Cakes on a Plane

This weekend I took a cake to my 94-year-old grandfather, since I missed his birthday at the end of August.  He lives in Florida, so I had to fly with my cake.  I had a terrible time photographing this cake ( I really need a new camera... different story), but I thought I'd tell you about how I packed the cake-- just in case you ever need to fly with cake!

I made a 6" 'Black Tie' cake-- a Chocolate Blackout Cake with Chambord Syrup and Espresso Truffle ganache.  If you look at my (not amazing) picture, you can see that the cake is sitting on the lid of a large Rubbermaid tupperware.  I have a 6" cardboard round under the cake, which I stuck to the larger cardboard with packaging tape.  I cut the larger cardboard to nestle tightly in the grooves of the tupperware lid. 

Then, I just set the tupperware over the cake and snapped it shut, like a snowglobe!  I put the whole thing in a shopping bag and put the cake through airport security like normal.  I checked the TSA website to make sure it was okay-- they say cakes and pies are allowed but may be subject to additional screening.  I did not seem to get any additional screening. 

On the plane, I folded over the top of the paper bag and slid it under the seat next to my purse.  No problem!   Of course, cakes are heavier than they look, so carrying it through the airport can tire out your arm.  Other than that, it was very easy.  The cake was not damaged at all in transit, unlike my July 4th cake that I checked in my suitcase... :) 

So if you ever want to bring a cake on a plane, that's how I did it!

The cake went over great with my grandpa and relatives. 

Simple Draped Cake

I've decided to enter a cake competition at the end of June-- that's the good news.  The bad news is, I have a lot of commitments in the days leading up to it, and this competition (unlike most others) requires the use of only real cake-- no dummies allowed!  So I'll let you in on a little secret-- I'm going to have to make my cakes the weekend before and freeze them.

So I froze 2 6" layers of my famous Chocolate Blackout Cake last week, took it out of the freezer on Friday, and did the stacking and decorating last night.  Then I tasted it-- since taste is one of the criteria in the show!

Now, I'm also on a quest for a perfectly clean looking cake-- neat corners and no bulges from the filling.  Ever seen a cake where you can tell where the layers end and the filling begins??  Yucky weird looking right?? Okay, maybe you don't care, but I want my real cake to look as good as the dummies (And taste a lot better). ;)

Here's last night's cake:

I kept the design really simple for multiple reasons-- it was late, it wasn't for anything special, and the point was to get clean lines-- no point in covering them up!  But you can see, it's got a nice corner, and no bulges!

How'd I do it?  A magician doesn't reveal her secrets-- but I was never much good at magic so I'll reveal mine.

Another objective in making this cake was to try an Italian Meringue Buttercream-- basically, you beat some egg whites, pour in a boiling sugar mixture, and then beat in tons of butter till it's creamy.  It's a little harder to work with than classic butter/shortening-based buttercream, but the taste is really creamy and slightly less sweet.

So here's the big secret:

You're looking at the bottom of the cake here-- I iced it upside-down.  Crazy talk, I know. ;)

You can find the details of the technique on Cake Central: http://cakecentral.com/articles/69/upside-down-icing-technique-for-perfectly-smooth-icing

Basically, you ice a circle slightly larger than your cake on a piece of parchment taped to cardboard-- make sure it's perfectly smooth!  I found out mine had ridges...  Anyway,  you refrigerate it and then stack and fill your cakes in reverse order (upside down), and apply your icing to the sides.  Then, you take an icing scraper or a paint scraper, run it under hot water, dry it, and drag it around your cake as you turn your turntable, going through the icing circle you created, all the way down to the parchment.  This makes a clean corner.  Then, you smooth the bottom (or top in the picture) by tucking in any rough edges.  Refrigerate, and flip onto your iced cake round:

 Refrigerate for 10 minutes again, then gently remove your parchment:

Nice corner, right?  The icing has some air bubbles, but I think with a more stable buttercream (and a smoother cardboard- you can see the ridges on the side from running my scraper over them as I smoothed), you could get pretty close to perfect.  Then, I decided to cover in fondant:

Pretty clean looking... :)  Always room for improvement, but I think this is the cleanest looking cake I've seen in a long time-- at least in person.

