Wiki Page, BAKING & PASTRY A: Group Cake Planning

Wiki Page
2026-03-10T09:15:07-07:00

For the rest of this week, you will be working in a group to plan a high-quality, multi-layers cake of your choosing. This project will teach you to communicate your ideas, choose flavor profiles, compile recipes, create ingredient/equipment list, write a requisition, choose a selling price, and most importantly produce a high-quality baked good. This will most likely take some time, we will work on it together after winter break when we return to class. Please feel free to email me if you have questions. For the rest of the week, you will discuss with your groups to create a plan (this will take some time and I am looking for extremely organized and detailed work!). Below are all the things you need to consider:

Groups: You will be working with large groups. We will combine some tables in class.

Brainstorm: You will need to conceptualize an idea with your group of what your cake will be. This includes many different components. You need to decide on flavors and appearance. You'll need to draw the design of both the exterior and interior of the cake once you are done planning. Make sure your flavors work well together! Try to create something original, don't just copy something.

What type of sponge cake is your cake composed of? You will need to research the different styles of sponges (i.e chiffon, genoise, joconde, etc.)

What flavor of syrup will you use to soak your sponge cake? (sponge cakes need to be soaked in a flavored syrup)

What type of buttercream/filling will be in-between your layers?

What will be the buttercream/coating on the outside of the cake?

What will you garnish/decorate the cake with?

What is the finished appearance of the cake look like? How many layers? What are the colors? What is the shape?

Compile your recipes: You'll need to find recipes and quantities for all your components. Ask me if you have questions.

Start here: Baking_Pastry_Skills_For_CA.pdf

You may look for other recipes on the internet if you can't find what you need.

Create your prep lists: Example prep list from Gourmet Foods - 2021 Winter Menu Prep and Order Guide.docx

You'll need a detailed prep list with steps for all of your components

What is the step-by step process for each component?

How long will each component take to make?

What ingredients/quantities of ingredients do you need for each component/step?

Create your equipment lists:

EXACTLY what equipment do you need to make your cake?

Make sure you organize your equipment in coordination with your prep list - what components need that specific equipment?

Requisition: Basically a order sheet

What ingredients do we need to buy and in what quantity?

That is all for now. You probably wont get all this done in the next couple days. You're going to want to set up a way to communicate with your teammates over break. We will continue with this after break, but you can keep working on it while we are gone. There will be more steps than this (costing and preparation). We will judge your final product very strictly and I will have people come taste test your work with me.