baking

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Design Food

Impeccably Precise Geometries Are Baked into Dinara Kasko’s Bold Cakes and Tarts

Ukrainian pastry chef Dinara Kasko (previously) brings a healthy dose of geometry to her meticulously designed cakes. Candy-colored spheres line a four-tier tower of layered sponge and cream, triangles connect to create an angular apple skin, and small pearls cloak a round form in a hypnotizing spectrum of pigments. Other patterns are more organic, like the shimmering petal-like confection that tops a strawberry tart. Many of the edible artworks are created by pouring mousse into silicone molds and then spraying the shapes in vibrant gradients or pastels.

Based in Ukraine before the war began in February, Kasko left her home and studios in Kharkiv following Russia’s invasion. She worked as a volunteer and fundraiser for a few months as she traveled around Europe before settling in a small space near Liverpool in recent weeks. “I lost everything in one day,” she says, sharing that many of her friends and family are still living in the country. “I’m working not like it was in Ukraine… It’s difficult to find the motivation to build the structure and work hard because you understand that someone can take it, and you can lose it again. On the other hand, I understand that I want to live much more.”

Kasko has started to photograph her cakes again after resettling and is currently working on launching two online courses in addition to designing a collection geared toward the home baker. Some of the molds she utilizes and sells are still handmade in and shipped from Kharkiv, despite pauses from bombings, loss of electricity and internet, or post office delays. You can shop those tools in Kasko’s store and follow her work on Instagram.

 

Animation Food

A Soothing Stop-Motion Animation Bakes a Rich Chocolate Layer Cake Entirely from LEGO

When your next ambitious baking project doesn’t pan out, try your hand at a simpler recipe with just one ingredient. Follow Japan-based animator tomosteen through a stop-motion tutorial for a decadent cake layered with chocolate frosting that’s made entirely with LEGO. The ASMR-inducing animation chronicles the baking process from cracking an egg into a yolky block to watching the batter subtly change color to crumbling individual bricks of chocolate for the top. For similar pastry builds like French toast, churros, and a triple-layer cheesecake, head to tomosteen’s YouTube. (via The Kids Should See This)

 

Design Food

Sumptuous Cakes Designed by Tortik Annushka Emerge as Elegant, Sculptural Desserts

Tortik Annushka’s fondant-wrapped desserts more closely resemble luxurious, edible artworks than the buttercream sheet cakes available from grocery bakeries. Based in Moscow, the confectionary designs lavish pastries that mimic a tub of ice cream, asymmetric sculptures, and famous paintings. Each pristinely shaped tier is made by hand entirely from scratch.

Founded in 2009 by a brother and sister, Torik Annushka hopes to offer more workshops and open a spot to enjoy the luxurious sweets in the future. You can follow the family business’s delightful creations on Instagram. (via swissmiss)

 

 

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A post shared by Tortik Annushka (@tortikannuchka) on Jun 23, 2019 at 4:06am PDT

Food

Doughy Braids and Sliced Fruits Arranged into Sumptuous Pies by Karin Pfeiff-Boschek

While many people are spending their days starting batches of sourdough, Karin Pfeiff-Boschek has been busy baking sweet pies with mesmerizing arrangements that appear almost too pretty to eat. She tops each pastry with a delicate floral motif of flaky dough, a precisely arranged gradient of sliced fruit, or a checkered weave braided in rows.

The pastry designer tells Colossal that she was raised in a family of bakers, although pies weren’t her first form of artistic expression. “As a child, I enjoyed seeing, smelling, and eating the breads and pastries that both of my grandmothers made. Baking was traditional in our family in rural Germany, and when I was a young teenager, I began baking cakes and pastries for my brother and sister,” she writes. “I did not become a baker, however, but became interested in fabrics, eventually designing, dyeing, and creating my own works of textile art.”

After learning to make pies from her American mother-in-law, Pfeiff-Boschek merged her new culinary skills with her background in design, saying she “began to wonder whether one could decorate them in a manner similar to the way cakes are turned into works of art.” Employing her own techniques, Pfeiff-Boschek modified her mother-in-law’s original recipe in minor ways and opted for chilling the raw pastry in batches. 

I found that by cooling the dough while creating decorations, using a very thin, sharp knife such as a scalpel and working very precisely it was possible to create ornate decorations that held their shape during baking. I make it a priority to also show the baked pie because regardless of how beautiful a pie may look before baking, it never will be served in that state and must look good after it comes out of the oven.

To alter the dough colors, Pfeiff-Boschek adds powders made from freeze-dried berries, spinach, and beetroot. She tends to bake sweet pies with peaches, apples, and other fruits, although occainsly assembles a savory version filled with meat and vegetables. Each creation takes between two and six hours to assemble and adorn. “I love nature, and many of my designs come from time I spend in our garden with our German shepherd dog, Halgrim. I am inspired by trees, leaves, and vines but also by classical geometric patterns and quite mundane articles, such as gully lids,” the designer says.

Many of Pfeiff-Boschek’s edible artworks have culminated in a book, Elegant Pie, and on her blog by the same name. To see both pre- and post-bake photographs, head to Instagram. You also might like Lauren Ko’s vibrant pies and tarts.

 

Food

Twisting Vines and Leafy Botanics Carved into Crusty Breads by Blondie + Rye

North Carolina-based baker Hannah P. has planted herself firmly at the intersection of art and food as she transforms her crusty rye loaves and spelt focaccias into edible canvases for her botanic projects. Through her Instagram account Blondie + Rye, Hannah shares hundreds of flour-covered creations replete with twisting vines and leafy stems. Some pieces even feature layered fruits and vegetables that resemble verdant gardens and floral bouquets. If the baker’s combinations weren’t so appetizing—think a spelt loaf speckled with rosemary and brown sugar and a cream cheese, Romano, and lemon zest center or a ring full of extra-crunchy peanut butter, honey, toasted pecans, pistachios, walnuts, and hazelnut cocoa filling—they’d be almost too pretty to eat. For more lovely baked exteriors, check out Lauren Ko‘s pies.

Design Food

Dazzling Gradients and Geometric Designs Baked into New Pies and Tarts by Lauren Ko

Seattle-based pie baker Lauren Ko (previously) has a multitude of non-edible inspirations that influence her creative pastry designs, including textile patterns, architecture, and string art. These elements are woven into her colorful, and often geometric, fruit pies and tarts topped with thin, undulating strips of apples, precisely placed pomegranate seeds, and triangles of radiating strawberries. Often Ko will color a portion of her dough with natural food dyes like beet butter to add even more color to the finished dessert. You can learn step-by-step instructions for how Ko creates her enticing sweets in this video made by Tasty, and follow the evolution of her pies on Instagram.

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