I wanted to try a draping technique that I might use in my show cake, so I figured this was a good opportunity.  It was a bit of a struggle because I wanted a pretty long drape, but I learned some valuable lessons and I think it will be easier when I try again.

Here it is after steaming.  To keep things quick and easy, I added a modeling chocolate rose that I had around, just to give it a focal point:

Done!  Then, I just 'had to' taste it:

Is it possible for a cake to taste even better after being frozen for a week?  Cause I'm a believer.  Was even moister (I think) than the cake from the same batch that was eaten fresh... Phew!  At least I know I have a recipe that will taste great for the competition.

To freeze my cake, immediately after cooling, I double wrapped each layer with seran wrap, followed by aluminum foil.  Then I put each cake in its own freezer bag.  To defrost, I just left the cakes in their packaging and set them on the counter. 

Happy caking!

  nom.. nom.. nom... ;)

Happy Birthday.... to me! :)

For my birthday cake, I decided to take on some new challenges.  I wanted to do a tiered cake, and I wanted to cover it in fondant.  Fortunately, I shared a birthday celebration with two of my classmates at Georgia Tech, so there was a nice party for this cake to make its debut... and a lot of friends armed with forks!  :)

This cake took a fair bit of planning.  If you read my previous post, you'll recall I made 2 6" funfetti cakes in conjunction with my cupcakes for last week's class.  I froze these until this past Thursday-- those made up my top tier.

Wednesday night, I baked the bottom tier.  I used Margaret Braun's Chocolate Blackout Cake recipe from her Cakewalk book.  Her recipe said that it made 2 10" cakes-- but didn't mention what height.  I knew there was a lot of batter, but wasn't sure how much it would rise.  I decided to just throw it into my 2 9" pans (mine are 2" high).

The recipe was fairly simple as scratch recipes go.  The only ingredients that I didn't have on hand already were buttermilk and cocoa powder.  It called for 1 1/2 c of cocoa powder, so I used one cup of Ghirardelli cocoa powder and 1/2 c of Hershey's special dark cocoa powder.

Carnage.

As my cakes baked, I watched them closely.  For a while, I thought we were going to be okay overflow wise, but a few minutes later, something bubbled and overflowed.  The cakes dripped onto the pizza stone in the bottom of my oven, and a little batter got on the element.  Therefore, instead of smelling chocolate cake for the last 30 mins, I smelled burning.  Oh well-- that's what I get for ignoring the whole 10" pan thing.

Regardless, the cakes came out beautiful. 

Margaret Braun claims that these cakes are moist, delicious, and 'a dream to work with.'  I don't know about the last part-- the cakes were very soft, so crumbs came off easily during the icing process.  Fortunately, I was covering them in fondant anyway, but I don't think these cakes would be carve-able, for example.  Maybe if I had cooked them an extra 5 mins, but the crumb was pretty fine.

Thursday night, I made the mocha buttercream.  I had already made a batch of regular white buttercream over the weekend for class, and I had made extra.  To make the mocha buttercream, I used about 2 c of regular white buttercream, a small batch of ganache (6 oz choc chips + 1/2 c cream), and a couple tablespoons of strong instant coffee, plus some kahlua.  It came out DELICIOUS.

Friday, my plan was to ice and cover the cakes.  I didn't think this would take nearly as long as it did...

I knew the cakes needed to be filled and dirty iced (a layer of buttercream that goes under the fondant to make it stick) before applying the fondant.  So I placed the small layer on a 6" round, iced and filled it with white buttercream, and stuck it in the fridge.  Then, I placed the chocolate cake on a 9" round and iced/ filled it with the mocha buttercream.  

