Originally posted on October 1, 2012
JUST came from the Toba Garrett media workshop at the American Hospitality Academy (HA) Philippines, and I’m so passionate about baking and pastry arts again. New York’s top cake designer, Chef Toba Garrett is way up there in the international hierarchy of pastry arts because her name is synonymous to multi-million dollar weddings in New York City. If a bride is to have a Vera Wang wedding gown and jewelry by Tiffany and Co., she’s got to have no less than a Toba Garrett wedding cake to go with them.
A world-renowed cake artist, highly sought-after pastry master-instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) in New York and author of several books on pastry and cake design, Chef Toba Garrett is in Manila to conduct a Master Class on the intricate art of cake design from October 2 to 4, 2012 as part of AHA Philippines’ Master Chef series. It’s actually Chef Toba’s third time to come to Manila, and her previous sessions have been so successful that AHA Philippines, headed by Chef Gene Cordova as president, decided to bring her back a third time.
On October 2, she conducts Upscale Cupcake: Baking Cupcakes. On October 3, her class is all about Upscale Cupcake: Basic Design; and on October 4, she focuses on Upscale Cupcake: Advanced Design. This afternoon, however, she gave Philippine media a preview by putting together an interactive Master Chef series launch cum workshop at the AHA Philippines campus in Makati.
Chef Toba taught her media students how to make marzipan fruits – strawberries, oranges, lemons, apples and raspberries – using colored marzipan – and how to put together a marzipan fruit basket on a cupcake, filling in the negative spaces with buttercream icing in the shape of leaves. She also taught the class how to make fabric roses and molded leaves using chocolate fondant.
The techniques are simple but totally impressive.
• For the orange, simply take a grape-sized amount of orange-colored marzipan,add a pea-sized amount of green marzipan to it, massage or knead in to slightly tinge the orange with green, then roll it in the palm of your hands to make a round shape. Texturize it by rolling the ball on a cheese grater. Press lightly with a dogbone tool to make a slight indentation, then place a small clove in the indentation to serve as stem.
• For the apple, take two parts green marzipan and one part yellow marzipan, combine and massage to work in the color but don’t make it disappear totally, then roll into a ball and form shape of apple by applying more pressure on the lower half of the ball while rolling horizontally on table surface. Make an indentation on top and place a clove in the indentation to serve as stem.
• For the strawberry, make a ball out of red marzipan and roll with hands to form a cone shape. Add texture by rolling on cheese grater, then make an indentation and place a piece of clove in the indentation to serve as stem.
• For the lemon, take a grape-sized amount of yellow marzipan, add a pea-sized amount of green marzipan, massage it in, roll into a ball and slightly elongate both ends into a dull point. Roll on cheese grater, then, on one dull point, make a light cross-shape indentation using a paring knife, and push a clove in all the way.
• For raspberries, simply take smaller amounts of red marzipan, roll into small balls on cheese grater, then make an indentation on top. No need to push in a clove.
As for the fruit basket on the cupcake, simply pipe green buttercream icing onto the edges of a cupcake using a leaf tip, place a dollop of buttercream icing in the center, and start layering the fruits on top. Brush with corn syrup diluted in a little water, then fill in the negative spaces with buttercream icing in the shape of leaves.
Workshop participants made their own fruits basket cupcakes. The best-looking got a prize. No, I didn’t win, but, oh, well, to have Toba Garrett as teacher was prize enough! Who could ask for more?
