I actually can't believe it's over. Sometimes the things we do in this class bother me a lot. Like notes, but that bothers me in every class, some projects that get sprung upon us. But I've never had more fun in this class than the past few weeks. I know it's astonishing. The Jacob Kaffey had fun in gifted class. It's like one of those times we should document the date and put it down in history. I'll just reflect a little. My TED talk was pretty good I think. I always have pretty killer opening and endings and then the in-between gets kind of ehh... but I think I kept this one together. I mean the parts that were supposed to be funny some of the people laughed and it made me feel pretty special. I really like that when you're up there it's hard to see the people so once I started talking I felt like I was talking to myself. I honestly forgot McPerlman was in the room. And yeah I was shaking a little but I pushed through, and I think my speech ran pretty smoothly compared to many of the other ones.. But my visuals were cute and funny. I slipped the picture of me into it, and if you didn't catch it the first time, here's a second chance!!
So I can finally relax for spring break. If it's not warm of break I'm going to be pretty mad. Oh right, if I were to rate myself on my presentation, I'd give it a solid 9 and a half. The half point off because I stumbled a little with the notecards and I wasn't really sure if I was loud enough. It's hard to tell since I'm the one talking so it might sound loud to me but no one else. I'm really sad to part with cake decorating being my homework. Like now it's only free time and I'm not sure how much motivation I will have for it. I wish I was creative enough to make like my own cake like the real cake boss does. I took mine from recipes and other websites. Obviously I would alter them to make them original like the coloring on the last cake was all original. But I want to be able to make something all by my own with my own ideas. Maybe I should learn to value creativity more. @mydeepermessage Oh and incase you didn't get title you should check my week 0 blog post!! My final sign off, Professional Baker: Jacob Kaffey Comments: Jacob Cohen Margo Kaplan Alexa Knapp
I can't believe this is the
final week. I feel like I've been decorating these cakes for years. I tried to
keep this week pretty relaxed as I am presenting on Monday and will be
focusing most of my time to the TED talk. I have about half of my script
drafted and I am brainstorming some ideas for my last cake. I'm actually
starting to get a little worried but hopefully I'll be alright.
Coming up with a cake idea
was actually a huge dilemma for me. Honestly there's so many upper-level cakes
that I could probably tackle this week. The only problem is that I don't have
an entire day to work on the cake. I have this issue where I like can't bake my
cakes a week in advance. The cake also will tend to go bad in a top of 3 days
so I end up making the actual cake 2 days before I bring it in, and decorate
the day before. It's not the greatest system, as I have realized. Some of it
has to do with my tendency to procrastinate (a lot). But thankfully I happened
to find myself looking through the good ol' 7th grade birthday present. It was
this amazing cook book made up of all of these crazy different designs. I've
only done about 4 of them. I did a pigs in the blanket (you can see it on my
first blog post), a peacock, something else (I forget) and the cake that I will
be making for this week. I'll keep it a surprise to kind of keep you all in
suspense. I can tell you one thing, it's going to be big and will require a box
to carry. It'll be colorful too... or will it? Guess you'll have to take a
bite!! ;)
Now that I have the whole
"which cake to choose" dilemma out of the way, I can focus on my TED
talk. Once again, another thing that I can use Netflix to procrastinate on!!!. I know my speech
is going to be well thought out though. I have had my end goal in thought since
the second week of this project. My whole problem, although, is the part about
getting to the end. I wrote my opening, and Toni told me it was really good.
And if Toni tells you it's good, then it's really good. She has very high
standards. So I just have to brainstorm the things I want to include in
the rest of the talk and I think I'll be set. If I get too worked up about
public speaking then my speeches don't go so well. That's why I'm trying to
stay calm and also drafting my TED talk at the same time I'm baking the cakes.
The baking thing has a really calming effect on me. Whether it's the smell or
the time I have to take out of my day and sort of slow everything down, it's
very hard for me to get stressed while baking. So I'm writing while I'm at my
calmest state which will help to make my talk the best it can be.
