The Journey to a Birthday Cake

Each year I bake cakes for the kids birthdays. 

This year my daughter asked for Doctor Who. I obliged.

 

Look! I cleaned!

Now I can start the REAL work. I've already preheated the oven.

This HAS to be done by tomorrow. That means a late Friday night tonight.

 

What? Don't judge me! This is what it takes! I'm sure the #Doctor would agree.

No custard here though.

The Chocolate Half is in the oven. Now I had to use a different pan because I had no 9x13's. Someone absconded with them. So I used the roasting pan that came with the new gas oven. This may be a better solution although I am not sure if this may rise too high. We'll see. I do want some bubbles so I only banged it twice instead of really thumping it to make it dense.

Ok, it's high, but I don't think it's TOO high. It certainly hasn't overflowed the pan, it's still got a shape and hasn't fallen miserably. I just have to convince everyone to be QUIET!!! in the kitchen.

Chocolate half DONE.

ALRIGHHHHHHHT. It turned out BEAUTIFUL. I am so glad the baking force is still with me. Double box method in a roasting pan and it's light, spongy, baked in a half hour, didn't overflow and smells great! 

The bad thing is... I only have one roasting pan. I have to wait for this to cool sufficiently so I can get it out of the pan, wash the pan, and start the vanilla half of the cake.

Why yes, that is a box of wine behind the cake, and I am partaking. 

Trivia: Did you know the Gallo winery in California stores their wines in MILLION gallon tanks? It's true.

Chocolate cake fully cooled and the top evened by cutting it with a greased string. 

The vanilla cake is the same so I won't show pictures of that until the two cakes come together. The vanilla is cooling in the fridge now.

Oh what's this then? I love this!

Chocolate and vanilla have come together in harmony. (mostly, except for that tiny slice in the middle that I am SO not worried about. yes, I had to slice off a bit of the top of the chocolate because it baked up much fluffier than the white cake did. No one will notice once the fondant goes on so ssshhhhh!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Marshmallow fondant. 

Coloring next.

Swirly blue just like I wanted! :D

Rolling fondant, even marshmallow fondant takes real effort.

A normal rolling pin does NOT cut it for this job.

 

Covered, but even as fast as I tried to work the fondant got dry and cracked a bit. 

I'll deal with that later.

 

Windows! Not 95. No not 7 either. 

These windows are special.

 

 

Doors and a bow tie. Because bow ties are cool.

Don't. Blink.

This is what I did with the crack. Prisoner Zero has escaped!

 

5a.m. Saturday - DONE!

In the end I completed the cake. My fondant DID run dry finally and I did not get the piping around all the bottom edges done, but here it is, my daughters completed birthday cake :)

Making It: Better, Faster, Easier

Making It: better, faster, easier.

     One of the earliest modern conveniences in food technology that helped to shape food was the invention of a packaging material that could really take a beating. The lowly tin can is still prominent on our supermarket shelves today, though it was patented back in 1810. It was in 1847 when Allen Taylor figured out that you could use a machine to create the packaging faster. This machine would flange the end of the disks that were cut so that it wouldn't have to be done by hand. Once this first step was completed, progress was swift. A pendulum press and combination die came out that cut out most of the can, flanged it to fit to the can neatly, and punched a filler hole in one end. By 1883 the can was being cut, rolled, seamed, soldered and pressure cooked at a rate of 2700 cans per hour as opposed to 5 or 6 cans per hour by one persons hand in the beginning. The industrial revolution had sent food technology on it's way toward automation. (Busch, 1981)

     As our global population grows the need for faster production rises. Although we have had basic advances such as the conveyor belt system, and modern advances such as ovens that can bake 100,000 hamburgers at a time, automated production levels are still very variable. This means that there is lots of potential for those who want to make it faster, easier, and better. (Wells, 2010)

     The beer industry saw its first automation efforts in 1765 with pumps and automatic stirring mechanisms. This not only made it easier to produce the beer, but further restricted the introduction of bacteria which could easily turn a beer “sour.” Today it's not just the big commercial breweries that are beginning to use automation, but smaller craft breweries such as Ninkasi in Eugene, Oregon. TAG (The Automation Group) is a provider of automation equipment that can bring floor data such as temperature controls, mash times, adjunct processing and volume metering to a central hub of the brewery to ensure that Ninkasi wastes no time with a batch so they can move on to the next batch. This also has the pleasant effect of creating more consistent batches of beer. (TAG, 2013)

     Automation of beer has even reached down to the home brewer. A recent Kickstarter campaign has introduced the PicoBrew, an automated beer brewing appliance for the home. Put in the grain, the hops, the malt, the adjuncts such as flavoring, the water, then choose a recipe and turn it on. The PicoBrewer will infuse, mash, boil, transfer, and ferment for you with a limited amount of interaction by the brewer. (PicoBrew, 2013)

     The world food supply is sometimes sketchy at best and rife with all sorts of social difficulties such as rising toxicity levels and how we should treat the animals we eat. Experts in robotics handling of meat state that reducing human involvement reduces the cost of manual labor, improves health and safety by reducing contamination and solves many problems in ethical and aesthetic concerns. So what if we could simply print our food and avoid many of these difficulties? (Sorenson, 1993)

     Modern Meadow, building on a concept that has been around for a decade is creating a process in which they can “build” meat one cell at a time. This is part of a process known as 3-d printing. Stem cells, which are able to replicate themselves are cultured carefully, then laid carefully in the pattern the printer creates. The cells undergo fusion and printed cells can become a steak, a hamburger, a breast of chicken, a fillet of fish. (Mironov, 2007)

     There are still many difficulties with food printing, such as flavor, texture, coloration. The nice brown crust on a steak or burger is called the Maillard Browning effect. This has been modeled through moisture retention in microwave technology so as to accurately reproduce it in an automated environment. (Microwaves being another automation breakthrough) (Lu, 1995)

     These problems should not represent obstacles, but rather we should see the challenges as possibilities for automation in food technology. By combining information accessibility, scientific research, and creativity in biology, chemistry, and engineering, we can continue to provide solutions to the world's needs where food is concerned.

Bibliography

Busch J. (1981) An Introduction to the Tin Can. Historical Archeology. Volume 15:No 1: 95-104

Khodabandehloo, K. (1993) Robotics in Meat, Fish and Poultry Processing.

Lu, G. (1995). Effect of water content and amino acids on Maillard Browning kinetics in propylene glycol based modeling systems during microwave heating. Ho, C.T. Flavor Technology: Physical Chemistry, Modification, and Process. Washington, D.C. American Chemical Society. Pgs 40-47.

Mironov, V., Prestwich, G., Forgacs, G. (2007). Bioprinting Living Structures. Journal of Materials Chemistry. Volume 17: 2054-2060.

Moskvitch, K. (1/21/2013). Modern Meadow aims to print raw meat using bioprinter. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20972018 (Accessed 10/12/2013)

PicoBrew LLC. (9/30/2013). PicoBrew Zymatic: Automatic Beer Brewing Appliance. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1708005089/picobrew-zymatic-the-automatic-beer-brewing-applia(Accessed 10/10/2013)

Sorenson, S.E. (1993). Automation in the production of pork meat. Khodabandeloo, K. Robotics In Meat, Fish, and Poultry Processing. New York, NY. Blackie Academic & Professional. Pgs 145 – 147.

TAG (2013) http://www.tag-inc.us/home/tag/smartlist_62/ninkasi_brewery_oregon.html (Accessed 10-23-2013)

Wells, R. (2010) Bristow Boasts The Biggest Ovens In The World.http://www.newson6.com/Global/story.asp?S=13762638 (Accessed 10-23-2013)