Now We're Here - Week 5

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

It's Coming To An End - Week 4

           

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

Call Me "Rocky Bal-Baker"

Vlog from Jacob Kaffey on Vimeo.




Stress levels: 3, the corners of my cakes got ruined with the fondant


Comments: Toni McFarland, Jacob Cohen, Arslan Amir

The Tip is What Matters - Week 2

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 12^th 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 1M  Swirl 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

It's Gonna Need More Than One Coat- Week 1

There are so many plusses and minuses to cake decorating. Starting off with the plusses (my favorite) the simplicity of it. Decorating a cake can be as simple as just a little bit of frosting to spice up the flavor. That’s it. And I am relieved that my first week encompasses those simple frosting techniques. Although, the downside of this does mean that at some point, I will have to face the complexities like fondant and making shapes out of the cake. But, we are not there yet and week one was a piece of cake…literally.

Although simply frosting a cake may seem easy, it is most definitely not. I decided to start the first week off by frosting a batch of cupcakes rather than jumping straight into the cake. See, by using a cupcake I am able to get 24 mini-cakes to practice on. So it’s okay if I happen to screw up the first 23 cupcakes (trust me, it’s been done), because I still have that final cake to make up for the mistakes. But you cannot do that with a cake. If you mess up, you have to bake a whole new cake, and that’s just a waste of time. So please, fancy the simple, yet complex, art of the frosting.

Crumb Coat

Sometimes perfecting and learning the basics is the easiest way to get by in the world. The crumb coat can turn your final decorated cake from “eh, that’s neat” to “WOW! Where can I learn that?”

So, what really is a crumb coat? A crumb coat is the base coat of icing to a cake. Some refer to it as the dirty icing, which sounds gross to me. I’ll stick to crumb coat. So a crumb coat is not very difficult. It is typically used for layered cakes to help keep all the crumbs under the first coat of icing so it does not mess up any following decorations you may have. A typical birthday cake will have two layers of frosting, the first being the crumb coat. By using the crumb coat, it makes the final product more clean and less rough or dirty.

The crumb coat is really quite simple. You’re supposed to have a cake board and a turntable and a bunch of other fancy tools. But, the gist of it is you take a relatively large glob of frosting and you just plop it right on the top of the cake or cupcake. With layered cakes, the frosting that binds each later together is spread around the sides and taken off. The one trick to the crumb coat is that every once in a while, you must clean the offset, or angled, spatula so that you are not frosting any crumbs into the cake.

This video I found, which is actually part of a whole cake decorating series, shows the crumb coat step of the cake decorating process. It will be the first of many of the videos I will show you in this series. Buckle you’re seatbelts, you’re in for a ride!!

Lastly, the most ideal step of the crumb coat. It must must must muusstt be chilled after. Anything above 20-30 minutes will do the trick. It’s ideal because if you do not let the frosting chill, your second layer of frosting will mess with the crumb coat. All your hard work for the smooth decoration is thrown away and you end up with a messy cake once again.

Possible Benefits

I was really happy on Sunday night when I happened to stumble across a CNN article. It was called “This is your brain on crafting” and it talked about a lady that had PTSD and picked up knitting as a hobby to get away from thinking about the trauma she went through. The article further develops into how crafting can “help those who suffer from anxiety, depression, or chronic pain… it may also relieve stress, increase happiness…” (cnn.com). My immediate thought was that I was so relieved to read that. Cake decorating is clearly crafting, no matter how simple or complex the baker makes it. But I read on, and the article quotes a clinical neuropsychologist. It was Catherine Carey Levisay, I don’t know if you know her, but she is married to the CEO of Craftsy.com. Anyway, Levisay says, “There’s promising evidence… that creating – whether it be through art, music, cooking, quilting, sewing, drawing, photography (or) cake decorating – is beneficial to us in a number of important ways.” She even included cake decorating! I was ecstatic to hear this because now there is almost proof, and a neuropsychologist believes, that crafting can be a stress reliever. That was the entire purpose of me picking cake decorating. It was to discover a stress reliever. I took a risk without being certain that cake decorating would help, but now I know it does, and I’m very exited to give purpose to my TED talk!!! I will now begin to rate myself on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being no stress and 10 being a lot of stress, to start a little experiment of my own with the effects of cake decorating to me. It may not prove much since it is only one person, but I like the idea of my experiment. Here’s the link to the article in case you are inclined to read it:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/25/health/brain-crafting-benefits/

The Grand Finale

          Surprise!! The finale is my decorations! My (slightly annoying) parents decided to accidentally forget to get me frosting. Of course I knew they were going to do that, so I looked up a concoction of my own. Making frosting really is not very hard. So here’s my recipe:

Ingredients-

·      1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening

·      1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine softened

·      1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract

·      4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (approximately 1 lb.)

