Pink Champagne Cake

I recently had one of my younger sisters over for the night.  Being the cool big sister that I am (right...) we baked a cake since there's really not much else to do at my apartment.  We settled on a pink champagne cake.  

The recipe was pretty simple- you start with a box cake mix and add champagne instead of water.  What I had forgotten was just how pathetically thin the layers of a box cake end up being.  Instead of settling for a squat cake I made another batch but decided not to color it pink. In the end, I'm really glad it happened that way because it looked really cool.

Although I didn't realize it at the time, the icing was just a glorified butter cream recipe with champagne instead of water or cream.  When I iced this cake I was frustrated that it didn't crust- only later did it dawn on me that butter cream crusts because of the meringue powder.  I used pureed strawberries as a filling between the layers and iced it with the champagne butter cream.  My sister was very interested in how roses were made, so I decided to make more mini roses and use them on the cake.  I had just learned how to do reverse shells in a cake class so I tried those as well. As seen in the picture I have some work to do, though in my defense, the icing was almost too thin to hold its shape.

In the end, I really liked this cake.  I brought it home when I dropped my sister off and everyone was very approving.  Next time I'll definitely use meringue powder in the butter cream and concentrate a little harder on my shells.
-Beth

Orange is the color of the day.

One of my younger sisters recently asked me to make a birthday cake for a friend of hers.  The only request she made was that it be orange.  With that in mind, I also had the opportunity to use a couple of decorations I made in my recent Wilton decorating class.

I used the same almond cake recipe that I had used in my most recent tall cakes and used the same filling (sweetened strawberry puree and sure-gel) since it had turned out so well last time.  I made 2 10inch cakes and 2 8 inch cakes (round) and trimmed them into square cakes that were approximately 7.5 inches and 6 inches.

I realized a few things making square cakes from circles.  First, remember that geometry we learned in high school? Yeah the whole triangles inside circles and Pythagorean theorem thing they swore we would use and we were pretty sure we wouldn't?... Well it turns out that did come in handy. Second, I found out that it's really difficult to get right angles without a reference, and even then if you're the teensiest bit off on each one, you're a whole lot off in the end.  Finally, using butter cream on corners is messy business, but my class instructor just explained a method that I will definitely be trying the next time I do this.

The bow and carnation were things we made in class recently.  To color the bow orange I mixed glimmer dust (edible) with vanilla extract and painted it on.  I wasn't entirely happy with how it turned out, but I had made it white in class so it was either that or thin down some gel colors.  I painted some water onto the tip of all the petals on the carnation and rolled in in the shimmer dust as well.  I used a tip 5 to make all of the dots and tips 5 and 101 to make the mini roses. For the gift tag I used rolled fondant and an edible marker. 

I was not there when the cake was eaten, however my sister assured me that everyone enjoyed it.

-Beth

Wilton Tall Cakes class

After smoothing over my royal icing disaster

Posting on my "tall cakes" class seems to have eluded my attention up until this point.  In the midst of taking the Wilton flowers class I spent three hours on a Saturday afternoon learning how top properly stack cakes.  I guess I had always assumed that it would be as simple as placing one cake on to of another, however that was not the case. I'm sure with your basic box cake recipe you could safely stack any way you choose, but as soon as you move onto denser cakes and more layers, I can see why you would want more support.

I brought in a 6 inch and an 8 inch double layer cake.  Stacking them included placing dowels in the lower level of the cake (the 8 inch tier) and leaving the top tier on its own cake board.  I also didn't know that to cut a stacked cake, you are supposed to remove each layer before serving it.  Lots of little details.  We were supposed to bring things for decorating to class, so I brought a lot of the flowers from the class I was taking. 

Originally I had planned to do flowers on the top and practice one technique for putting music notes and a staff on the bottom, but using royal icing wasn't as easy as I'd hoped. First of all, I had to kneel on the floor the entire time I was attempting to draw the lines for the staff on.  Second, I either need stronger hands or a thinner icing because it was very hard to lay down an even, steady line. Finally, I had colored the icing with Wilton black gel color and it turned out an oily purple instead of black... In general I just wasn't at all happy with how it was turning out.  I ran out of time in class to finish anyway, but when I got home I scraped the idea and used more flowers.

Because royal icing dries hard, it was relatively easy (with patience) to remove what I had applied to the cake.  A fresh coat of buttercream smoothed over the whole mess.  I finished it off with another cascade of flowers and another round of dimensional dots. 

Final product!

A few more notes about this cake.  First, I still need to work on shells- definitely an improvement over my last attempt, but just not quite there.  Next, I need more practice on centering when I stack, so expect more posts on tall cakes! Finally, I used a recipe given to me by my Wilton instructor and it was great!  I loved how tall the individual layers were and that one recipe made enough for both tiers. For the filling I used pureed strawberries- the end result tasted very much like a strawberry shortcake!  The only thing I would change is the icing I used.  Instead of butter and vanilla flavoring I used almond to match the cake.  It was good, but very sweet (not just my opinion).  Next time I will probably put half the amount called for and use vanilla for the rest.

The top half of the cake was consumed at my staff meeting for once (first time I've brought anything with me) and the bottom half was sent to work with Chris.  Everyone seemed to really like it.