The theme for this important modern art collector's birthday was "Art Alive at 75". The cake helped him celebrate with a few of his favorite pieces including Jonathan Borofsky's Hammering Man (several!), works by Jim Dine, Damien Hirst, Yasuma Morimura, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Frank Stella. And of course, his very favorite work of art, his family.
Robin Leach (Life styles of the Rich and Famous) was the honored guest at San Diego Youth & Community Services’ “Creations in Chocolate” fund-raiser at the NTC Promenade.
The city’s top master pastry chefs and chocolatiers satisfied sweet tooths for the benefit of the Bridgman Home, Southern California’s first group home for deaf youth.
as seen in the May, 2008 issue of San Diego Magazine:
We made a very awesome cake covered with chocolate fondant, decorated with white modeling chocolate flowers and painted with gold swirlies. The top 3 cakes were auctioned off. The bottom 2 were yummy Styrofoam. And mini chocolate cupcakes for the crowd. Mmmmmmm. That's me on the left, my associate Casey (who got to ENJOY the party!) and her BF, and of course Robin Leach.
Do you think it should be "sweet teeth" instead of "sweet tooths?" I'm confused.
I've listed some of my favorite books in the Books section (duh) of this blog but unfortunately, some of the very best ones aren't visible because they only give you Amazon as a resource. So, I'm going to tell you about a few of my other personal favorites which I have found to be inspirational.
First of all, I have to admit that generally I don't buy cookbooks for the recipes. I buy them for the photographs, the histories that are sometimes included, presentation ideas, flavor combinations, etc. I can go to a bookstore and leave with 5 or 6 cookbooks and spend several days in bed reading through them like novels. I will spend time reading a cookbook before I will spend time reading an actual novel. And then, they go up on a shelf and I may not open them again for years. But I KNOW what is in them and when I need something, I remember exactly where to look. At some point, I will refer to every book that I have.
Mastering the Art of French Pastry was published in 1984 and I think is still one of the best books on French Pastry ever written. If you can find it, BUY IT. This book started me thinking like a pastry chef even though I was just a little baker wannabe who had a recipe for EVERYTHING. It made me realize that this could become this, which could then become that, and go between these and HEY-a really cool dessert!
I purchased Das Ist Zucker after taking a beginning sugar course from Ewald Notter at his school which was then located in Gaithersburg, Maryland (I think it's in Florida now). After the class, the book makes sense although I will NEVER even come close to creating some of the amazing pieces he demonstrates. (I make GREAT spheres and EXCELLENT seaweed) It has helpful beginning advice but it's still better to have actually had hands on experience before attempting sugar work. And of course, the right equipment, which is quite substantial and costly which is why very few people ever become masters of this incredible art form. There's just so much STUFF you have to have. Another helpful purchase was his 2 part Basic Sugar Decoration and Advanced Sugar Decoration videos (or now probably DVD's) done through the Culinary Institute of America. The videos are shot in the exact sequence as the courses so, if you've been through the course, it's like going all over again.
Au Coeur Des Saveurs is just an amazing book. It's huge and expensive and a must have for any serious pastry chef's library. It's in French and English which is extremely helpful and the desserts are magnificent.
los postres de el bulli is another one of those expensive "must have" books for the serious pastry chef. Albert Adria is a mad scientist and most of us will never make ANYTHING from this book other that maybe an espuma but that's a good reason to invest in an Issi whipper, right?
Faszination in Marzipan is another REALLY old book by Georg Maushagen who, quite coincidentally, just created the monumentally monstrous wedding cake for Ivana Trump and her boy-toy (OK, OK, don't be a Bitter Betty!) at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. With the able assistance of my good friend and Master Pastry Chef Rudi Weider of the San Diego Marriott Marina. Oh the stories I got to hear. You guys didn't hear NUTHIN! But I digress. I took a sugar class from Georg, like, 13 years ago. We actually held the class in the kitchen I was renting at the time. Of course, I never used anything that I learned and had to pay the big bucks to relearn it all from Ewald Notter 10 years later. Georg is like a rock star in Germany. Of course, here, he was just the guy who made Ivana's cake. No big whup. Did you SEE the thing? It was 9 freaking feet tall! Anyway, he's also a great marzipan guy. Hence, the book above. You were probably wondering.