·      2 tablespoons milk

Directions

1. In large bowl, beat shortening and butter with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla.
2. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry.
3. Gradually add milk; beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.

          This recipe may be used throughout the rest of the project. I know it would be cool to make my own frosting every time but I also think that would take too much time. I might end up doing it though just to see how I can maybe adapt it to make it my own.

         

I first dropped the glob of frosting onto the cupcake as shown above. And then I tried to spread the frosting throughout the cake.

          Then terror struck. After starting the process of frosting my cupcakes, I came to a quick realization. I was unable to decorate the cupcakes like any of the videos where the cupcake was covered on the top and the sides too. Even by folding down the liners, the cupcakes were too small to cover the sides. It got all over my fingers, which was a sticky mess. In the end, when I continued to turn the cupcake, my fingers would just ruin the frosting on the sides.

Here are my first and last attempts to frosting the whole cupcake side-by-side

          You can see that I did improve in making it looks smoother, but the bottoms of the cupcakes are messy.

          As a result, I readjusted to frosting only the tops of the cupcakes but still using the technique of the crumb coat to make my cupcakes look as delectable as possible.

You can see that the cupcake naturally looks much cleaner even though it is just the crumb coat. I would like to note, that after the crumb coat and the cooling of the frosting in the fridge for about 10 minutes, there was a remarkable difference in the ease of the frosting (shown right)

Usually, before I knew about the crumb coat, I would just frost the cupcakes and they would never really look smooth or pretty. But I would only be doing the crumb coat, but now that I double coat the frosting, my skills have noticeably improved. I can't wait for the actual decorations of next week!!

Signing off,

The next Cake Boss

Comments:
Lizzy Cutler
Toni Mcfarland
Jacob Cohen

Started From the Bottom - Week 0

How many of you have ever wished you could be Buddy Valastro from Cake Boss? If not, how many have enjoyed watching his team decorate and deliver the cakes? I fall into the category of those who wish to be him. I am fascinated by how in such little time, he is able to come up with an idea and just create beautiful artworks out of cake. I have had a little past experience in decorating as I got a decorating book for my birthday and have made a few cakes for special occasions within my family. My favorite being the pigs in a blanket cake I made for my cousin’s 11th birthday. That is why I am investing the 20% of my time into cake decorating. Other reasons include how the slow and tedious process may lead to decreased level of stress and anxiety, which most people can relate to. And the best part, you end with a spectacular and delicious treat to eat! So by developing my cake decorating skills, I can find a healthy activity to relieve my anxiety.

To lay it all out, in cycle 1, I will start with the basics. I will research basic frosting tips and if cake decorating can actually help me with stress. I will start developing my skill by neatly frosting cupcakes in using the techniques I discovered. Each cupcake will hopefully be able to incorporate a different tip I researched about. Leading into cycle 2, I will find out which tools to use for the actual decorations and will frost a batch or two of cupcakes and each cupcake will incorporate a different pattern or use a different tool for the decorations. Cycle 3 is where I will cross the bridge from cupcakes to cakes to get one step closer to my end goal. I will keep it simple by just researching more complex designs and decorating one cake for that week using the designs. Cycle 4 is where I will start to use and create fondant rather than just using frosting for my decorations. I will strive to decorate a cake that week entirely with fondant and no frosting. Cycle 5 is where I will blend the fondant and the frosting to create 2 fully designed cakes, but by following a recipe and decoration directions for the cakes. And lastly, in week 6 I will reach my end goal by effectively creating my own original decorated cake by culminating all the skills I’ve learned throughout my project. Throughout the whole process, I will put my anxiety and stress levels onto a scale for each blog post to set up a personal experiment to see if the decorating can actually help me.

In the end, I hope to have found a healthy and effective anxiety-relieving activity for me to do. Throughout the process I will also begin to value the importance of focusing on personal goals. I tend to lose my sense of self and focus too much on other people which leads to potential problems. I’ll also be advancing my skills as a cake decorating because I think that’s a pretty cool skill to know just off hand. Like people can come up to you and be like, “what’s one of your passions?” and I’ll be able to answer that question with cake decorating and I’ll get the obvious follow up question, “Will you bake me something?” But either way, I will have a cool skill to be able to flaunt to. I also believe it’s a special and unique skill that will make me different in some kind of way. And I like that feeling.