Masterclass: Mike's Amazing Cakes

Mike of Mike's Amazing Cakes

At this year's Cake and Bake Show in London I took a masterclass with Mike McCarey of Mike's Amazing Cakes, a US bakery that is known for producing elaborate three-dimensional cakes for weddings, birthdays and other occasions. He can often be seen on the television channel the Food Network, though I have to admit when I signed up to the class I had never heard of him before - I gathered he was famous though and was interested in what he was going to demonstrate!

I hadn't been to the Cake and Bake show before or booked a masterclass at any similar shows so I had been expecting a small group of us - maybe 12 people - to be learning and creating something under Mike's supervision. Unfortunately that wasn't the case; instead there were about 50 of us sitting in rows, watching Mike do a demonstration at the front. And what's more, he wasn't actually making a cake, but showing us pictures of a cake he had previously made.

Now, I know that sounds like it was rubbish but in fact I learnt a lot. There's no way Mike could have made even part of the cake he was demonstrating in the 45 minute session as he was showing us how to make a standing up dog.

The photos I took are terrible as I was seated several rows back and couldn't see what Mike was doing directly, and had to watch instead what was projected onto a screen, but there were still people's heads in the way and the bright screen doesn't come out well in photos. However, I wanted to share with you a few of Mike's tips and a broad explanation of how to make a 3D cake, without giving away any of his secrets of course!

It never occured to me but a large freestanding 3D cake can't stand up by itself... you need a solid structure to build it around. Mike actually makes his out of MDF and styrofoam, and of course covers any parts that will come into contact with cake.

Here you can see a diagram of the model Mike built for the dog; he measured and drew a sketch from a photograph, enlarged it on a photocopier and laminated parts of it to use as a template.

The type of cake itself is important; sponge cake is too light and won't support the structure (in this case, the dog's head) so he recommends pound cake - I'm not sure what we call that in the UK but I know madeira cake is good for carving. Rather than use a lot of fondant for creating shapes like the dog's head, Mike likes to use modelling chocolate, and he says if you use fondant put it in the freezer to harden it.


He built up the cake layer by layer and then sculpted the sides - you can see the dog's body taking shape here.

Don't try to cover your whole cake with fondant in one go if it's an unusual shape with little details; instead do it in two halves and then work the seam together until smooth. Mike recommends using Massa Ticino fondant but it's not cheap.

Here is the dog with the limbs attached (all made out of modelling chocolate) and then covered in fondant.

Rather than knead colour into the fondant Mike airbrushes his models at the end which allows him to build up layers of colours. I might have to look into airbrushing!

This is the finished cake, doesn't it look amazing? It was just a shame we only got to see a picture and not the real thing!

Dog biscuits

This Christmas I made some edible gifts for various friends and family and had a few four-legged friends I didn't want to leave out: Tilly, Princess and Patch. I'd picked up some cute cookie cutters at Wal-Mart when I was in America in September and this seemed the perfect way to use them.

I looked online to find a good recipe for dog biscuits and liked this one. There's actually nothing in it that humans couldn't eat and I like the fact that it seems relatively healthy - no preservatives but also no sugar (though there is peanut butter). It was also very quick and easy to make.

You need:
3/4 cup skimmed milk
1 egg
1 cup peanut butter
2 and a half cups wholemeal flour
1 tbsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180C. In a bowl, beat the egg and the milk then add the peanut butter.

Add the flour and baking powder and work into a dough

This is the set of cookie cutters I got in Wal-Mart for only a couple of dollars. There's a paw, a bone and a dog shape; they are made of metal so quite sturdy and from the Wilton brand, so I think they're really good.

Roll out the dough and cut out the shapes.

I got about 20 thick cookies out of this mixture I think

Bake for about 15 minutes.

As these were a Christmas gift I packaged them in one of the tins I bought from Ikea, that I mentioned in a previous post. I also included a note listing the ingredients as I don't think people would want to give anything to their pets without knowing what was in it. My sister said her dogs really liked them!

Our letter for Alphabakes this month is D, and while this is a bit unusual there is nothing in the rules to state that bakes have to be for human consumption! So I am entering these dog biscuits in the challenge, which I am hosting this month.

