Here we go!! Eilat

This weekend we took some time off and went on a beach vavction in the southest city in Israel, Eilat.

It's an amazing place, a touristic city of course, with great beaches, resturants, water sports and more. But the best thing by far is the red sea. (the name comes from the mountains surronding the sea, called the red mountains).
We share the sea with Jordan and Eygpt.

The sea is a real nature resereve, with so many amazing types of fish and corals, it is truly astonishing.

how cool is this garbage can!

look what I found in the equarium!

There is a place called the underwater observatory marine park, where you can see most if not all of the fish in pools and aquariums.

The biggist attraction is however the actuall underwater observatory- a building built in the sea, covered with coralsin the water. you can climb the stairs to the top and enjoy the view of the sea and mountains that surround you, or descent to the bottom, (using stairs as well), where you can walk in the round cell looking through glass windows and watching the fish and corals in their natural habitat.
Actually whenever we go there I kinda feel as if i'm in an aquerium and the fish are looking at me...

We also went to the Dolphin reef to see Dolphins as close as possible and take some time to build sand castels.

a thirsty dolphin

In the evening we went to a great show called WOW on ice, If you get  a chance to visit Eilat I highly recommend going to see it.

I loved how the costume designer combined fish into the costums of the skaters.
That was really inspiring and now I would really love to create a cake with some beautiful fish and corals.

So how's this- my husband has a birthday in about a week, I have three wedding cakes to prepare this week so I won't have much time, but will try to plan and design a special sea cake for him. He was actually born in Eilat and loves the sea and everything concerning the sea.
If I do find the time- you guys will be the first to know...(he does read my blog, but this week he will be sooo busy I hope he'll miss it...)

It was a wonderful vacation, a bit short, but that always leaves a taste for more.

Til' next time

Cake away
Sharon

Bursting bloom

I love sugar flowers, not any sugar flowers, but the ones that either simulate real flowers and are done perfectly to reflect real flowers. Or the ones that are sooo very different that they are obviously not real but merely a fantasy in their creators mind...

Loving these flowers obviously affects my cake designs, many of my clients come to me because of my ability to recreate real flowers into sugar flowers.

One of my favorites is obviously creating a wedding cake with a "bursting bloom", I call them bursting because they decorate the top tier of the wedding cake and usually look like the flowers are poping out of the cake.  They seem as if they are bursting..

With all my love to these cakes, they are not the majority we create, due to the amount of flowers. These cakes consist of hundreds and hundreds of flowers (which present hours and hours of work) Not many couples can afford these cakes, therefore when one of these cakes comes around I'm really happy to create it.

This cake was created for a cute couple Lauren and Fred, and there is actually a funny story about our meeting.

Lauren met me at her hotel, and Fred joined us a few minutes later saying he was sorry for the delay, he had to say hi to a friend from Italy who is also getting married just a week after their wedding.
He said that his friend told him she choose an amazing cake decorator and she suggested that they'd meet with her, as well.

Two minutes after he said that, his friend camew over to say hello to Lauren. To my surprise, it was Carol, a bride that chose and ordered her wedding cake just 3 weeks before my meeting with Lauren and Fred.... Such a small world!

You can imagine I had the easiest time presenting to the couple.
And to make things even better! they chose a bursting bloom cake. They had a photo of a cake they saw in a magazine and asked me to create something similar, which I did.
Later I learned that the cake in the photo was created by Ron Ben Israel!

Tada!

Another view of the wedding cake

Front view of the cake

Cake away guys

Sharon

Ron Ben Israel styled wedding cake

A few months ago I posted about my exeperiance in Ron Ben Israel's master class for wedding cakes.
You can check it out here

I also told you how I've finished my mockup / fake wedding cake using his guidelines to create an amazing wedding cake.

At first I really didn't know what to do with it because my cake studio has no more space to keep extra mockup cakes.

So, when I told the guys at "touch food" (the boutique food chain, where I teach cake decorating) that I created a special cake and I kindda don't have a spot for it they begged me to bring it to the store....
I was total for it, and to show their gratitude, they even built a special shelf, just for the cake.

Gladly that cake is proudly presented and has many good effects-I get more cake orders and more classes. That cake does so much work for me!

(for all of you that do this for a living or just a part time, I truly recommend placing a fake cake at a local bakery or event hall, along with your contact information in order to boost orders!)

