Back Home, tetanus and all! Plus, my time at Bonnie Gordon College!

Its not that I have been absent because I don’t have recipes to share (in fact, I have quite a few piling up), it’s just that I have ten thousand things going on in my mind right now, and since each thought is more absurd than the next, I just wasn’t able to blog. Probably not blogging for so long has got me in a blogging rut as well and hence the writers’ block or whatever this is. But I guess I just need to jump back into it.

Kind of like cooking. For the first three days back from Canada I cooked absolutely nothing, relying solely on the frozen buffalo chicken wings and spicy black bean burgers that V had stocked up on while I was away for our meals. Three days later I took baby steps to cooking and now I am back in full swing (on most days). Except that on Monday I cut my finger real bad and had to go to urgent care to get my skin glued back and a tetanus shot as well, which left me more or less incapacitated to do anything and gave me an excuse to just louse around.

Now since I am better and I do have a lot of things to share, especially about my trip to Canada I thought I will just fill you in with all the stuff I learnt and made during my two month course at Bonnie Gordon College, and since I am not in the mood of writing too much (yup, this is when I am not in the mood), this one will be a picture heavy post. The picture on the left at the top (the very first pic of the post) is the cake I did as part of my Haute Couture assignment. We had to be inspired by haute couture and translate it to a cake. I chose to do a cake inspired by an Indian designer duo’s collection (Meera and Muzaffar Ali’s Jamazeb Collection). I really wanted to do a lehenga cake and thought it would be fun to practice the fabric like draping on the cake.

On the right is the figure model we learnt to make from sugar paste. I loved this class. Almost as much as I loved the sugar roses and orchids class. Sugar flowers are the most therapeutic things to make. At least for me.

Below, the cake on the left is the first actual cake (read not a dummy) that I have ever masked and covered with fondant. We also learnt how to make ribbons, bows, primroses and quilling, which I practiced on the cake on the right.

Each class was designed in such a way that the first hour or so would be spent on a demo by the teacher assigned to us for that day and then the rest of the day we would practice the technique taught on a dummy cake or an actual cake. Almost every day we were taking something back home- which meant a lot of cakes/cupcakes that my uncle’s family got to eat.

For the cake below on the left, I practiced the eyelet technique and painting using stencils, plus the use of silicon molds and ruffling. The cupcakes below are from our chocolate cakes’ class- we made a batch of white chocolate cupcakes and made a chocolate cake that we masked and decorated later.

For my wedding cake assignment, my imaginary client was an Indian bride who wanted a cake that represented her wedding decor. the wedding colours were orange, hot pink and magenta. Her head table had gold and silver accents. I did a paisley mehendi inspired design for the bottom square tier and topped with flowers for the top tier.

I also took a weekend macaron class from Bonnie Gordon College, since macarons have been on my list to master for the longest time (top left side pic below). The top right pic below is the bride and groom painting I decided to do for our painting on cakes class. We also spent a day with our very talented instructor working with sugar and isomalt. It was not one of my favorite classes, since sugar tends to be very hot to work with and I ended up with blisters on my fingers by the end of class. It was a learning experience, nonetheless.

For our final cake assignment, we were supposed to bake a two tiered chocolate cake and decorate it as per our “client’s” wishes. My theme was a bridal shower and the “client” wanted a paris themed cake and wanted it in pastel colors. I decided to do a pink piped Eiffel tower inspired by a card I had seen online, and do cut outs of a boulangerie and buildings to add to the whole Paris feel.

We also had a class on sculpted cakes and with my love for photography, I chose to do a polaroid camera. I did not have time to complete it in class and did not have the tools at my uncle’s place to add the rainbow stripes and other details, but still here it is.

The two months were definitely an enriching experience, and I am trying to make sure I keep practicing what I learnt and hopefully one day can see this to something more than just practicing for myself.