Dog basket cake

About a year and a half ago, before I started this blog, I took a four-week cake decorating course at Kingston Adult Education college in Surbiton (on the outskirts of London). For a while now I'd been thinking about doing a more in-depth course to learn a little more than how to pipe buttercream onto cupcakes, but all the classes I'd found in central London cost at least £99 for a one-day course, and I've seen some that cost almost twice that.

Then I started browsing adult education websites and realised this was potentially a much better option - and certainly cheaper. Unfortunately adult education colleges don't tend to be in central London so the best course I could find was in Surbiton - and it took me almost two hours to get there after work (I only just got there in time for the 7pm start) and about an hour and a half to get home. Since then I've taken a course at a college just a few minutes from my house but at the time this was all I could find. The course was two hours a week for four weeks, covering different techniques every time, and only cost £40 for all four weeks. My friend David and I decided to sign up and do it together, and I was really glad we did!

The course was taught by a very experienced cake decorator called Annie. I swiftly discovered that David and I were the only ones coming from central London after work - everyone else seemed to be local to Surbiton and had managed to go home first and have dinner (dinner for us was a sandwich eaten with one hand in class while modelling icing!) and could load their cars with all the equipment we needed to bring, whereas we had to carry it all on the tube!

Luckily the class was worth the effort that we went to. We didn't have to bring a cake for our first week, but were asked to bring white roll-out icing, a box of Dr Oetker coloured icing, a rolling pin and various other bits and bobs that I forget now. We were told we were going to spend the next two weeks making a dog basket cake, and Annie began by showing us a picture of one she had made previously. I couldn't believe I was going to be able to make something like that! Now of course it looks really straightforward but at the time I had never made anything like that before.

We spent the whole of the first class making dalmation dogs to go on top of the cake, as you can see below!

So how did we do this? First, take a ball of white icing and mould to make the shape of the head - so wider at one end a little like a carrot, and then flatten the bottom slightly so it sits flat. This was the first time I'd modelled with icing so I wasn't happy with my first few shapes, but the beauty of roll-out icing is that you can re-do it over and over!

Next we took some of the Dr. Oetker black icing (you get five colours in the pack, including black). Roll some very small balls and squash them so they become discs, and press them onto the dog's head. Similarly, use the black icing to make some ears.

We coloured some white icing with a little pink paste to make the nose, and used a modelling tool to indent the eyes and mouth.

The feet were fairly easy too - for the front paws, just mould some white icing. For the back paws, mould icing in the shape you can see above, and roll then press out some tiny balls of pink icing to make the soft pads on the paws.

As this took the whole lesson, we would then leave the dogs until next week, so we wrapped them in clingfilm and tried to transport them home as carefully as we could.

So it's probably no surprise that the next week began with a quick repair job to the dogs where a couple of people had found an ear or a nose had fallen off!

This week we had been told to bring a cake and a cake board, along with all the stuff from last week - white and coloured roll-out icing , rolling pin etc.

To start with, I rolled a cylinder of icing and stuck it along one edge of my cake to make one side more raised than the other. Most people actually achieved this effect by cutting a section out of one side of their cake but as my cake wasn't as deep as some peoples', we decided this was the best way. Basically what you want is for one side to be a little higher as you can see from the picture a little further below.

Then we coloured some roll-out icing with brown paste and rolled out a section large enough to fit all the way around the cake and a couple of inches higher than the side. We stamped all over this with a basketweave embosser, which I thought was really cool. It's a piece of plastic with basket or brick-like markings and a little handle, so when you press it into icing you are left with the indentations.

Then use some buttercream or apricot jam to stick the 'basket' around the side of the cake, like so:

The next part was relatively easy. We chose another colour and rolled out a square of icing to make a blanket. I rolled out some tiny balls and pressed them on to make a polkadot effect. Then position your dogs' heads and paws in the basket and put the blanket over the top, so it looks as if they are asleep under the blanket in their basket.

Ta-da!

And from the front....

