Ahhh! I had high hopes for this cake. It tasted good, but I went crazy with the icing and the whole thing collapsed on our way to the celebration :-P
I'm putting this in writing so I'll hope to remember next time what I learned: I still love Wilton's white butter cream recipe. I missed the fine print that said, add 4T each of corn syrup and water to ice cake. When I couldn't spread the icing, I added more icing and more and more....a little obsessively! And crash went the cake.
I also learned, that if you want to make one of those cakes with chocolate on one side and vanilla on the other, don't try to "stick" the halves together with icing. That created a giant crevasse in the cake. Just place them side by side. Not sure I'll try that again though.
Finally, I learned that to create the really thick center layer of icing, you should do what the experts say to do. Pipe a border around the top of the bottom layer and then fill that in. I tried to spread two layers of icing instead, and that make one corner slope. You can see it in the top right of the picture. Down it goes.
One thing that DID work was the air head candy decoration in the middle. Microwave candy for 10 seconds or less. It gets hot fast. Roll it out between plastic layers of Ziploc type bags. Use a sharp dry knife, rinse it often to keep the sugar from sticking to the blade. White airheads are "mystery flavor" and are usually sold in a variety pack with other colors.
There's always next time!
3 comments:
When I worked in a bakery we made a lot of layer cakes for local restaurants. We would cut the top of the round layers so they would lay flat on top of each other, and the last layer would be upside down, which would give an even more distinct edge around the top. After we put the layers together with icing we would then take a bread knife and shave off the sides where they didn't match or weren't smooth. I was younger then, so I always liked cutting away these little bits of cake and I could eat them without getting fat! Most of our cakes were iced with mousse which was put on pretty thick. We would put the cake on a cardboard circle and then cut the circle to about 1/3 inch away from the cake all the way around. I've never seen any other bakery do this before, but we would pick up the cake and ice the sides first, all the way around, flush with the cardboard, then put the cake down on a pedestal and ice the top, bringing it to the edges, then smoothing the seams. It would make for a perfect cylindrical cake. Though mousse is easier to work with than buttercream, we'd still have a few cakes fall, especially when it got hot and we didn't have time to set them in the freezer for a little bit.
I'm going to have to try that trick with the airheads. I don't know what I'll make, but that looks like a lot of fun to play with.
And I'm going to have to try to make that buttercream recipe. It was very good -- much better than the Pillsbury-in-a-can that I've been using the past few years!
Ok, you are going to have to explain that cardboard trick to me again.
First you level the bottom layer. Then fill with mousse. Then cut the edges flush. and THEN ice the sides before the top, flush with the cardboard?
Well. Now I'm going to have to do that. Lee will have to be taking cake to work :-)
That's it. It'd be better if I could show you, but I don't know when I'd get an opportunity to do that.
Did Lee take doggy cupcakes in to work, or were you guys able to eat them all? :)
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