Day 20: Last Week in the Desert Cake

So because this is my last week in the sunny desert of Southern California my mom ordered my a small custom-made cake in celebration of that and my graduation. In Cathedral City there's this great little bakery called The Pastry Swan. Hands-down best cake bakery possible! Our usual choice of cake is either chocolate or vanilla. Their cakes are three layers thick so we choose a raspberry mousse and a raspberry jam as fillings. Now I'm not sure why but generally it seems that chocolate cake can come out to be drier than vanilla or yellow cake. Such is not the case with this place! The chocolate cake we ordered was deliciously moist with a quality similar to cakey-brownie. The raspberry mousse is a very light pink color that tastes like whipped cream with the strong and tangy essence of raspberry. The raspberry jam layer is in fact raspberry preserves so there is nothing particularly unique about their jam usage. Though I must add my favorite part of the cake is the mix of the chocolate cake and the jam. The entire cake is covered in whipped buttercream. Now I make a good buttercream frosting but there's is significantly different. Their version goes very well with the cake. It's much lighter and blander than regular buttercream frosting and it does not have the strong and somewhat metallic taste of powdered sugar. Also, the pastry swan does an excellent job in cake design using the best and only fondant I think I'd ever be able to eat plain. For this particular cake I merely asked for blue, pink, and yellow fondant balls to border the base of the cake. I had planned to create a candy mosaic on the top. The mosaic wasn't as elegant as I had planned. I used Tropical Dots, Good & Fruity, Crazy Core Skittles, & Peanut Butter M&Ms. I need more and smaller candies. And by the way, Good & Fruity? Not so good. The flavor's alright but the texture is just awful. It tastes similar to the crunchy shell of a jelly bean before you hit the the more gummy-like center. Anyway, I didn't really enjoy my mosaic. Not only that but it ruined the cake-eating experience. I kept having to pick off the candies as I ate cake. I have made a mental not to mess with a custom-made cake again.





My brother (and mom) got a little anxious because I kept taking pictures rather than cutting them a piece...

I've decided to include some more pictures of other pastry swan cakes to demonstrate their creativity! ^_^