WHIMSICAL BAKEHOUSE
BY KAYE HANSEN AND LIV HANSEN
Review by Barb & Ron Kroll
Whimsical Bakehouse - Fun-to-Make Cakes That Taste as Good as They Look
(Clarkson Potter) ISBN 978-0307587541 0307587541
Learn how to decorate cakes with cake decorating lessons from the Riviera Bakehouse in Westchester, NY. Whimsical Bakehouse is Cake Decorating 101 in a cookbook. Step-by-step cake decorating instruction includes delicious recipes for cakes, icings and fillings, as well as advice on cake assembly and making edible cake decorations.
The easy cake decorating designs will help you to create novelty cakes that look like professional cake decorating. Kaye Hansen and Liv Hansen provide cake decoration ideas, ranging from baby shower cake designs to birthday cake decorations and novelty cakes.
Freezing buttercream roses
Written like a cake decorating course, with clear instructions and photos, Whimsical Bakehouse shows you how to decorate cakes. If you are an amateur or professional cake decorator, you will learn new cake decorating techniques.
Kaye Hansen and Liv Hansen begin each chapter with an introduction. For example, the introduction to the cake decorating flowers chapter explains that you can make buttercream roses in advance and freeze them. You can make other icing flowers ahead of time, or pipe them directly on the cake.
Learn how to decorate cakes
Each chapter of the 160-page cake decorating book specifies what you will need, including cake and frosting recipes, as well as cake decorating supplies, such as tips for pastry bags and liquid gel colors.
The How To section provides cake decorating instruction in numbered points, from baking and icing cakes to cake decorating tips. Special inserts provide details.
The buttercream flowers insert, for example, explains how to make buttercream icing, roses, daisies, mums, pansies, daffodils, buds and other flowers. Each description includes numbers for the petal tips.
Cake decorating equipment
Another cake decorating insert shows you how to make basket weave decorations and how to pipe rosettes, ribbon borders, lattice, swag and shell patterns.
Buttercream recipes include delicious variations, like chocolate hazelnut buttercream and coffee buttercream.
The Basics chapter provides advice on how to fill a tilted cake. A cake decorating supplies chapter discusses decorating equipment, like flower nails and edible cake decorations, such as edible glitter and luster dust. An appendix lists mail-order cake decorating suppliers with phone numbers and web sites.
Color photos by Ben Fink depict birthday cake, cupcake, wedding cake and novelty cake decorations in Whimsical Bakehouse. Photos of piping, buttercream flowers and chocolate cake decorations illustrate cake decorating techniques.
Patterns for cake decorating
A color mixing chart explains how to create colors like leaf green and mint green, with buttercream and liquid gel colors, or wafer chocolate and candy colors.
Kaye Hansen and Liv Hansen provide cake decorating patterns that you can photocopy or trace and place below parchment paper as cake decorating guidelines. They include stars, bumble bees, butterflies and teddy bears (for baby shower cakes).
A chapter on cupcake decorations provides cake decorating ideas for novelty cupcakes, perfect for kids' parties. Whimsical Bakehouse shows you how to make cute ladybug, caterpillar, snail, dragonfly and other edible decorations from colored wafer chocolate and nonpareils sprinkles.
Sample Riviera Bakehouse recipes
Grand Marnier cheesecake. Julie's chocolate peanut butter swirl cheesecake. Chocolate apricot pecan torte. Truffle cake. Lemon ginger cream cheese pound cake. Cookies and cream filling. Walnut caramel cake. Hazelnut cake. Bailey's Irish Cream mousse filling. Raspberry buttercream.
Contents
IntroductionHow to get started
- Part One: The Basics
- Tools of the trade
- Working with chocolate
- Color
- The basics of cake assembly
- Part Two: Simple Cakes
- Ode to Jackson Pollock
- Starry night
- One-color chocolate method
- Fling
- Mini birthday cake
- Piping
- Crazy swirls
- Bugged out
- Multicolor chocolate method
- Summer nights
- Sunflower
- Advanced chocolate method
- Winter wonderland
- Relief chocolate method
- Flowers
- Coffee cup cake
- Part Three: Tiered Cakes
- Assembling tiered cakes
- White on white
- Summer daze
- New York, New York
- Autumn harvest
- Safari
- Quilting bee
- Tipsy birthday bash
- Oh baby
- Butterflies
Appendixes
Index
Authors
Kaye Hansen is a baker and the owner of Riviera Bakehouse. Liv Hansen is her daughter, and a painter, who uses her artistic skills to decorate novelty cakes.