I created my first “Sarah-Jane”cake today. It was a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache between the layers. The icing was cream cheese & white chocolate. Then I used white chocolate shards and curls to decorate the cake. It turned out quite beautiful.
I learned a little more about making the shards and can’t wait to try this cake again. Thank you Sarah-Jane of Cake That! for the idea.
Here is the picture I promised:
Normally I send my practice cakes to the Ronald McDonald House, but the week before I had promised my husband a cake for work. I had planned to make a cake celebrating the first football game of the season, but it turned out horrible. I didn’t take a single picture for fear it would end up on cake wrecks.
So when I made the cake above, I sent it with him. I mixed instant cappuccino mix into the icing and it was delicious!
When Matt got to work, he dropped the entire cake upside down in the parking lot! It smashed everything, but it still looked OK, according to him. He stuck it in the kitchen along with a note explaining it was dropped and to eat at your own risk. It was gone by 10:30! People were coming from other floors to get a piece. I guess I’ll be making that icing again.
I had made some lowfat brownies awhile back and since then one lady in the office has thought all my desserts, including the one above were low calorie. She was really disappointed to learn that none of them were.
Here is another practice cake I made recently:
My sister has a degree in photography and is trying to teach me from across the country how to take better pictures. I am having trouble not using my flash, but the colors do turn out better. I guess I need to read the owner’s manual for our camera.
There is a local website that allows brides to barter for services for their wedding. It is pretty new, but I discovered it and contacted the one bride who had posted for needing a cake. Since I only had pictures of one tiered cake, I made 2 this week and sent her pictures of one of them.
The first cake is a chocolate cake with fondant daisies. I was thinking since it was a miniature cake I could use a single cake for each layer, but the dimensions look weird I think. I thought all the daisies looked so neat laying on my counter, but I couldn’t seem to make them as random when I put them on the cake. I took this cake to a Bible study and all the girls loved it.
Next up was a fondant cake. I learned my lesson and used 2 cakes for each layer. I think I need more practice with fondant! I mixed fondant and gumpaste to make the monogram. I wanted to stick the monogram on top but I was out of toothpicks and couldn’t figure out a way to prop it up without seeing the props in the picture. Next time I may dry toothpicks in the letters to that they can stick in the top.
I redecorated the fondant cake a few different ways, but the best was using Skittles. I was inspired by a cake I saw on Flickr. This is the version I took to the Ronald McDonald House. I made my husband take it in, which was good since a bunch of people were hanging out in the kitchen. They thought the cake was gorgeous and I have trouble taking a compliment. Anyway, one little girl will be staying there so long she had to enroll in school here. Instead of leaving the cake out like they normally do, they are going to bring it out at supper tonight and give it to her as a “Back to School” cake. I thought that was pretty neat.
For anyone who has worked with fondant, I need help! I covered each tier separately before stacking them. What type of knife do you use to cut the bottom of the fondant? I am not sure if you can tell from this picture, but my edges were not very neat. There was no way I could use this cake without using ribbons to hide the edges of the cake. On the top and bottom layers, I ended up with overlap of fondant. I never could get the lines to disappear. I kind of filled it in with buttercream, which you don’t see in this picture, but what do I do in the future? I know I probably just need practice. This is only the 3rd or 4th fondant cake I have ever done.
With the cupcakes leftover from yesterday, I made some flower cupcakes. My original idea was a 5 petal flower but it didn’t work and I couldn’t find the place where I originally saw it. My second idea was a giant rose using the cupcake as the flower nail. Something was weird about my icing though so the edges of the petals were really jagged. This would have been fine if it was just part of a petal, but it was all the edges. Plan ‘C’ was the rosebuds. I admit, they need some work but I was tired and in a hurry because nap time for the kids was almost over. The rest of the flowers were chrysanthemums, the idea stolen from this you tube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9qtZwHHmx4. These actually turned out pretty well in my opinion.
I made these for a friend’s daughter. The dog is supposed to be their beagle mix. I followed the pattern in Hello, cupcake!
The cupcakes are devil’s food with chocolate buttercream icing.
I still want to make a great chocolate cake and since my friend Christie’s birthday was yesterday, I figured it would be a good time to try again.
Bad plan.
The recipe I chose sounded good, Decadent Chocolate Cake, from the Silver Palate Desserts Cookbook. I read through the recipe and figured it seemed simple. Then I realized that I had never actually had to beat egg whites “until stiff but not dry”.
My only previous attempts at beating eggs whites I used my Kitchenaid and never got them more than foamy. This time I used my hand mixer, and they definitely beat easily. It was cool watching the transformation from clear sticky mess to a pure white puffy cloud-like texture. I then was to gently fold this into my batter.
Just earlier in the day I had learned the proper way to fold in whites, and I was excited I knew how to do this “right”. But the perfect egg whites seemed to have turned into a meringue consistency and I doubt my folding was gentle enough.
The next problem was the fact that I didn’t own a tube pan. According to a couple cooking websites, it was fine to substitute a Bundt pan. I poured the batter into the pan, stuck in the oven and waited.
20 minutes later, the house smelled like burned marshmallows. I realized my pan wasn’t big enough for the cake and it was spilling over, I put a cookie sheet under the cake to prevent more spillage from causing a fire, but this caused my beautiful cake to collapse. When the cake was finally done, it wasn’t pretty. It had the texture of a bad case of acne, of course I was hoping once I flipped it, it would be OK.
Wrong! Only half of the cake flipped out of the pan. The other half I couldn’t even chisel out. It tasted good, and it was moist, but there were these weird little beads throughout the cake, I suspect egg whites that didn’t get mixed in.
I may have added double the baking soda and none of the baking powder, but I can’t be sure. The cake was such a disaster I didn’t even bother making the icing. I’ll probably try again, but I’ll be borrowing a tube pan, making sure I get all the proper amounts of ingredients in the cake, and making sure I learn how to properly beat my eggs first.
I have been baking for several years, can turn out a decent loaf of bread, pan of brownies, or cheesecake any day of the week, but for some reason I am terrible with cakes.