So here is my very own first version of a wedding cake with Ron Ben Israel's roses, actually I made all the flowers, but they were created based on Ron's excellent methods. in addition you can see I added a vareity of flowers, many of them based on Ron's methods as well.

Tada!

sugar flowers: peony, sweet pea, jasmin, lisianthus

the orange sugar flower you can't see from this angel, is the Poppy

til' next time, cake away !

Sharon

The 27th international exhibition for .....food and beverage Part 2

Lets continue our tour at the exhibition:

Iris and I continued our walk and we saw these very unique looking wine bottles. We tasted the wine that was really good, and then we saw this vendor has other special things.

Aren't these great bottles?

He offered us a taste of preserved walnuts with their nutshell. It was amazing! can you imagine eating a walnut shell? it was soft and chewy. This is how they look like

The black ones, are walnuts in their shells

 And then we saw these special ice-creams made from goat cheese. We were rather full at this point, so we skipped on trying them but I must say I never tried pomegranate ice cream.

pomegranate icecream

I really liked the way this cake looks, it reminded me of a national cheese cake contest I participated in, in 2001 (I won 2nd place! and my prize was 800$ and a basket filled with dairy products) of of the contestants created a lemon bomb cheese cake that looked very similar to this cake.

Yumm

After seeing and trying so many cakes we got really thirsty so we stopped at a vendor that passed around consumable water bottles. 

However the water was warm so we went looking for ice and we found it:

check out this guy's cheek the blurry line is the ice

This is a machine that makes ice and spits it out quickly.

To warp it up, macaroons are really great cookies, but this photo was amazing, so I couln't resist. Iris, a bit tired from a long walk and tastings agreed to pose with the macaroons.

 I hope you enjoyed this on line tour.

Sharon

The 27th international exhibition for .....food and beverage (in short) Part 1

The long version is: The 27th international exhibition for equipment, services & technologies for the Hospitality Industry, the Retail and Institutional Sectors in Israel...

That name is TOOO long for me, so I'll just give you the shorthand: 

When I entered the cake decorating world I started receiving a yearly invitation to this exhibit. I'm a total sucker for new inventions, especially new food inventions.       

So, once a year when I get their letter I'm really happy to check out all the new stuff.
And You won't believe things that people invent?!   

So, this year I invited my best friend Iris to join me.

It was a great day, the sun was shining, the roads weren't too crowded and in the exhibit buildings the air conditioning was just right (I hate it when it's too hot, don't you?) 

Last year the best thing I tried was the new Avocado oil which is very tasty and supposed to be healthy and very good for you.  This year I was expecting more, and I really got it!

First we saw these plates and cutlery all recyclable made from different plants- pine leaves, bamboo and others, that is really cool and in addition to keeping our environment cleaner, you get really nice looking plates, for a very unique table arrangment!

Then we saw these chocolate fountains, except they weren't all chocolate. One was sesame seeds sweet cream, one was nougat (crushed sweet nuts powder) flavored, and ya-ha the others were just ordinary chocolate. Obviously everybody stopped at that point and tried at least 2-3 flavors..

Then we saw a large group of people standing next to this guy giving everybody cake handouts from a famous Swedish (or Swiss?) cake company. They were soooo good, I can imagine why they are so famous. I wish I could send you a taste.

A sample of the swedish/swiss cakes

Then we saw the cutest pita bread ever! Baby Pita Bread. Iris is nibbling on one of them. they were really good and a great size for younger kids for snack time.

baby pita -look how small they are!

 Back to sweetness- there were so many different chocolate and dough shells for filling

My favorite sweet is called Cream-Bo A.K.A warm Ice-cream A.K.A Marshmallow-treat 

Though the Cream-Bo is created on a production line, the foil covering each one is done manualy

Making Cream-Bo -check it out 

Here is a recipe for the homemade version which is so much better compared to the store type:

Foamy filling

1 ¾ cups of sugar

¼ cup of lukewarm water

3 egg whites

¼ teaspoon tartar cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Piping bag

Round sweet cookies (you can use Oreo sandwiches or each cookie separated.

For the chocolate coating

400 grams / 0.88 lb dark chocolate

3 table spoons canola oil

1.  Mix all the foamy filling ingredients together in a heat durable bowl using the double boiler method (A set of pans: a saucepan that holds hot water, and a bowl that fits securely over the saucepan. The ingredients are placed in the bowl and melt/warm-cook over gentle, indirect heat. Any metal or glass bowl that fits over the top of a saucepan will do.)