The proportions are a little off - if you think about the size of the dogs' heads, there is no way there's room for three bodies under that blanket! Other than that I was really pleased with this - my first character cake. Incidentally the cake underneath was a plain sponge - we were told not to split and fill it, which I think did make it taste a little bland, and I reckon I could have got away with doing this and still been able to model the basket around it, so if I did it again I would either do that or make a chocolate cake as I think that would have tasted nicer.

My sister's birthday was a few days after this cake class and I was going down to Southampton to see her, so I took this cake. I had told her she was getting a birthday cake but she said she hadn't expected anything like this - and it was perfect for her as she has dogs. She didn't even want to cut into it initially to spoil the effect, which was a really nice thing to hear!

The letter for this month's Alphabakes is D and since I hadn't gotten around to blogging this dog cake yet, it seemed like the perfect opportunity! Please do send in your D bakes as we have a prize on offer this month!

Puppy dog cupcakes

Woof woof!

Random Recipes and Tea Time Treats have teamed up this month so the challenge was to assemble all of your recipe books that contain cakes, biscuits and other tea time treats, and pick something at random. I did just that, and the book that my hand fell upon (OK, poetic licence there - I actually went all high tech and used a random number generator!) was none other than Hello, Cupcake!

For those of you who aren't familiar with the behemoth that is Hello Cupcake, it's an American publishing sensation that encompasses books, a website, an app and even a calendar. They show you how to make cupcakes that look like animals, boxes of popcorn, shoes - they are known for their imaginative designs. They're not meant to be hard and use everyday items, usually sweets/candy, but one problem I've had is that this is an American book and they often list ingredients I've never heard of and can't get in the UK, so I have to substitute what I can. I have made some of their designs before - these ducks, penguins and werewolves - as they are really fun and have a huge impact when people see your creations. I'd been meaning to make something else from their book for a while and had stocked up on some goodies on a recent trip to America, so when I opened the book at random, I was hoping it would be something I could do....


As I knew this one would take a while, I decided to cheat slightly and use a packet cake mix. Has anyone used these before? I never have, and often think they are a bit pointless - you still need to add eggs and oil to the dry ingredients so it's not like it's all that much quicker. But I've tasted cakes made from this mix before and they are actually really nice, and I've been told it is a good standby to have in the cupboard if you do need to whip up cakes in a hurry. I've never exactly suffered from a cake emergency before but then, I don't have children or many visitors to my house, so who knows?

 

Stage one: Take your cake mix!

 

Mix according to instructions. As this is the first time I've used a packet mix, I'll do a little review... I found that mixing everything together in one go, rather than adding the ingredients gradually, made it a little hard to mix properly and there were a few lumps. Also, eggs are generally the one ingredient I don't have in the fridge so buying them to go with a cake mix isn't any quicker than buying them to make a cake from scratch, since I generally do have the other ingredients I need and it doesn't take all that long to make a cake. But I can see there are some advantages to having a packet mix in the cupboard just in case. In addition, the cakes taste amazing - really light and springy. So on that basis I might buy this again.

I don't have a photo of the finished cakes but they are essentially just chocolate cupcakes so you don't need a picture! I made a few trying to follow the instructions from Hello Cupcake - they tell you how to make different breeds of dog - and they looked horrible, like a cross between a goblin and a monster. In the end I found a method that worked, which was loosely based on the one given in the book but really I made it up as I went along, so I don't think I'll be breaking any copyright rules if I show you how I did it!

If you recall from this post, I bought a lot of baking supplies in America earlier this month. I bought a tub of Betty Crocker whipped vanilla frosting, purely as it looked a bit different and was something we can't get in the UK. It's pure white, and has the texture (and similar taste) of marshmallow fluff. I don't know how they make it and if there is a way to make buttercream that is actually white (maybe using Trex, but that would taste horrible!) so I might have to look into that. I was very glad to have it though, as I realised using chocolate icing for my dog cakes was making them look like the things that dogs leave behind.... so I went with the white icing instead.

First I covered a cupcake with some of the white frosting

Then I cut a piece of marshmallow into a triangle. I happened to have orange marshmallows (they were the pumpkin-shaped ones I bought in America), but in restrospect it would have been much better to use white marshmallows.

 

 

I covered the marshmallow with more frosting. It just looks like a big lump now but that's the angle of the photo - it does actually have a raised part which is going to form the dog's nose and mouth area.

