Working with marsipan for a change

Ok so it is rare for us to do what we affectionately call a 'domed cake'. Traditionally, decorated cakes were traditional fruit cake layered with marsipan and then finished with fondant. Last week we went traditional and made four beautiful cakes for four 80th birthdays - a client who knew how to entertain put on one impressive birthday event!

This cake is adorned with deep red roses and natural looking green leaves.
This cake was a cake to be shared and cut at the event. As it was two men and one lady it was important to find the balance between not too masculine or feminine.
This lovely cake uses a combination of handpainting and piping.

as does this ...

Marsipan tends to be something people either love or hate. Unfortunately, for those who love it, it is very hard to purchase good quality marsipan in Australia. Thankfully our pastry chef is German and as we all know marsipan is pretty much synonymise with German. Nick imports this from Germany and whilst very pricey it is definitely quality!

We had a bit of fun trying to pronounce ...

Here is the actual marsipan. It can be quite tacky and very different from the imitation marsipans that are made in Australia. Nick was a gem and gave me fabulous advice. I had once heard not to use cornflour to roll marsipan but that is apparently not true which was good as we mostly use cornflour for rolling. This marsipan can be quite sticky and would be terrible to use with icing sugar.

Whilst it's good to embrace difference I am delighted to be back with ganache!

Til next time,

Belinda

http://www.ediblecreations.com.au/