Customizing the Cakes

As you may have seen throughout the different publications, I love customizing the cakes. To see somebody's happiness, who realises that you have been thinking in him/her and that you have spent time to make something unique especially for him/her, is something indescribable, which overjoys me.

The "reproduction" in chocolate of a photograph on a cake has been one of my challenges in the latest months: portraits 

However, there are various techniques that are very different: the handmade customization with chocolate, called signage (the one I always use), the photocopy of the picture on a ricewafer or on a sugarpaper (using special photocopiers), and silk screen printing (with "chocotransfer" paper).

The first method (signage) is a hand work, and demands patience and precision, what turns the outcome into a handcrafted product, that can be customized up to the extreme.  

The second way of decoration (photocopy) is practical and the "customizing" becomes something much quicker, but the acquisition of special machinery is necessary.

Refering to the silk screen printing, this manner consists in tracing in "chocotransfer" paper (or guitar paper) mass production pictures through cocoa butter and artificial colors primers. These ones are sold prepared, so that the pastry cook only has to pour warm chocolate on it, and, once the chocolate has hardened, to put it out of the paper and to place the figure on the cake. This is one of the most common techniques used for Easter figures.

The work is obviously very different. In the first case, everything has to do with the pastry cook hands. In the second and third ones, you only have to get the necessary technology and/or accessories, and in a few seconds the work is done. However, the result is also very different and shows perfectly what has been created by hand.

3 examples, with Barça's crest:

PHOTOCOPY ON RICEWAFER

Advantages

Speed in its execution,

The picture is alike the model

Drawbacks

Machinery very expensive
The inks get mixed up

Not only chocolate is used

SILK SCREEN PRINTING 

Advantages

Speed in its execution

The picture is alike the model

Only chocolate is used

At first look, it can seem handmade

Drawbacks

Accessories very expensive

SIGNAGE

Advantages

Handmade Work

Give the possibility to create and to vary from the original

Clarity

The boundaries are only set by the pastry cook's imagination

The cost "only" lies in the elaboration time

Drawbacks

Slow elaboration