Romantic Wedding Cakes by Kerry Vincent is great. It's beautiful and has unique and fabulous designs and techniques up the yin-yang. Of course, you need every crimper, cutter, shaper, patterned rolling pin and lace press in the known universe to create even one of her extravaganzas but you can tone it down and still have a very cool cake. Kerry is, as all Food Network Challenge addicts know, the evil judge who rarely has much positive to say about anything but, honestly, I'm a little suspicious of this role. Is she a plant? A sort of devil's advocate to create drama? Is she REALLY that mean? I don't know. Stay tuned for her next (OMG-did she REALLY just say that?) remark.
And then, there are the best cookbooks of all. The ones that are never published but the recipes you use day after day, year after year. Collected from friends, relatives, magazines, the Internet. The ones everybody always asks you for and you say, oh I just mix a little of this and that and, you know, I don't actually use a recipe. Because.....IT'S TAKEN ME 25 YEARS TO PERFECT IT AND YOU'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO REPRODUCE IT AND YOU'LL BE CALLING AND TELLING ME I GAVE YOU THE WRONG RECIPE.....etc. etc. etc. Like the crusty, old pages below.
I apologize for this being so dark and the poor sound quality. It's my first attempt so I promise I'll get better! It's just a silly clip where I'm being shown the "proper" way to use a whisk. I guarantee, you won't learn how to make bread pudding!
I have been one of Los Dos Chefs for the past 3 years. It is a scholarship benefit for deserving underpriveleged students organized by my friend and sidekick Marilyn Biggica. She puts her heart and soul into this event and even before the present one is over, she is planning next year's to be even bigger, better, and raising more funds. Ricardo Munoz is always the "other" and main chef as he is the poster boy for the culinary program for community colleges. I'll do another post on him at another time. He's a whole story unto itself.
This is a story of my own.
You would probably imagine that someone who ships a LOT of cookies for a living would pretty much have the process down pat and well organized. Well, I have a difficult time saying no to most projects quite frankly because I always need the dollars. And unless it's really stupid and I just don't want to do it I tend to take on more than most mortals (and my poor staff) can handle. This particular type of incident has happened a couple of times so this may actually become 2 stories.
We had an order of 300 cookies for a jeans company called Paige Premium Denim. They are based in NYC. Not a particularly big deal except that we had a full load of orders besides that one. As luck would have it, we missed the very last FedEx delivery and they were due there the following day. I am one of those people who would rather lose money than disappoint a client so it was obvious that I would have to deliver them personally. I was on the red eye that night to NYC, arrived at 6:30am, took a cab into the city directly to the street where the client's showroom was located. Unfortunately, the President of the United States was expected that day and giving a speech in Bryant Park, right across the street. The street was police barricaded and the cab had to drop me at the corner. With a huge shipping box and my rolling suitcase.
I was frantic. I couldn't carry the box AND my suitcase so what am I to do? I asked a policeman if he could watch my suitcase while I delivered the box but he didn't give me a whole lot of confidence as to just how carefully he might be watching after my belongings. So, there's a very busy deli on the corner. I went to the back and asked if there was any way I could leave my suitcase with them while I delivered the package and they shrugged and said OK. Awesome. So I left my suitcase there and ran (or rather staggered) down the block to the client's address, up the elevator (passing all kinds of designer showrooms with names that would make the average fashionista swoon with ecstacy) to the studio. No one was there except for a young stock girl. I gave her the box, letting her know what was inside and left. Back to the deli for my suitcase, cab to the W Hotel in Times Square, checked in, had a fabulous massage, nap, cocktails in the bar, dinner at Max Brenner (because he's a cool chocolate guy), cab to the airport at 5:30am and back to San Diego. Now, there are a couple of interesting things about this story, other than the sheer ridiculousness of flying across the country to deliver cookies. The first is: How amazing that after 9/11, a business, IN NYC, would allow a complete stranger to leave a suitcase unattended with no questions asked. The second is that my client never knew that I personally delivered those cookies. For all they knew, FedEx dropped them off that morning just in the nick of time.
