Transport and Taste: Cakes 1 and 2

So I put both cakes into Wilton 8 inch cake boxes, and discovered that the cakes were too tall! They don't close! So I had to tape down the lids at an angle. Then I loaded them into my SUV. One sat on the floor of the passenger seat, and the other on the floor behind my seat. As I learned on CakeCentral, never transport a cake on a vehicle seat.

Both cakes survived the 25 mile commute to my office, and it took two trips but I got them up to my office. The top of one was a little mushed when the board slid inside the box at one point, but it looked fine.

Both cakes sat in my office for four hours, until the meeting. Then I served Cake #1. Cake #2 came home with me, as there were other snacks and it turned out to be unnecessary. Half of Cake #1 was consumed, to general enjoyment. Slicing the cake was easier than anticipated, but one of my coworkers than sliced each piece in half again, so the pieces went farther. (The remaining half cake was eaten that afternoon and the next morning after going into the fridge.)

Cake #2 I popped into the fridge and took home, where my husband and I enjoyed it. The frosting recipe creator swore that it would hold up well and didn't need refrigeration, and since it sat out for about 5 hours total plus commute time and was still tasty, I'm inclined to believe her.

The Icing on the Cake

This is one full recipe of the aforementioned buttercream. I failed to measure it, but I'd guesstimate it's about 8 cups. I tinted this with a little bit of Wilton orange paste coloring I bought to dye silks (another post for another day). Again, I bought the coloring with a 40% off coupon, so I think I paid about $6 for 8 small pots of color. To add color, dip a toothpick in the color and swirl it through the frosting, then mix until combined. Keep adding color until it reaches slightly lighter than the final color you want. Color will intensify upon standing.

For application to the cakes, I thought I'd try piping it on first. I loaded a Ziploc bag with icing and added a Wilton 1M star tip, as I'd seen a giant cupcake on Flickr iced with that tip and thought it looked good. My first attempt was ..... well, a failure.
This isn't the best photo, but the cake showed through, the bottom ring of frosting kept falling off, and overall it was just not good, so I smoothed down the icing with an offset spatula a bit, and dotted it with orange sugar.
For cake #2, I chose to monkey around with the star tip a bit, creating swirls instead of piping straight across. While not perfect, this was more successful, so I drizzled it with orange pumpkin sprinkles and brown jimmies.

Covering the Bases

One of the big questions for me has been how to cover the base of each cake. More accomplished bakers do fancy piping or rolled fondant, but I worried about how long that would take. Also it seems like a shame to hide the shape of the base. However, leaving it plain seems like it would dry out the cake, and also expose any cake release that clings to it. (Replacing some of the flour with cocoa helps that, but of course only works on chocolate cakes.)

My favorite go-to cake icing is chocolate ganache. It's easy, tasty, and looks great. So I decided to try that with these cake bases. It would provide a glossy, tasty coating as well as helping to adhere the layers of cake together.

I flipped the bases top-side down onto a cooling rack over a cookie sheet, then made a simple ganache from a cup of half and half (use cream if you have it; I didn't so decided to make do) and a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Melt the chocolate in the microwave or double boiler, then pour in the cream/half and half. Stir until blended thoroughly. I allowed this to cool slightly, then drizzled it carefully over the sides of both cakes. I also covered the tops (what would be the bottoms) to help adhere them to the cake boards I would use later.

The coverage wasn't complete, but it was pretty good, with minimal waste. I then sprinkled on some holiday nonpareils for fun. Finally, I placed an 8" round cake board on each cake, set another cookie sheet on top, and inverted the whole thing. Then I removed the cooling rack and spread the remaining ganache on top of each cake base, and gently settled the tops of the cakes on the bases. In retrospect I should have leveled both sides first, but it worked fairly well anyway.

Why use cake bases? (Found in 12 packs at JoAnn's for something like $1.50.) These make moving your cake a snap, and allow the cakes to be removed from a box for presentation. For the wedding we'll cover these with grease-proof paper.

Cake #2

Staring at the cake, it looked small, so after I put my son to bed I decided to make a second cake. I have about 15 coworkers at any given meeting, and the cake supposedly serves 8-10. 8-10 munchkins, or non-hungry people eating a slice to be polite, maybe.

So I scrapped the previous recipe and went back to one I've used before, the Too Much Chocolate Cake, from AllRecipes. This is another cake mix cake, but I didn't have any coffee to use and it called for fewer eggs, so I was hopeful of a lighter, less fudgy result that wouldn't fall.

I also did a bit more reading on cake release, and found that some people added an extra 1/2 cup of oil to their mixture. I drizzled in about 1/3 cup and mixed it up. This mixture coated the pan much better.