Well I really have to get
back to work. Hopefully this dumb computer doesn’t glitch out on me when I try
to upload and delete all my work again!! Let’s hope for the best. Not only for
this computer, but for my TED talk as well. Farewell. All’s well that ends
well. (Almost) Professional Baker, Jacob Kaffey Comments: Lizzy Cutler Toni Mcfarland David Weiss
For those of you following my
progress, this week was one huge step for mankind… Well, not really. I really
like to keep things simple when I am first trying something out, so there was
not a huge step from last week. My min focus of the week was to actually start
decorating my cupcakes instead of just frosting them. If you’re lucky, and I
have enough energy to frost all 24 of these cupcakes, there may be a little
treat for you all on day 6! It won’t be much, but I mean cupcakes are cupcakes,
am I right. I’ll try to make them look as pretty as I can and dazzle all of you
with my artistic decorating abilities.
So, like I said, I actually started
to decorate the cupcakes this week. My goal was to find 12 different ways to
decorate a cupcake, and since there are 24 cupcakes. The only problem was that
I got a little hungry when decorating them and so there are really only 23
cupcakes… That’s beside the point, though. So I was successful in finding all
12 of my types of decorations. I struggled to find the 12 for a while. And I
was ecstatic when I found a 12th that was easy enough for a
beginner. But, I overlooked one slight problem: most of the decorations need
special types of tips to go on the end of the piping bags. I did not realize
the predicament I put myself into until I went to decorate one of
the 12 that I
picked out, and I didn’t have the tip for it. So, I made do with the 6 tips
that I had, and made the (somewhat) beautiful creations for this week.
Oh and if anyone was wondering, I
decided to not make my own frosting this week. The frosting for last week only
tasted like confectioner’s sugar and it didn’t taste like frosting at all. So I
was very disappointed in the recipe I found, got frustrated, and resorted to
using Betty Crocker’s wonderful frosting. The decorations I have for you this
week are: the 1 M Swirl, The Round Tip Swirl, The Rosette, The Ruffle Shuffle,
The E-Motion, The good ol’ Zig Zag, The Pull Out Star, The Zig Zag Puff (a
twist on the original), The Shell, The Hershey Kiss, and The Spike.
From former experience, I have
found that more often than not, frosting is much too thick to be able to spread
into different forms. The frosting you take right out of the can is made to
just cover the cupcakes with one layer. So, I didn’t know what to do with the
frosting to make it thinner. I thought about leaving it out for a while, but it
really didn’t do much. Thankfully my mom has dabbled in her cake decorations
and she knew exactly what to do. I added some milk and BAM… perfect frosting
consistency. Well… that is until you let them sit out for a little. I frosted
the first two and found them to be running a little bit. I had to readjust and
put them into the fridge to cool and harden a little. Maybe I’ll keep with this
technique of frosting and then cooling. I think I might just cool the frosting
a little bit. Now that I think of it, cooling the cupcakes
kind of contradicts the idea of
adding milk… Oh well.
**The cupcake on the
RIGHT in each picture is the second cupcake**
The 1 M Swirl
This one
was easy. I took a simple star tip and put a small dot of frosting in the
middle. I’m sure you could guess that I came out with a neat little star… but
if you couldn’t then… uhh… I’m a little bit worried quite honestly. Anyway,
once you have the star in the middle, you apply the same amount of pressure and
begin to swirl outwards from the star. You get this nice little swirled
pattern, hence the name. As I said before, each decoration gets two cupcakes.
So on the second cupcake I swirled and as I got to the edge of the cupcake,
began to do the same circular motion towards the center of the cupcake to give
it some volume. All in all, I’m actually very proud of my first two
decorations. I’ll add some sprinkles and other little candies at the end of all
my decorating to spice up the cupcakes a little.