The next story is even scarier. This incident gave me serious pause as to whether I should continue in this line of work or get a job at Starbucks.
There is an event in Indianapolis that has ocurred for several years called "Y-Me" for cancer research. It is held at the downtown Marriott and includes a luncheon and a fashion show and all the who's who ladies of Indianapolis attend. Nordstrom is a large part of the event. Just Fabulous was hired by Nordstrom to provide an amenities box for each guest. It had been on our schedule for months. Buuuuuut we're a little procrastatorial (is that a word?) and put off the project to the week prior thinking that was plenty of time. Now, this was for 1300 guests. That's 1300 little boxes that have to be unpacked, opened, stuffed with pretty pink shred, filled with 4 candies, each with a different image, closed, and packed into shipping boxes. That doesn't count the actual MAKING of the candies and putting the images on. It-was-freaking-insane. The plan had been to have all the boxes shipped to arrive the day prior to the event. Well, that wasn't happening. I had a drop dead time that I had to leave with all the boxes to make it to Fed Ex in time for a First Overnight delivery and at some point I realized that wasn't going to happen. So, I booked a flight to Indianapolis that left SD at 7:30pm and would get me in by 6:30am. Of course, I'm having to be in communication with my contact in Indianapolis who was amazingly calm about the whole thing. (An aside about Nordstrom employees: They are the easiest and most accomodating people I've ever worked with. Cheerful, friendly, organized. I LOVE working with that company!) Well, I finally had to leave with only 3/4 of the order, hoping that the rest could be finished and follow later. I get to the airport and am standing in line, waiting for the rest of the order to arrive, telling people to go on ahead of me. It's getting later and later. Finally, the rest of the boxes arrive (13 in all) and I proceed to the ticket window to check in. The WONDERFUL agent says, sorry, it's too late to get onto that flight. I'm dumbfounded. I said but I've been standing here for an hour and she says, well why didn't you go ahead and check in at least? I don't know, I'm an idiot and my brain is fried and paralyzed with terror I guess. I said, please, this is for a cancer event, I HAVE to get on that plane and she says well why didn't I get there earlier? My eyes are crossing and blood is coming out of my ears and my heart is coming right out of my chest. By this time, she's waving me aside and beckoning the next customer. The skycap is standing there with a cart full of boxes asking me what I want to do with them and I said "Just throw them away!" I walked off and sat down against a wall and cried. I think it was probably one of the worst points in my life. Well, some time went by and an airline employee finally came over and said, lets see if we can get you on another flight. Now, why, for the love of God, couldn't that other sadistic woman have done that very thing herself? So, there's another flight out at 11pm which would get me into Indianapolis at 9:30am. The luncheon is at 11am. I take it. So, get into Indy, race out to the rental car place, race back to baggage claim, jump out of the car and am immediately told that I can't leave it unattended. I can SEE ALL MY BOXES THROUGH THE WINDOW and I'm like, they're right there, I'll only be a second, this is for a CANCER EVENT and they're like, sorry, you can't leave blah blah blah, I just ran in and started loading them up. What were they going to do, shoot me? So, I get all loaded up, race to the Marriott which thankfully is pretty close to the airport, pull up in front and there's my contact pacing back and forth waiting for me. It's about 10:30. With about every bellman's help we got the boxes up to the ballroom and are faced with, I kid you not, an aircraft carrier sized area of tables. Pink and white balloons everywhere, pink everything. It was gorgeous. So, I and about 20 volunteers set a box at every place setting and by the time we finished it was 11am and they opened the doors to the first guests. Drove the rental car back to the airport and had to pass by the baggage claim area on my way to the ticket counter. One of the baggage people came out of the office and said, Hey, did you know you left 2 boxes here? I was like, well, we put a box at every place so ENJOY! Candy for Everyone! I was back in SD that afternoon.
That, my friends, is what you might call, a close shave. Not one I ever care to repeat again. Not only did I cause unnecessary stress for the client, but my staff and myself as well. It was one of THE most horrible experiences in my career however, I have to admit that these are the situations that keep me humble. Just when you start to think, hmm, I'm prettttty baaaad, something like this will bring you right back down to earth. But want to know something funny? They called us again this year and THIS year, we got it right.
