No, you misunderstand. I’m talking about an affordable system or a machine process for Bakers-- Whereby, they can take any shape or idea they have, put it into some CAD software, spit out a unique “laser lathed” Plastic model, and make cake pans to order on premises in a mold press. It would allow them to make entirely unique cakes on a per order and custom basis. The technology is there, if only slightly expensive, but for a serious artistic cake business the technology would be novel and perhap worth the investment.
Ah, I see. That does sound neat - of course it would totally change cake decorating, taking it from something you do with sugar and fat that happens to be on top of this foamy “cake” thing, and bring the design all the way to the cake itself. The cake would no longer be merely a structural element, but a design element. I’d be interested to see if it would change things. As someone who would rather eat the cake than the frosting, I like your thinking!
Fondant makes cakes look like they’ve been sculpted from polymer clay, and that weirds me out. It also reminds me of marzipan, and it is very easy to get sick of marzipan. So that’s two gut-reaction negatives for fondant.
I love good frosting - not greasy, or oversweet. I have no idea how to accomplish good frosting myself beyond chocolate or peanut butter. Flavors more subtle than that have been harder to do without problems (greasy texture etc.) So I can see the appeal of choosing fondant so as to avoid a bad frosting.
We tried making buttercream. It kind of turned out to be a whole bunch of sugary butter. The ‘becomes frosting’ miracle did not occur. We’ve been afraid to try again.
Of course, the biggest advantage of this would be time saved, shave off a few hours for sculpting, reduce overhead in inflexible, metalloid, and expensive baking equipment. Higher Volume, Higher profits.
This machining process could also be used for all types of culinary applications. Cake Making, Confections, and any haute molding of gelee, mousse, or flan.
My boyfriend and I walked by a subway advertisement for “Ace of Cakes” the other day, the one where Mr. Ace (whatever the main guy’s name is) has “bake cake” tattooed on his knuckles, and the BF said “what are they talking about? You never see anyone bake a cake on that show!”
The show is, from what I can tell, about a bunch of vaguely attractive stoned people making cool-looking things out of fondant that you’d never in a million years want to eat. That stuff looks nasty as hell.
If/when we get married, we’ll take the messy-looking buttercream, thank you very much!
Addendum: The CAD Mod (proprietary software) would split the cake design into planes or slices of accurately and optimally sized dies for perfect baking dimensions. Simply, fill, bake, cool, assemble, and layer with frosting; a model based on optimally sized and perfectly baked delectable cake of unlimited imagination, resolution, and dimension. Slip on the offset frosting mold, have a fitting and pressurized tube and buttercream frosting injection to the detail and texturization of the sheath.
Is this a crazy idea, or is it viable. I know some of you are on the engineering end of this, the implementation, I know some would like to invest on the bottom floor… I have no idea where to start? Would I patent this?
I’d agree with this wholeheartedly, except I’d remove the word “attractive” and replace “cool” with “okay”. But egads, some of those things have pvc pipe and rope and crap like that in them! Not to mention all the hastily fixed at the last minute fuckups. Who in their right, un-star-struck mind, would ever want a cake from there, I always ask myself when I watch that show.
Not to mention the episode where most of the decorators had colds…one girl snotted all over her hand, then went right back to cake airbrushing/painting. I understand it’s very likely that the scene of her washing her hands was cut for time, but didn’t anyone think about how disgusting that was?
Speaking of Food Network, they had a Disney-based episode of some show that focused on the cake-baking facilities at one of the theme parks. They used lots of fondant, of course – but they showed the decorators taking the cake back to the kitchen after the presentation so the fondant could be removed prior to serving.
They rarely show the guy who bakes the cakes because, well, who wants to watch somebody bake sheet cakes for half an hour? Also, he hates people who talk about how the cakes probably don’t taste any good when they haven’t even tasted it.
But egads, some of those things have pvc pipe and rope and crap like that in them! Not to mention all the hastily fixed at the last minute fuckups. Who in their right, un-star-struck mind, would ever want a cake from there, I always ask myself when I watch that show.