Upon baking for about 45 minutes (no opening the oven prematurely this time), Cake #2 emerged from the oven puffy and delicious-smelling, and turned out of the pan with ease.

Icing #1

Since icing tends to keep well, I decided to make up the icing ahead and practice piping on the cupcakes. Alas, three of them emerged from the pan in pieces, so I had three to practice on. I hadn't bought my piping tips yet, so I did these with just a ziploc bag with a hole cut in one end.

The recipe I used I found on CakeCentral. This was the Crisco-based Buttercream recipe I used. I subbed out the vanilla with Grand Marnier because M requested that flavor, and tinted it with Wilton orange paste color.

My piping was pretty sloppy, but the icing is tasty. No need to hunt for a second recipe. I also added some cheap Halloween decors I bought at Aldi.

Cake #1

For practice cake #1, I used a modified cake mix recipe. Normally I bake from scratch, but chose to use a mix for two reasons: mixes are harder to screw up and deliver a more consistent product. This particular recipe involved extra eggs, coffee instead of water, and a cup of sour cream. I won't give the extra recipe, because it was not successful for me.

Everything I read suggested that heavy greasing of the pan was necessary. Posters on cakecentral suggested a homemade concoction called "cake release," made from 1/2 cup of shortening and 1/2 cup of flour mixed together to form a paste that is then wiped into the crannies of the pan with a paper towel.

I filled the larger side of the pan with 3 cups of batter, and 2.5 cups on the smaller side. This left me with enough batter to make six cupcakes.

After baking the cake at 325 for about 35 minutes with the smaller section toward the front of the oven, I opened the door to check the cake and rotate the pan. Big mistake. The cake fell in, and never recovered. After about 50 minutes I pulled my now deflated but done cake out of the oven, and let it cool in the pan for about twenty minutes before flipping it out to cool further. The cake did not come out cleanly and was very dense. I didn't take a picture because, frankly, it was embarrassing. My cakes never fall.

Disappointed, I let the cake cool on the counter all afternoon, then wrapped it up and put in the fridge, intending to ice it Wednesday to bring to my office staff meeting on Thursday.

Research and Development

Well, I bought the Wilton pan, using a 40% off coupon from JoAnn's, and started to do some research ahead of starting to bake. We are baking both white cakes and chocolate cakes. Since the groom doesn't like chocolate cake, it made sense to split our cakes so that M works on white cake and I work on chocolate cake.

If there's one thing I know about myself, it's that I have a tendency to get a wee bit obsessed with new projects, especially if they seem fun and don't involve my actual paying job. When the project involves cake, the likelihood of obsession grows. My first stop for information on wedding cake decorating was, as usual, the Internet. Almost immediately, I stumbled across Cake Central, an extensive site with tutorials, image galleries, and a lively user forum. I began saving photos of cakes that looked good, and sharing them with M. She approved a few, and gave me some ideas.

The wedding colors are pink and either red or raspberry, so we will probably ice each cake in varying shades of pink. Red is such a strong color it's difficult to achieve in frosting and tends to result in a nasty taste in the icing. M still really likes the fondant look, and I hope to become proficient enough with it to cover the head table's cake in white fondant, to really separate it from the other cakes.

Ideas in hand, next I went to my library in search of books, both for ideas and for tutorials and techniques. I especially liked the detailed instructions in Debbie Brown's 50 Easy Party Cakes, though none of the designs are suited to a wedding cake. After reading many books, I decided that the simplest thing to do would be to ice each cake in buttercream and then top it with unique decorations, including large sugar crystals, edible pearls, fondant flowers, pearl or luster dust, or edible glitter.

Project #1: Wedding Cakes

My sister M is getting married next March, and the budget has gone from small to "as little as possible without looking cheap." With that mandate in mind, my sister has decided that she and I (her matron-of-honor) will be making the wedding cake.

In this case, it will be cakes. Initially she wanted a small, tiered, fondant-covered cake, a prospect that filled me with dread. While I do bake a lot, I have no experience with fondant, and neither does she. She thought it would look good and be easy to do. Luckily, her fiance spotted the Wilton giant cupcake pan at a craft store and suggested they use a giant cupcake as the centerpiece of each table. So now the plan is to bake 8-10 giant cupcakes for this wedding: one for each guest table and one for the head table for the bride and groom to cut.

We have five months to perfect two cake recipes (one white and one chocolate), find a good icing recipe, master frosting this style of cake, decide on fillings and find good recipes, and master any necessary decorating techniques. For two moms with full-time jobs and a toddler each, it's going to be tough. I also strongly suspect that, in the end, it will be no cheaper than having a bakery make a cake.