Sunday, September 13, 2009

Cake Test


Today was a lazy day around here,

I think we were still recovering from yesterday. It was cake test day. The oven is an antique and I don't want to speak on it's behalf (not knowing it's full history and all) but I know I've never seen- let alone baked that much cake batter in one day!

The day started early with a trip to the grocery store- since I don't usually keep that much butter hanging around the house. Then the craft store- since I haven't had occasion to bake very large cakes before I needed very large pans.

Then I got ready to bake.


Mom came over for moral/technical support and the actual baking started,


and continued for the next 5 hours!
The cakes came out good. And tasted yummy! I have officially baked cakes from scratch. Woo hoo!



1 destroyed kitchen, 6 cups of sugar, 9 eggs, 4.5 sticks of butter and a tub of frosting larger than should be legal- later, I was ready to attempt my first fondant covering- ever.

The first part I covered was the tall center piece. It came out lumpy and I couldn't get it all the sides to lay flat- there are wrinkles and some overlapping fondant. The bottom tier came out much better!

Then I practiced decorating. Purely practice- just to sort out what might be possible and what will be way too hard. (The actual cake will not look like this!)


In the "way to hard" category- piping. When I was a kids my grandmother made amazing cakes for weddings and special occasions. She let me play with the leftover icing, teaching me how to use the piping bag and to make roses. I didn't remember it being this hard! When I first thought about making this cake I wasn't really worried about the piping- but results are really bad and I think I may keep the piping to a minimum and go with more fondant.


Overall I'm pretty happy. The general structure worked, which was worrying me the most. I'll make a fake roof that will go on top for the real thing. I thought the sticking the chocolate horse lollypops in was straight forward enough that I didn't need to make pops for this. It doesn't look like much now but I think it might just come together! I'm not going to win any cake awards- but it's presentable. And I'm fully aware that as my first ever cake- from scratch, covered, stacked and decorated... so it could have gone much, much worse!

If anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them!!! Please leave me a comment or send me an email.


3 comments:

  1. You go girl! Shame we don't live closer, we could totally tag team - you with the fondant and me with the piping. If there's anything frosting-wise I can help you with - let me know! Are you using royal icing or buttercream? With buttercream it's all in the consistency - and dependent on what, specifically, you are piping, you should make it thicker/thinner. But you probably already know this :)

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  2. I could totally use a cake/frosting expert right now. To bad we don't live closer.

    It's buttercream and actually I didn't know about the consistency thing. I been thinking about it and I'm almost sure my Grandmother would give me Royal Icing to play with because it's so "heavy duty". I noticed on the buttercream container is said you could thicken it with confectionary sugar. I think I'm going to try that and see if it gets any better. Wish me Luck! : )

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  3. What kind of buttercream are you using? E-Mail me... I can help you with the consistency. And yes, royal icing I understand is MUCH more heavy duty - but I haven't ever worked with it...

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