RMC Culinary’s final exam takes the cake
Culinary students prepare wedding cakes for their final exam.
Wedding cakes are very expensive and involve a time consuming process, which is why engaged couples hire professionals to make them. Depending on the idea for the project and the concept for the wedding, professional cake makers can offer many different options for a wedding cake.
For students in The Culinary Institute at Robert Morris College, their final presentation in the Cakes and Petite Four class was to create a wedding cake.
Some students presented traditional cakes and some students explored more intriguing forms, like Melissa Campion’s “Hawaiian Escape.”
For the final exam, this presentation was a perfect way to showcase the students’ skills in both the culinary and artistic areas. For this final presentation, students had to have enough patience to look for simple, yet beautiful decorating techniques that were supported by their Instructor, Chef Aisha Cooks.
The long process of making the cakes begins with the preparation of the different layers of cake. Each layer is placed upon the next depending on how big the final cake is going to be. Some of the projects had three layers and some had four layers.
This is the first time the students have done a project of this scale.
“This is definitely challenging for the students. Even if they [students] had pastry classes all quarter, they never worked before at this scale. They have to do research, find books and make sketches of how the project is going to look like, then present the proposal for [the] instructor’s approval,” said Pastry Instructor Laura Kaltenecker.
Long hours were invested in this project and some of those hours were spent on the students’ own time.
Melissa Campion’s project was a three-layer cake with details made out of special decorating paste colored with a range of reds. The idea behind the project was, “Simple, elegant and fun,” said Campion.
To create something simple, elegant, and fun, Campion found her inspiration coming from her friend’s upcoming wedding.
“[This is going to be] my friend's wedding cake. I'm making it in a couple months. May as well get some practice in first,” Campion said.
Campion explained how the decorating process was and how she sorted this new challenge.
“I went with royal icing over the cake for a more traditional [style]. [It was] not really challenging. I've been making wedding cakes since I started the program. I was at the mercy of the bride. I was pretty lucky,” Campion said.
For junior Emilio Rinconeno, this class was very challenging because of the time and preparation dedicated to this project. This was not like a plate for a dinner or a dish for a lunch, this project required a significant amount of time and planing ahead for the look of the final product.
“This project was very challenging because I have never done a wedding cake before, and to add to that, I never piped roses before either and they were the main component on my cake. I wanted to do a brightly colored cake, and found a picture of a wedding cake that I thought was similar to what I wanted my cake to look like.
We had to hand in our cake designs, and then we were able to work on our cakes for three weeks, six hours a week, leading up to the final. The process for making my cake was pretty difficult because I had to pipe every rose on my cake because it was the main component of my cake. This project just sealed the fact that I do want to be a cake decorator as my career, and later on in the future a bakery owner.
“The future for RMC students in the wedding cake field is very promising. Before entering this class I wanted to learn how to decorate cakes, and now that I have completed the class, I am sure this is what I want to do as my career and future,” said Rinconeno.