Today’s post is less a recipe than a post about cake making.
I love making cakes. I especially love making the “big cakes” where you can go wild. Chances are that if you invite me to an event above “kiddie birthday” and ask to bring a cake, I will use it as an excuse to turn approximately 100.000 calories into a cake.
The excuse for the following cake was my friend’s kids holy communion (the family’s catholicism has been puzzling to us for generations. Girl, I know what you did in your 20s and 30s).
The cake base was a red velvet cake with cherry filling, which I frosted with chocolate ganache. This was pretty not spectacular although already delicious. I went for two layers, though. If you do, use a cakeboard or a wrapped piece of cardboard supported by some sticks because otherwise the very heavy second layer will sink into the soft first layer.
It didn’t have to be very even because there’s a second frosting to come. I always wanted to do an Italian meringue buttercream, but I never tried because my old kitchen machine was designed by an engineer who put the motor below the bowl and the gears into the middle of the bowl. Don’t ask. Regular buttercream regularly ended in a disaster because everything just melted, so after a particularly annoying instance I decided to get a new one and Mr convinced me (I’m using that word in a very loose sense here) to get something decent and I went for a Kitchen Aid. I never looked back. The only problem was that I could have done with a second one to keep whipping the meringue while I was creaming the butter, but that was possible to do by hand. In the video, Yolanda just adds the butter, but I was following a different recipe.
Since communions are in spring I went with green, first a light one to cover the whole cake and then a darker one for the grass.
But that’s only about 80.000 calories, so the next step was to break out the fondant and go crazy. I love that silicone forms have become quite affordable. The trick is to dust them with starch, as well as the finger you use to push the sugar into the form.
I was quite pleased with the result.
Looks gorgeous. Think I gained some weight just looking at it.
The cake is … not a lie?
Pretty! Also educational.
Maybe I should submit my few odd little recipes here sometime. My signature foods are all fictional things I made real -- a couple from video games, a sitcom salad, things like that…
That looks fantastic! And now I must learn about cake boards.
Oh, such a beautiful cake! Definitely too much for me, I’m already not a big fan of cakes unless they’re made with about half the sugar recipes ask for, my sweet threshold appears to be very different from most people. Your cake sounds like it would be overkill for my taste buds. It’s so pretty, though, I love those little butterflies! :)
You had me at red velvet and cherry filling, but the ganache plus buttercream frosting plus fondant flowers has me drooling. And it’s beautiful.
What is better than one cake? Two cakes stacked on top of each other!
(Or to quote a friend: “If you make cake, go ham on it!” which seems some kind of double pun that I don’t completely get.)
A design-idea that popped in my head at the second picture: Same process but more colours and you should get a wonderful coral reef cake!
Why is my oven so small?
A modern Catholic, routinely confessing her sins to a friend rather than the priest?
Oh wow. I have thus far confined myself to single-tier cakes and simple decorations, so I commend you for your work. This cake, on the inside, is about the best of everything I love in a cake. From the outside, it is a work of art (but this would not stop me…).
abbycadabra
Yes, please!
I once started to make a cookbook for the fictional world of our RPG group, but never finished it.
Joseph Zwogi
They’re basically just sturdy food safe boards that you use to take the weight of the second tier. You insert wooden skewers or plastic sticks into your first tier and put the board on top so the second tier rests on those “pillars”.
Wow, that is impressive, though I’m with Nightjar on actually eating it, it would be way too sweet for me.
The grass grows on me, it looking at it multiple times has made me like it more and more, but the flowers really bring the visual balance to the cake. And I have every reason to believe it’s delicious.