2.  Mix the ingredients with a hand mixer for 10 minutes, until you get shiny stiff white foam.

3.  Remove the bowl from the pot and mix with the mixer for 2 more minutes.  

4.  For best results use a candy thermometer and make sure the mixture doesn't exceed 70⁰ c /158⁰ F degrees.

5.  Place the cookies on a tray covered with a baking sheet; keep a small distance between them.

6.  Fill your piping bag with the white foam and pipe a mountain peak on each cookie.

7.  Place the tray in the refrigerator.

8.  Melt the chocolate and oil in a clean bowl using the double boiler method again, until the mixture becomes smooth and shiny.

9   Remove from heat and cool mixture foe about 20 minutes

10.Take the cookies out of the fridge. Using a table spoon coat the foam peaks with the runny chocolate

11.Leave in room temperature for 20 minutes and place in the fridge for at least 3 more hours.   

Cake away!
t'il next time
Sharon

What a cake!

This is going to be a short post, because I think the following article is quite enough.

Here’s a toast to William & Catherine, may their marriage last forever with everlasting love.

I hope they had a tasty cake, it was beautiful!

Check out the cake and crew that worked on it

Just in case, William ordered a second wedding cake from his favorite recipe:

A tea biscuits cake

and here you can see how it looked

check out the photos at the top of this page the dark chocolate cake is the tea biscuits cake William ordered.

The tea biscuit cake was actually eaten during a morning coffee-tea-toasting held at the palace.

It was very exciting to tell my kids a prince and princess are about to be married. It blew their mind away. They asked me if we could go see them...

We didn't, obviously, but we watched it on TV and they had so much fun, my youngest daughter said Kate is very pretty and William handsome and she also said that when she marries it will only be to a real prince.

Hope you enjoyed the wedding, and the cake photos, if not a taste.

Cake away

Sharon

A GREEN WEDDING CAKE? Are you sure?

Sometimes a bride comes to my consulting meeting well prepared.

I really enjoy these meetings, hearing from the bride exactly what she wants, helping out with the design when necessary, and creating a cake that I might never have thought of because the style and concept are coming from someone else.

We sat down with her mom to decide on the cake design. She already knew she wanted a cake based on her very special and unique invitation. The invitation is a story in itself and I thought you might want to hear it- the bride Liat is a very artsy person. She loves design and beautiful things.

While looking for an idea for a wedding invitation, her aunt called from London to tell her that she found an amazing idea for her (her aunt is very artsy herself). She found a gift card sold at one of the leading store chains in the UK. Actually the cover was the interesting part. Her aunt sent her a photo and she fell in love… 

This is the invitations envelope (I know it doesn't look like much, but it was really hard to capture the beauty and unique ness of the colors. The white dots in the background are almost invisible...

Her aunt contacted the stores management and asked to buy about 200 pieces, but they said that there is only a limited amount and they can’t sell her that amount.

Obviously Liat her mom and aunt were really frustrated because they were sure all was lost (and you know how it is when you really want something it’s very difficult to choose something else and be thrilled about it). But then they figured out a way to do it anyway!

The frustrated aunt went back to the store and looked at the gift card and then she understood it was a card that can be bought for any sum from 1£ and up (that’s about 1 ½ bucks)

So she ended up buying 200 gift cards for a total of 200£…

Though, that wasn’t the end of it!

Liat’s mom flew over to pick up the important delivery and make sure it arrives home safely. After that they had to remove the back of the cover (it had an advertisement) finally they glued a new back created by a professional printing company, and instead of the gift card they placed an invitation.

Well, back to the cake- Liat wanted to have elements from the invitation on her cake.

The background was light apple green with white polka dots. The front had a special design combined with rich peachy-pink roses and two swallows. 

This is a photo taken in my studio (hence the background) the colors here are closeset to the real actual cake. This was one of the most difficult attempts to photo a cake. 

For the drawen roses and decoration I used special edible paper to save time and money. The sugar roses were made in consistency to the roses in the invitation.

The swallows

The cake placed at the wedding hall a couple of hours before the wedding starts (you can see how the light changes the colors on the cake)

I never created a green wedding cake before, and if you’d ask me, I’d probably say “a green wedding cake? Are you sure?” but I rally love the way this cake turned out, and so did Liat!

I hope this will inspire you to test your boundaries and realize that there are no limits!

Mazal tov Liat and Sagi 

And to all you cake decorators, Cake away ! until next time

Sharon