The Round Tip Swirl
Okay let me
tell you. This one was NOT easy. The directions (I have this whole website that
has directions on how to do all of these decorations) tell you to like do it
quickly and go in a circular motion. And like they have pictures, so like you’d
think it would help. But it doesn’t. It has like the beginning and then the
next step is the end and it’s very clear that the cupcake in the first picture
is not the same as the second. So basically you do the same thing as the
1MSwirl but you use a large circular
tip. And it was a little stressful and these cupcakes don’t look as pretty as I
was hoping, but I’m just going to move forward.
The Rosette
So after
some short research about the rosette, I came to find that this is the
decoration that is very common on cupcakes from bakeries. So if someone tells
you to imagine a cupcake and you see that patterned swirl, you are most likely
thinking of a cupcake with the rosette on top. As I move farther into these decorations
I have come to notice that the counter-clockwise circular motion is very
common. This decoration was similar to the first one, so I made 4 little
rosettes on each cupcake to show the difference. I was glad I was able to take
my time with these and they came out pretty well.
The Ruffle Shuffle
It’s really
just the ruffle, but I added the shuffle just because “the ruffle” is too
boring for me. I was not very fond of this one. It was a little weird and I
realized that this is better for the border of a cake. It was not effective for
decorating the cupcakes. But in reality, this border technique is better for me
for the following weeks. But what you had to do was hold the tip at a 45° angle
and move the tip up and to the right. To end the ruffle, you push back down.
They started off a little ugly and I found
that when moving down if you move
the tip back into the frosting you get this nice little mountain of frosting.
It made the ruffle easier to see. In the pictures you can see a close-up to the
right to see the decoration a little better.
The E-Motion
Yet again,
I come across another decoration for the borders. This decoration is simple.
It’s really exactly what it sounds like. You press the tip down and make a
cursive “e”. You just continue the cursive “e” and write them like you would
when you were first learning cursive. Just switch out that pencil for a
frosting bag and continue your line of various looking “e’s”. I actually
accidentally decorated these to look like the Hostess® cupcakes
Good ol’ Zig Zag
feat. The Puff
I decided
to just group these two decorations together considering they are basically the
same. I’m sure you can guess what it looks like. I was interested to find out
for almost ¾ of all the decorations use the same star tip. I was
expecting to have to change and clean the tip each time but it actually made my
life much easier. So to all of my indie/alternative music listeners, this
decoration looked A LOT like the Arctic Monkey’s artwork on their latest album
looks like. It was mostly the puff one, but both looked relatively like it. So
the puff one was different just because of how the strokes got wider and wider
until you decided you reached the middle point and then they started to get
smaller again. So like if you were to draw a tornado, it would be wider at the
top and thinner at the bottom, sort of like that.
The Pull Out Star
There isn’t
really much to this one. You just make a star, and pull away as you decrease
the pressure. It’s basically what the title states. But let me tell yo
u, the
example pictures for this went 0 to 100 really quick. You had like just one
tiny star and then the last one was like this whole crazy caterpillar thing. I
can’t even explain it.
Since I
just realized how redundant this post has been I’ll speed past the last few and
give you a nice little video to watch for the last 3. So the shell looks like a
shell (surprise!!!). Basically you just pipe out a lot of frosting and
gradually decrease as your bring the bag closer towards you. And here would be
the video, the second of the HowCast videos from their baking playlist that I
have used. It tells how to do the The Hershey Kiss and The Spike way better
than I would be able to explain. And it also gives you a nice visual of how to
do it.
So, a whole
week and 5 pounds later, I am finally signing off. I have successfully eaten
almost an entire can of frosting and also improved my decorating skills. I also
widened my range of decorating techniques and designs. I would say I have a
decent repertoire at the moment. Honestly, I just wanted to use the word
repertoire. I hope you enjoy your treats for this block day. And I’m pretty
certain in saying you can expect some type of treat to come your way every day
our blog posts are due until the end of the project.
And as I
promised, I have to score myself on how stressed I feel. So, out of 10, I’ll
give this week a solid 3. There’s still a lot of work for me in the coming
days, but I was able to take a little time out of the week to spend on just
something I enjoy.
See ya next week,
Baking prodigy: Jacob Kaffey Comments: Simon Schiller Lizzy Cutler Matt Graeff