I have to say that I must be getting really old and forgetful because I was reminded by my staff that the above story did NOT actually end QUITE that way. It seems that we were able to get 10 of the 12 boxes of cookies to FedEx in time for shipping however, I STILL had to hop a plane to Indy with the other 2 boxes. But once again, the client was not aware of this little glitch. So, I guess you could call it a happy ending other than the fact that my coveted Amex miles were severely impacted.
Kind of crowded, huh? Hey, don't EVER surprise me with a camera! Charity!
So the Art Alive event was great. Lots of oohs and ahhs over our little dessert. And one of the easiest things to serve that I've ever done at one of these events. Unfortunately I deleted the photo of the fine art cookies we did. Bummer.
OK, I admit it. I'm killing time while waiting to "do" an event called Art Alive at the San Diego Art Museum. It's a very cool event where florists choose a painting from the museum's collection and then do an arrangement that goes along with the theme of that piece of art. And there are food stations that serve whatever they are known for or in my case, something I just thought was super cute. We've spent 3 days making little cookies with art images on them and these freakingly adorable little "cupcake pops" that are mini cupcakes that look like.......mini cupcakes. I'll show you later. Anyway, I cannot take credit for the sweet, time sucking little treats. They were invented (as far as I know) by this company Bakerella who will undoubtedly become famous for them since they were snapped up by MARTHA. That's like being annointed by the Pope.
Anyway, since in my last post I mentioned "renderings", I thought I'd show you a few more. They're kind of interesting.
Ever wondered just how a cake is born? Generally the client has an idea of the direction in which they would like their cake to go. Simple and elegant, whimsical, towering, petite, monochromatic, technicolor, modern, romantically old fashioned, an unforgettable show stopper. Doesn't care because nobody remembers the cake anyway. THAT is enough to bring a cake stylist to tears. Important details such as color scheme, florals, linens, decor, design elements of the wedding gown and bridesmaids dresses all help the designer to create a cake that will fit seamlessly into the event.
These particular clients came into my office with no real clear idea of the cake design they were looking for. Their reception was being held at the Westgate Hotel which is a very ornate, gold leafy, brocade, cherub, oriental rugs, magnificent chandeliers and huge floral arrangements filled space. So that was my first glimpse into their personalities. Both were artistic and definitely wanting to impress their guests. They planned on using dramatic lighting and lots of jewel tones. So, my thoughts naturally went to Faberge egg designs. From there, they chose the particular egg they liked and I sketched out an idea. When designing a cake of this magnitude and cost, the client wants to know almost exactly what they will be getting so, a color rendering is the next step. The design phase can take weeks of tweaking. I worked with an artist (you can see the extent of my drawing ability above!) who incorporated all of the design elements I indicated in the description. It was then presented to the client who approved it and THEN, the real work began. Usually, I make a mock-up of the cake out of Styrofoam, especially if there are unusual shapes and different heights of tiers. Guessing is not an option. Then, we make all of the "accessories" which, in this case, took about a week. A false base, the royal icing "fan jewels", gold paisleys, leaves, and the egg top. The lion "pulls" were a challenge at first. I found a great drawer pull at an antique hardware store and made a mold which created the perfect lion head. The egg itself took an entire day and was covered with tons of teeny little gumpaste flowers painted gold and centered with garnet colored beads. Tiny pearls filled in all the gaps. The base of the egg was formed in a champagne glass with cast sugar, covered with fondant and then decorated. I won't bore you with the actual assembling of the cake but the scary part is the "day of" because so much of the decorating and application of accessories has to be done after the cake is almost completely built. It's a race against the clock. I don't know about other cake "people" but, after a cake like that, I feel like I've gone through childbirth. It's a huge adrenaline rush and then........it's over. Miller time.
Story submitted by: Jeanne Topham of I Dream of Jeanne Cakes.
This story comes from my friend Jeanne. We call her "Jeanne from Boston" and immediately know who we're talking about.
