Monday, October 29, 2012

Archimboldo cake - winter


Archimboldo is one of my favorite painters. Halloween is coming, and I just thought that doing a 3D version of his "Winter" would be wonderfully creepy.

Archimboldo's winter

Archimboldo winter cake





Ingredients:

Part 1
2 eggs
125 g crushed walnuts
1 Tbs instant coffee dissolved in 2 Tbs hot water
50 g sugar
orange flavor (natural, oil based)

Part 2
Apricot jam
1 banana+lemon juice

Part 3
250 g butter
880 g chestnut pureesugar (as needed, depends on chestnuts, whether sweetened or not)
rum or Bailey's
375 g  ground almonds

Whip up the egg white with half of the sugar. Whip the yolks, sugar, orange flavor and dissolved instant coffee until well mixed and paler color. Mix in crushed walnuts, and one Tbs of whipped up egg whites, and then fold in remaining egg whites, pour into a suitable cake pan (tiffin or doll shaped, greased with butter and sprinkled with flour) and bake at 180C until done. Leave i the pan for a few minutes, then turn over onto a cooling rack.

Mix together all the ingredients for Part 3.

Slice Part 1 in half, then spread some apricot jam on it and arrange banana slices sprinkled with lemon juice. Cover with chestnut part and the top half, and spread the chestnut part on the sides as well. Use the chestnut part to for a neck and continue forming a cylinder for entire length of the head. Stick a dowel inside for the support and chill for chestnut to set. Once it has hardened, use remaining chestnut part to shape the head and then again chill.

Day before assembling the cake prepare gumpaste leaves, fruit and some twigs. To make sure that leaf veins will stay light color, paint them with egg white before drying the leaves and color the leaves with petal dust once they are dry. The dust will not stick on egg white-painted parts. For the fruit, use styrofoam balls or crumpled aluminum foil for a lighter core and then covered it with marzipan and then gumpaste and imprint texture on it. The big branch supporting the fruit should be on a cake dowel rather than florist wire or toothpick, it needs sturdy support.

Cover the cake with marzipan and then fondant. For tree branches on top of the head, I have wound florist wire around toothpicks (I don't want to stick wires directly into cake, didn't have flower picks which are small enough, and was out of thin straws which can be used for the same purpose) and then covered it with brown fondant (Satin Ice, has a wonderful chocolate smell) and shade with petal dust. Use green gumpaste for moss (pass it through tea strainer and scrape it off or use a texture mat) and marzipan for mushroom "lips". In the end drape some light brown fondant around the bottom and stick in the branch on a dowel and attach the fruit.


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