Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Temari Cakes at Peggy Porschen

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to visit the Peggy Porschen Academy for the first time. I was attending the Temari Cakes course with Maki Searle who is famous in cake circles for her innovative spherical shaped cakes.
Maki of Maki's Cakes took us through the process for making Temari cakes step by step. These gorgeous cakes are perfect for many occasions but are particular popular for weddings...although I'm not sure how I'd feel about making 100 of them! :-)
They're also ideal for Christmas...just make them in festive colours...et voila...you have Christmas baubles!
On the day we made two sizes of Temari cake and also the lovely parcel cake below. We made the spotty bow by cutting out small circles of green and laying them on top of the red before gently rolling over them. You can see the same technique here, which I used to make Pudsey Bear's bandana.
So what does Temari actually mean I hear you ask...or even if you didn't I'm going to tell you anyway! Temari are traditional Japanese hand balls for kids to bounce and dribble. It's not only cake here...you get education too ;-)
To make the balls, the cakes are baked in a half sphere silicone mould. The cakes are then levelled and a small amount of cake is scooped out with a melon baller. Half the spheres are filled with jam and half with buttercream and they're then chilled. Two halves are then put together before the whole thing is lighly coated in buttercream.
When thoroughly chilled the balls are covered in marzipan as you can see Maki doing in the picture above. They're then covered in sugarpaste icing.
The finishing touch is the addition of a little lustre dust, some glitter and piped royal icing using a 1.5 nozzle. I've also seen Temari balls with little snowflakes cut out of flowerpaste, hardened and then stuck on...very wintery and they'd make a lovely Chirstmas present.
If you'd like to know more about how to make Temari cakes then Maki explains the process in her book Cakes to Fall in Love With.
These cakes really are beautiful and I'd love to find the time to make some more. They're so unusual and very original.
To finish any visit to the academy or if you just happen to be passing, the lovely Peggy Porschen Parlour is just across the road. I had a sticky toffee cupcake which was a moist date and walnut sponge with a creamy caramel centre and a toffee frosting. I don't normally rave about such things but I would go so far to say that this was one of the best cupcakes I've ever eaten...truly delicious! I also saved a sugar plum cupcake for the next day which was a tasty combination of plum and cinnamon.
As for my visit to the academy, I did enjoy my day and the Temari cake instruction but I do find the price to be extremely high considering I have paid less for courses elsewhere and the experience has been just as good. That being said...I'm so pleased to have learnt how to make Temari cakes and some other courses use dummies for their Temari instead of real cake so it was worth it for that alone!

13 comments:

  1. Wow! They look fab! I was at Peggy's on Sunday (2nd Dec) and had the sugar plum cupcake! Yummy. Xx

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  2. Wow these look incredible! I wanted to make some spherical bauble cakes for christmas so might attempt something similar. Were they tricky to make?

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  3. Those cakes are so beautiful and creative. Thank you for stopping by my blog and your sweet words.

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  4. They look really stunning! I wouldn't want to eat them they're so pretty :)

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  5. Now utterly fabulous Laura! Just so inventive! Karen

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  6. Wow! I've never heard of these but they look amazing! :)

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  7. Oooooooooooooh you are a lucky duck! What a great way to spend a day. Lovely stuff.

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  8. Hi Ellie, I would say fairly tricky but certainly do-able! I think the trick is making sure your marzipan and icing is nice and smooth and ensuring it's all carefully gathered underneath! I'd love to see your baubles if you give them a try :-)

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  9. They are amazing! I would love to spend a day at Peggy Porschen's. So exciting!

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  10. Let me tell you...I have been searching for a few weeks for a really detailed commentary on Temari cakes...THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH for sharing this invaluable technique directly from Maki's teaching. Yes you have a blog but considering that you PAID for this lesson, and chose to post it on your blog with PICS and details just shows that there are still great people in this world. I have much gratitude!!!!!!!

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  11. My comments too 'How Sweet It Is' what a grest tutorial, just managed to buy her book second-hand so can't wait to have a go!

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