 

Next I added two smaller pieces of marshmallow for the eyes...

...and covered these in frosting as well. The shape is better than it appears from this photo - though I have to admit it's not particularly neat! Patience is not one of my virtues.

Adding eyes and nose. Here's a random thing: the Hello Cupcake book frequently suggests using mini M&Ms for eyes, and I never knew what to do as we don't have those in the UK. I just used normal M&Ms and thought they worked and weren't too big. Now I know why - normal M&Ms in America seem to be much bigger than the ones we have here! Unless that was just the kind I bought - I got peanut butter M&Ms, which taste amazing! I used one for the nose, and mini M&Ms for the eyes. I think that our M&Ms are somewhere betweeen the two sizes.

The book also specifies Famous Chocolate Wafers for many of its recipes, another brand we don't have in the UK, but I was able to buy some of these over the internet. They are flat, round, fairly thin chocolate biscuits that remind me a little of Oreos (only thinner and without the filling).

Cut the biscuit to make the ears, and stick into the side of the cupcake like this. I also made a tongue from a small piece of a strawberry lace.

Here's a slightly better one... do you think they look like puppies? They didn't turn out much like the ones in the Hello Cupcake book after all, but I think they are cute!

Side view

This is a different one - I managed to make nine in the end, six of which I took into work for the Macmillan bake sale, and three I'm saving for my family when I see them this weekend.

A litter of puppies! The dots of orange you can see are from the marshmallow, so as I said I'm wishing I'd used white ones.

 

These went down pretty well at the bake sale! My favourite is the one in the middle of the bottom row, I think it actually does look quite canine!

 

Now comes the multi-challenge badges... first of all I made this for Random Recipes hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen and Tea Time Treats, which is co-hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate at What Kate Baked, as I chose this recipe at random from my collection of baking books. It was a great idea to combine the two challenges!

Next as I made cupcakes I am sending them to Calendar Cakes, hosted by Rachel of Dolly Bakes and Laura at Laura Loves Cakes, as their theme this month is cupcakes.

I'm also sending it to Cupcake Tuesday, hosted by Hoosier Homemade

As this is a US recipe book and so many of my ingredients came from America, I am sending this to Cupcake Crazy Gem's United Bakes of America challenge. Gem has just moved from the UK to Vancouver so now has direct access to Wal-Mart, I'm so jealous!

And finally, since I'm hosting Alphabakes this month and have accepted a few late entries, I thought I'd slip in a late entry of my own. The letter this month is P and the title of this recipe in Hello Cupcake is Pup Cakes, though I prefer to call them Puppy dog cupcakes :-)

Corgi cake balls

The Queen's corgi dogs - just in time for the Jubilee!

I'm planning a fairly ambitious bake for the Jubilee weekend (which is also my mum's birthday) but in the meantime thought I would share this with you. I made corgi dog cake balls! And here's how I did it.

Take one madeira cake that you've already baked, and turn into cake crumbs.

Mix with buttercream to make a play-dough type consistency.

Attempt to make cake pops. Fail completely. Discover the balls keep falling off the sticks and eventually give up and decide to do something else with the damn things.
True story... lol!

Roll out some leftover brown-coloured fondant, and cover the cake ball completely.
Look online for pictures of corgi dogs as you can't quite remember what they look like.
Make a nose and central face stripe from white fondant, and ears from the brown fondant.
Assemble like so.

Take chocolate chips you had bought for another recipe, and insert two point-first as the eyes, and another one as the nose.

Repeat as desired. Do you think they look like corgis? They definitely look like dogs!

 

I'm planning to include these with my main Jubilee bake but in the meantime I am entering them in the Blogging Jubilee Baking Competition hosted by Homemade by Fleur. The competition is sponsored by Appliances Online .The deadline is June 3rd so you still have a few days to get your entries in!

Because this used up leftover fondant, and ingredients I bought for another recipe, and cake that I would have otherwise thrown away as the cake pops failed, I am entering this into Frugal Food Fridays. I am guest hosting the challenge on behalf of Helen from Fuss Free Flavours from now until the end of June.