Springtime = Caketime

With the exception of the past two days, we've been blessed with gorgeous spring weather recently! Taking that into consideration, I used the spring as a theme in a recent cake I made for a school celebration. The cake was my favourite chocolate cake, the recipe for which you can find here, or on the recipes page with several of my other faves!

What I really wanted to talk about was how simple it was to make this cake, though some of the details look quite intricate. What you'll take away from this post is not only a simple way to make pretty cakes, but also that I'm a bit lazy (well, not lazy per se, but I sure wouldn't take the time to craft each flower on my own).

To start, I covered the cake in chocolate buttercream, and the followed that with a layer of fondant. This was a simple marshmallow fondant made from green mini-marshmallows.

Next, I divided gum paste into three sections, colouring them blue, pink, and brown respectively. I've come to find that gum paste is much nicer to work with than fondant, so I chose it for the decorations as opposed to the fondant that I'd usually used previously.

Now, here's the real trick - gum paste molds. They are quite possibly the easiest thing to use, honestly. There are several different Wilton ones to choose from, and I chose a spring themed one. Simply dust the molds with corn starch (I'm sure icing sugar would work well too) and then push the gum paste into the molds. Carefully remove the gum paste and trim any areas that may need trimming. Voila, easy peasy.

To attach the gum paste, I used a small brush and sum water but you can of course use gum glue. Once the pieces were attached, I painted sugar dust onto the flowers for some extra dimension. The cake was a hit, and I think (despite my protest that it was much easier than it looked) I was given much more credit than necessary for this quick little cake. It really does look like spring in a cake though, and tasted alright too!

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Taste the Rainbow Cake!

Original challenge photo

 If you've met me, you know that I set pretty high standards for myself. You may or may not also know that I don't like to lose - I'm a little bit competitive and I don't like to say no to a challenge. Having said that, recently a friend posted an image to my personal Facebook wall. There was a simple caption with the image, which read. "Do you accept the challenge?"

I didn't think twice about it. Of course I accepted, informing him that he'd have to eat the cake once I'd made it. This was to be a six-layer, rainbow cake with white fondant and a meme on top. I created the meme in advance using gum paste. I coloured a portion of it black and left the remainder white to create the meme. Once it was ready, it was set aside to harden while I focused on the cake.

I used a basic vanilla cake recipe from Baking With The Cake Boss for this cake. The recipe suggested that it was enough cake batter to make two 9" round layers. Once I had the batter prepared, I divided it equally among 6 different bowls - this was about 3/4 cup of batter per bowl. Once I had the batter divided, I added a little bit of soft gel paste food colouring to each bowl. This was the first time I'd used these food colours and they were great! The colour was extremely vibrant and stayed vibrant once baked.

Once the batter was coloured, I sprayed the 9" cake pans with non-stick spray and then poured in the batter. Since there was very little batter for each colour, the cake layers took significantly less time to bake. I found that each layer only took 12-15 minutes. Because the layers are so thin, you want to be careful not to over bake them or they'll be dry. I started checking each layer around 10 minutes.

While the layers cooled, I prepared a butter cream icing (basic white, to accent the vibrant colours) to use to assemble the cake. As there were so many layers, I used a fine layer of icing between each so as not to have too much. Once the entire cake was iced, I covered the cake in white fondant, and then positioned the pre-made meme on the top.

I was pretty happy with how this cake turned out. Once we cut into it, the inside looked great. This was also much simpler to make than it looked, and was a hit with those who saw it. It would make a great cake for birthdays or other colourful events!

Soccer Jersey Chocolate Cake

So, about that other cake I made at the end of last week. A few weeks back, a good friend, Mariana (check out her fantastic blog, Gift Favours Under $5), asked me to make a birthday cake featuring the Stoke On The Trent football team's jersey and logo.

This seemed like an easy enough challenge although I was pretty nervous about making a cake for someone outside my family. This was the first time that failure would not be an option and I was feeling the pressure, and for good reason.

I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe for this cake, and it turned out quite nicely except that the chocolate chips in it stuck to the bottom of the pan and it broke coming out. Broke only slightly, but broke nonetheless.

I managed to save the situation by using that broken side of the cake to trim in order to make the sleeves. Crisis averted. For the time being.

Next, my chocolate butter cream was too thick and wouldn't go on smoothly, so I had to thin it out so that I could have a smooth surface.

Next, my fondant was drying out a quite a rapid pace (quicker than usual) and would not cooperate. As if it needed to be more problematic when I'd already fought tooth and nail to get it red.

Finally, I was doing a shell border around the edge of the cake and ran out of white icing with about 3 inches to go and had to make more for that tiny length. By the time I was finished, it looked like a bomb had gone off in my kitchen, with chocolate icing in one corner, vanilla butter cream in another, and the counter covered in scraps of fondant. It took an hour (with the help of my lovely mother) to clean up the mess of icing sugar, fondant, and butter cream that coated just about every surface.

Needless to say, when it was all said and done I was less than satisfied with the results of this cake. Perhaps that was just due to my frustration, I can't be sure. I guess it's true that we are our own harshest critics. Although, I did use gum paste for the first time when making the crest and I can honestly say that I quite enjoyed using it. It's much easier to work with than fondant.