Today was a great and busy day in Food Styling! A school came to tour the department and participate in our ice cream lab recipe with us. Chef Mary Helen had asked me the afternoon before to do a demo for the high schoolers. I decided that decorating a cake would be the most simple demo with the least amount of prep work. Thankfully, Lynkie’s cakes were still in the culinary department, so I scraped off all of her beautiful icing to redecorate the cake. I felt really bad about doing this, but it really beat having to bake a brand new cake at 5:00 am. I also enlisted Holly (my other Baking Babe) to help with the cake demo.

Lynkie’s cake before I destroyed it:

We decided to do a “drip” cake, so when we came in at 7:30, I made buttercream and colored it light blue and Holly made chocolate ganache for the drips.

I was honestly pretty nervous in front of the kids. They were chattering throughout the entire demo which bothered me a little bit, but I know that it is something that I need to get used to and be prepared for for future demos. Holly and I had no time to rehearse the demo at all, so we were just having to go with the flow!

I demonstrated how to put the buttercream on the cake, smooth it out with an offset spatula and bench scraper, and then how to smooth it with a Viva paper towel. I did my best to get it smoothed out within just a couple minutes so that the demo would not last too long; however, the buttercream was by no means perfect. I really don’t think you could tell though because of the distance between the cake and the audience. I then popped it into the freezer for a few minutes while Holly demonstrated how to make the chocolate ganache. Once she was all finished, I pulled the cake out of the fridge and she showed the kids how to pour the chocolate onto the cake to make the drips.

I then filled a disposable piping bag with a 1M tip and buttercream, and showed the audience how to pipe a few buttercream rosettes!

All in all, I think the cake turned out pretty well for being done in under ten minutes with no prior rehearsal! Holly had never even done a drip cake before, so I think she did excellent for this being her first try! We were both fairly pleased with the resulting cake. Of course, if we had more time, the cake would be better (the buttercream could have been smoothed out better and the ganache could have been warmer to make thinner drips) but all in all, it was a pretty good “learning on the job” kind of experience.

Of course, we trashed the cake when it was all over because it was fairly old at this point, so unfortunately, no one got to eat it. However, some of our classmates had made scones for the high schoolers, and Chef Mary Helen let Holly and me have one for doing the demo!

We cleaned up our mess while Chef Mary Helen demoed how to make artificial ice cream to the kids. Once she was all finished, we each got to make our own artificial ice cream! Holly and I teamed up once again as The Baking Babes to make our ice cream.

Here is the recipe:

Artificial Ice Cream

Ingredients:

• 1 lb powdered sugar
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup Crisco
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup light corn syrup

Directions:

1. Mix everything together in a food processor or knead together with gloved hands until smooth in consistency.
2. Shape into a ball in preparation to scoop.
3. Store covered with plastic wrap to prevent drying. Refrigerate if made in advance.

Variations:

• “vanilla” ice cream – substitute 2 to 3 tbsp of margarine for the crisco
• “strawberry” ice cream – substitute 1/4 cup strawberry jam for syrup
• “chocolate” ice cream – add cocoa powder until desired color.

**For best results, use hamilton beach scoop and press down as you press scoop lever.

Holly and I made three batches of this, one for each “flavor”. We then plated our own ice cream. I put one scoop of each flavor on an oval plate and added a drizzle of chocolate syrup and some colored sprinkles!

I really loved my presentation. It looks like real ice cream from an ice cream parlor! I really like how kind of messy the edges of the scoops were – this made them look a lot more real. All I need was a banana to go on top of my sundae!

Holly decided to use all chocolate and put small scoops in a martini glass with raspberries and mint leaves!

Her ice cream looked more like it would belong in an upscale restaurant. I can almost taste the chocolate and raspberry combination when I look at it!

She also made a three flavored cone of ice cream with chocolate drizzle and sprinkles.

Chef Mary Helen suggested that we take a selfie with the ice cream cone, and as we did, the ICE CREAM FELL OFF THE CONE ONTO HOLLY’S WHITE JACKET! She had the biggest chocolate stain on her jacket! She even caught it in action:

Oh, it was so so funny and tragic at the same time. Of course we had to clean up the ice cream mess on the floor, but I really think the picture was worth it!

I cannot wait to see what is in store for food styling next week when we do Valentine food styling!

ABC.