materials. Probably the most simple dummy I have made, but all in good fun!

                                Gabby so concentrated!:)

Next week should be exciting because we will learn some new cake recipes and work with Chef Kristen on a stacked real cake, which will teach the class how to make cakes meant for stacking and how to mask a cake in buttercream and assemble. Should be good!

Happy Weekend! 
-N