Emergency Cake Surgery

(Finished cake)



So a few weeks back my former English teacher had a birthday and he is so awesome I decided to make him a cake. Its a very simple cake with stenciled words I cut out myself and chocolate frosting. Just so all of you know, making your own stencils is a pain in the butt. First you have to find what you want to stencil, then adjust the size on the computer, print it off, and finally cut it out. If it is small its not so bad, but apparently cutting out "Happy Birthday" in fancy font is no easy feat.

(Stenciled words made out of sugar sprinkles.)

(Homemade stencils.)

The first attempt at the cake did not go so well. I had tried to make it a chocolate cake with delicious whipped ganache filling and a chocolate buttercream icing, however I accidentally over mixed the ganache (at least I think that's what I did) and it didn't quite turn out correctly. I tried to salvage it and make it work and, even though it tasted just fine, it refused to stay between the layers. I quickly iced the cake trying to trap it in but still the ganache found a way out by pushing the icing off. I quickly stuck it in the fridge to try to firm it up, however my attempt were futile and I was left with this:

(Whipped ganache pushing icing off the cake)

 

After realizing my original plan would not work i tried to use what I was left with by pulling the layers of cake apart and scraping off the ganache. It was important to get all the ganache off so that the cake wouldn't absorb it and become too moist. I then re-iced the cake and stenciled on the words. The chocolate buttercream frosting (recipe page) was a huge hit. I received multiple compliments on it and some people said that was their favorite part. After everyone got through with the cake I was left with only leftover icing to take home (pictured below). However my friend Shelby later got a hold of the cake carrier and when she was done it did not look like there had been a cake on it at all.

(The cake after the party was over)

Summer

Hooray!!! It's the first day of summer today. Yahoo! For my family, however, not only is it the first day of Summer, but it's also my grandpa's birthday. This year I did not make anything, but thankfully I'm still trying to get you all caught up on all my previous baking, so i shall talk about the cake i made last year.

So this is the cake that I made for my grandpa for his birthday. That time instead of doing two cakes in one day like i did the first time i baked, I this time made two cakes in one week because it was the same week as Fathers Day. As you can see, in this cake, I used a chocolate butter cream icing. for some of the decorations, all the blue icing, I simply took the chocolate butter cream and didn't add the cocoa to it. Trust me that was a VERY bad idea. The icing was runny and drippy and dripped all over the place. When i piped it onto the cake it ran all the way down the sides, as you can see at the lower left. Also when i added the blue coloring to the de-cocoa-afied icing, it wouldn't mix in all the way! Even after i mixed it to the best of my ability, you could still see swirls of white, as you can see in the lower middle. However, thankfully, some of the icing came out perfectly fine, as shown in the lower right.

Now for some advise for all of you. For one thing, if you're going to do a cake like this, where you take it out of the pan and decorate it, do a border. Always do a border on cakes like this. Without a border you will see more of the mistakes and creases in the icing where you switch between icing horizontally and vertically. It also shows where you ran into the cake tray if you don't put a border. Another advantage to doing a border is that it breaks up the cake for the eye and it's not quite so hard for people to take in. Of course there are exceptions, but I'll not get into those now, least I confuse you if I haven't already.

More advise? Make it interesting. however it is possible to make it too interesting. Make sure you reach the balance in between. A cool decorating trick for candles, at least I think it's cool, is when your decorating the cake to put on the top of the cake, or where ever you want the candles to go, little dots or flowers or something. This way when you put the candles in the have a nice little border and it doesn't look as much like you are massacring the cake. Well I hope I've helped you out a little bit. Thanks for reading! Check in again sometime soon!