Sunday, April 28, 2013

Cakin' it

Cake

I love it.

I love it more than words can express, but if words could express, it would be the words of Jim Gaffigan. Listen to his bit on Cake and you will understand.

It's difficult to ruin a cake, taste-wise. It really is one of those things that nobody cares how it looks, they just want it in their bellies. Unless it looks like feces. And even then! If it's supposed to look like poop, people grab their forks and dig in.

But one of my favorite things about cake is how beautiful it can look! And it can take anywhere from very little effort, to exorbitant amounts of time, effort....tears. huh? ya...i've cried over my cakes....many times. There was a time when making a beautiful cake would make me break out in cold sweats. But I enjoyed it so much at the same time, I knew if I could practice and get over that fear of failure, I would love it! So now, I welcome an opportunity to make a beautiful cake or cupcakes. Or anything with the word "cake" in it, really.

A few weeks ago it was my little Wyatt's 1st birthday. It was so fun that I made him TWO cakes. Because I wanted a fun one for his birthday and a cute one for his pictures I took a few days later. Sounds extreme and stupid, right? Well...I have a trick! When I made his "birthday" birthday cake, I did a layer in yellow cake and a layer in chocolate. That meant I had plenty of batter for a 9-inch cake and a 6-inch. So I baked everything on the same day and then...get ready...I froze the smaller layers! Yes...cake freezes. Some of you may know this from freezing wedding cake, but I had completely forgotten how well it freezes! All you need to do is thaw it out in the refrigerator before you decorate it. If you thaw it at room temp, you run the risk of it getting soggy. Yuck! Cold cake is also MUCH easier to work with than warm or room-temp cake.

After the cake has thawed you can do a couple of things. Level it and decorate, OR pop it under the broiler for a couple minutes! It gets this nice crust on the top and seems like it is fresh from the oven. I love to serve hot chocolate cake with a maple frosting melted over the top. Trust me...the combination is incredible. I grew up on a recipe called "Old Black Joe cake with Maple Frosting" and to this day, it is my favorite. thing. ever. Now I have a better chocolate cake recipe, but nothing can beat that frosting I grew up on. This is my husband's current favorite cake. Anyways, back to the frozen birthday cakes.

Here is the cake for Wyatt's birthday: (and here is a link to the tutorial I used)



And here is the little frozen cake I decorated for his pictures:



Can't even tell it was in the freezer for a week, right? And yes...it tasted great, too. Charlotte snuck in a bite in that last picture. Little monster!

Right now I am getting ready to make Char's cake for her 3rd birthday in May. She is in LOVE with Rainbow Bright, so I knew I wanted to make a cake with "star sprinkles" and a rainbow and Starlight as the topper. But in all my years of searching I had never found an ELEGANT horse tutorial. They all look like this:

...which is so adorable, but not what I am usually looking for. And having grown up very seriously into horses, i'm a little picky. I like my horses muscular and regal and perfect. Also, if you've ever seen Starlight, he is a slender, fancy, "incredible horse." So finally...after literally YEARS of searching and trying to overcome my fear of fondant...I found this tutorial. Trust me when I say that if you are a caker and in need of a beautiful horse...this is it! The tutorial is actually for a unicorn, but take off the horn and you have a horse! Great tutorial. So here was my first attempt and while it's not perfect to the trained eye, i'm still so happy with it! I'll be sure to post pictures of the completed cake with my final Starlight on top.



2 comments:

  1. Did you really make that? That's awesome.

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  2. Thanks. :) It's so much fun! I wish I could practice all the time.

    ReplyDelete