In my design specification I decided my cake to be a Christmas theme; I chose to target my novelty cake at children. The decoration on my novelty cake was based on flat relief because if the cake were to be mass produced it would be difficult to manufacture 3D models, I made the decision to use fondant icing to cover and decorate my cake because I a lot more manageable then royal icing. The design I chose to use for the decoration on my gift cake fitted my specification of the Christmas theme and aiming it at children perfectly. My novelty cake was designed to serve between 3-4 people. If I were to sell my cake in a supermarket I would have priced it at about £4.98.
Originally I was going to use a layer of marzipan because it is a traditional Christmas cake covering for fruit cake, however seen as my design was targeted at children I decided against using a fruit cake base and used a Madeira sponge base, which didn’t need covering with marzipan. Once I had made my product I piped royal icing around the bottom of the cake to add detail to my design. Overall I think my design was successful due to the research and testing I carried out.
Throughout the practical lesson I was extremely organised because I knew exactly what to do, I had planned everything accurately, the correct equipment, instructions on what to do in which order and how long it should take to do. The new skills I learnt were how to use the creaming method for a cake base, which is very useful. The covering of the cake was complicated, but I was careful and made sure no crumbs got on the fondant icing, I used the palm of my hands and lifting the icing and smoothing it down to get a clean, smooth finish. For the decoration on my gift cake I used my hands to roll and flatten objects, I also used a special cutter to cut out Christmas trees to stick around the edge of my cake.
My gift cakes appearance was exactly how I had planned. My product was a circular cake with Christmas theme with a Rudolf face on the top, which fitted nicely with the target audience being children. The colour of the fondant icing I used matched the Christmas theme brilliantly. I decorated my cake very neatly so it looked professional. The cake was quite small I would have liked it to be bigger but unfortunately due to production restrictions. On the whole I think my cake looked like a great Christmas cake for children that you could defiantly mass produce and sell in a supermarket. My product looked very appetising so I sampled my cake I recorded its sensory qualities. I found that my gift cake was very sweet, slightly crumbly, rich in flavour, quite creamy and moist. The cake had a pale crumb with an even variation. In my opinion the cake tasted great and looked great. Success!
If I made this cake again, I would improve my cake mixture, it was very nice, but I think it could have been improved slightly by adding more butter to the mixture. I would consider spending more time on covering my cake in buttercream to use as an adhesive because on my plan I didn’t think it would take as long as it actually did take in the practical lesson. Despite that my cake was tasty and I did manage to complete the task in time.
I think I was particularly good at icing the cake because I have some practice at it. I was very organised and I used the lesson time appropriately. The quality of my planning and research was quite good; however I would have liked to have spent more time on it to achieve a better grade. In the future I think I need to improve on my annotation skills and understand fully what the task in hand is. I have learnt a lot about gift cakes throughout this project, especially about different cake bases.
In conclusion, my main aims for this project were to produce a Christmas gift cake targeted at children; I also aimed to complete my paper work to the highest standard possible. I feel I did not meet my aim to complete my work to my highest standard this was because sometimes I didn’t have enough time to complete the work to the standard I would have liked because of having work to complete from other subjects, so I had to rush my work a bit in order to complete all my work. However my organisation skills are very good, and I put a lot of effort into this project. I believe I have met my design brief, and my cake certainly did.
