Dinner or Dessert?
One American baker, Debbie Hoard, creates dinners that are actually dessert
- Debbie Goard has been making ‘sculpted’ food cakes for 25 years
- Ms Goard dissects real foods to come up with recipes to create life-like textures and finishes
From succulent roast ham to crispy meat tacos, these cakes are enough to make anyone’s mouth water.
But in fact, you might be surprised to know that this sumptuous plate of fried chicken is in fact made entirely from cake.
These deceiving sweet treats are the work of American baker, Debbie Goard, who creates her masterpieces in San Francisco.
Sweet or savoury?
What would you prefer? A Cake that looks like chicken, or a delicious, artfully created pie that actually does taste like chicken breast that has been slow cooked in a leek & onion cream sauce? It could only be the Country Chicken Pie
The 45-year-old baker, who has been making cakes for 25 years, said most people can hardly believe her work when they see it.
‘Virtually every cake I make starts with basic slab cakes, stacked and carved into shape, I use no shaped tins or moulds.’
A Tasty Taco Treat
‘People can’t believe my work is a cake when they first see it, and the reaction is universally “that’s a cake!?”
Sweet or Savoury?
For a Taco like taste, that’s not so sweet, why not try a Beef & Cheese pie, the best part of a Taco with a delicious shortcrust dough taking the place of the tortilla!
Yum ‘Cha’ Cake
Ms Goard has created over 2,000 cakes, sometimes working for as long as 57 hours to finish the creations which start at 200 USD each.
‘Because these are edible I don’t have the luxury of spending too much time perfecting a piece.
This brings a whole new meaning to Cheese-Cake
Cheesecake or Cheese-Cake?
That is the question? Which would you choose, a cheese board or a cheesecake?‘Early on in my business I was asked to make a ham cake for a comedy club, I think I surprised even myself in how convincing it was.
‘From then on the food themes have been some of my favourites.
‘I tend to dissect real foods more than look at them and I love the challenge of finding new ways to recreate the textures and finishes to make them hyper realistic.’
Creating everything from road kill cakes to animal themed sweets, the baker said her recipe for creating the realistic textures is top secret.
But she revealed her buffalo wing sauce is made from a combination of corn syrups and sugars which, she claims, is taken from a recipe rumoured to have been used to make blood in old Hammer horror films.
‘My favourite cake is usually the latest one I’ve done, I so enjoy trying to improve on my own work,’ she said.
‘I recently made a French bread/ cheese cake; I think that I was able to really capture the different textures to create a very convincing piece.’
‘I am constantly looking at my own work with a very critical eye so each successive cake, I hope to make more realistic than the last.’
Create your own custom cake
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