For whatever reason, I decided to start by covering the larger cake first.  I left this one out (rather than putting it in the fridge) because I wanted the frosting to stay a little sticky.  

I don't have any pictures of the next part of this process, unfortunately, because I was hurrying a lot and was doing a fair bit of swearing.

I was using Satin Ice fondant (which tastes pretty good, by the way), so I went to their website to see some of their how-to videos.  I watched Ron Ben-Israel cover a cake in what seemed to be 2 minutes (rolling the fondant out by hand, not using a sheeter), so I wasn't prepared for the magnitude of my next task.

I knew I needed 17+" diameter of fondant to cover the 9" cake, since it was a full 4" tall.  I grabbed close to 2 lb of white fondant, painstakingly kneaded it (though maybe not enough), and started rolling it out on my pastry mat.  And I rolled.  And rolled. With my normal kitchen rolling pin, I rolled.  It must've been 10-20 mins and I noticed my wrists had cramped and I was in pain-- but I had to keep rolling.  I could sense the edges drying out, and I still had inches to go.  And I rolled and rolled and rolled.  About 30 mins later I had met my size constraint, but couldn't move my wrists.  I attempted to roll the fondant onto the rolling pin to transfer it to the cake, only to realize the cake wasn't where I wanted it, and I dropped it.  Perfect.  I marred it a little picking it back up and just threw it onto the cake.  I started smoothing it with my Wilton fondant smoother, but between the stiffness at the edges and my lack of a good process, there were some tears along the bottom edges as I attempted to get the wrinkles out.

And as I ran my smoother over the tears in the fondant, I conveniently smudged the chocolatey frosting on my lovely white fondant.  You can imagine I had some choice words.  

I finally got the cake covered and trimmed the fondant, and had to just leave a few holes.  Fortunately, the were near the bottom of the cake, and I knew I could cover most of them.  But I know for a fact I need a way to roll out fondant faster-- at least a bigger rolling pin.  Maybe I'll take a page out of Ron Ben-Israel's book and buy a sizable piece of PVC pipe to be my fondant rolling pin.

I covered the small cake later Friday night.  This one was much less dramatic, but since the frosting had crusted, it was a little harder to get it to stick.  This made it a little easier not to smudge the frosting all over the place, however.  I will have to find a happy medium.  

I finished the decorating Saturday morning.  I placed the white cake on a silver cake drum with some buttercream under it, and inserted 4 drinking straws cut to height in a diamond shape in the center of the cake to support the weight of the top tier.  I put some more buttercream in the middle of that cake, and put on the top tier.  

I rolled out smaller quantities of fondant and used the Wilton fondant ribbon cutter to cut different widths for the ribbon going around the cakes and the bows.  After the bows were done, I cut out the polka dots using a circular cutter.  I applied my decorations using water/ moisture, or buttercream, or royal icing, depending on how strong an adhesive I needed and what I had around in an appropriate color.

To give the cakes a nice shiny finish and to get rid of any remaining powdered sugar (which is used when you roll out the fondant to prevent sticking-- it's very obvious on the black fondant), I steamed the cakes with a little steamer I bought at Sears.  I had seen Buddy do this on Cake Boss, and it's very effective.  You can buy a small steamer for about $30-- a worthwhile investment if you plan to work with colored fondant.

 

Overall, I was really pleased with the outcome.

 

So how'd it taste?

The chocolate cake was moist and delicious.  And chocolatey.  I've found that some chocolate cakes are moist but leave me wanting more chocolate.  This one was really good, and went perfectly with the mocha buttercream.  And, only a few people left over the fondant (which means it must've tasted pretty good too.)

I thought this cake looked cute with the Funfetti.  

Anyway, the cake was a big success.  And now somehow I have to make yet another cake and more buttercream for my class on Tuesday :oP   Cake Overload.  Hope my co-workers are hungry for cake...