Portal Cake-- It's All Lies.

There was another masters defense in my lab today, a.k.a. another cake making opportunity!  A couple of the guys in my lab (including this one) are really into gaming-- hey, we're all engineers.  Even I'm a bit of a gamer in certain respects...

Anyway, there is a PC game called Portal, which is very popular and supposedly very good.  Cake is a common theme throughout the game, and is particularly important in the ending.  There's even a song about it, and it is the last thing you see at the end of the game.

I knew he'd appreciate a replica of the Portal Cake.  I baked a chocolate cake, and made a chocolate/mocha buttercream. 

Since I didn't have to do any piping, and the color didn't matter, I made a double batch of buttercream containing real butter (as opposed to just shortening) and real vanilla extract (not clear vanilla extract).  Here is the recipe I used (double batch):

• 1 c Butter (salted)
• 1 c shortening
• 8 c sifted powdered sugar (actually I only used 7)
• 2 t vanilla extract
• 6 tbsp milk

Cream the butter and shortening, add vanilla.  Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, mixing well on medium speed.  After adding all sugar, icing will be a bit dry; add milk.  Mix well till creamy.

This recipe tastes much better than my class recipe, which only calls for shortening, sugar, flavorings, water, and meringue powder.  However, the class recipe keeps almost indefinitely and is good for piping.  Since I wasn't concerned about piping, I added a little less sugar so it was less stiff and more creamy. 

I used about 2 cups of the icing and mixed it with a small batch of ganache and espresso liqueur to make the chocolate/ mocha flavored icing that I used to ice and fill this cake.

Here you can see the mess I was making-- after I iced the cake, I covered it with grated chocolate (literally, I grated a Ghirardelli bar) and some sliced almonds.  The key with this icing was to work quickly-- it was lovely and soft initially but as the chocolate hardens, it gets harder to work with, and harder for anything to stick to it...

Anyway, I covered the cake with the shavings just using my hands and making a mess.  After I was done, I swept away the excess.

For the top, I piped some of the buttercream that I hadn't mixed with the chocolate using tip 2C, then added a jumbo maraschino cherry to each dollop.

To finish, I added the iconic candle.

This cake was fairly simple to make, and very tasty.  I think the icing is my favorite so far (and my advisor's...) :)

I have this theory that chocolate ganache causes cakes to dry out some, because I feel like I have a hard time with cakes crumbling when they contain ganache/ chocolate icings rather than simply buttercream.  This cake crumbled a little when I was cutting it, but was still moist to taste.  I may try glazing my cakes in the future if I plan to use a ganache or ganache based icing.  On the other hand, the bottom tier of my birthday cake didn't crumble at all, and it had a similar icing on it.  Maybe that recipe was just more moist to begin with, though.

Anyway, if you need a quick, effective, and tasty cake, or have a friend who's a gamer, I'm sure you could make your own version of the Portal Cake! :)

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...

The Cake That Started It All

OK-- this wasn't the first cake that I'd EVER made, but it was the first one I took seriously.  It was made for my friend Stephanie, an office-mate who was moving.  

The idea for this cake was an amalgamation of a chocolate cake I've ogled at my local grocery store and the cream puff cake that Buddy makes in honor of his late father on Cake Boss: Episode 2. 

I could not find a picture of the cream puff cake, but it is a large cake featuring cream puffs and chocolate covered strawberries, along with classic buttercream borders and a chocolate drizzle.  I decided to incorporate the chocolate covered strawberries and the chocolate drizzle, though I didn't use quite the same approach, since this was only an 8" cake.

The chocolate triangles are a fairly common gimmick on grocery store chocolate cakes, but I think they're really effective!  I didn't want to hand make these triangles, so I carefully cut some Ghirardelli 72% cacao squares along the diagonal to create a similar effect.

The great news about this cake: box chocolate cake mix, and white icing out of a can (I know, gasp).  BUT, for this cake I made a chocolate ganache to fill between the layers.  Ganache is like chocolate truffle filling-- recipes are everywhere.  Basically, you bring some heavy cream to a simmer and pour it over some semi-sweet chocolate chips in a mixing bowl.  Then you stir till all the chocolate is melted.  I added a splash of Kahlua for extra deliciousness.  I also layered some fresh strawberries on top of the ganache when I filled the cake.

I set aside some ganache and put it in a squeeze bottle (a small plastic bottle which can be found by the candy making supplies at your local Michael's or similar).  This is what I used to do the drizzles and the design on the top.

Also, this cake was made before I had invested in any real cake decorating supplies.  All the piping was done using a Farberware pastry bag set I found at the grocery store.

Here is the cake as I served it, surrounded by chocolate covered strawberries:

It was tasty.

So the only supplies I had to buy for this cake (aside from the ingredients):

• A package of 12" cake rounds
• A cake caddy to bring it to work-- note that the 12" rounds fit perfectly in the caddy and prevents sliding...
• A cheap pastry bag and tip set from the grocery store
• A plastic squeeze bottle for the chocolate

I already had a decent icing spatula on hand. :)

Skills used:

• Filling the cake: Ok, here was one mini-disaster.  The first step was to pipe some white icing around the circumference (yes, I'm an engineer) of the bottom layer of the cake to create a dam for the filling.  (Note: do this AFTER you put the cake on its cake round).  I did my best to create a sturdy dam, but I was impatient and overzealous when I poured on the ganache.  I made kind of a lot and didn't let it cool as long as I might have (it thickens significantly as it cools), and slowly poured it in the center, using as much as I could.  Well, for a while the surface tension held it, but there was clearly a low spot on my dam.  As I sprinkled on the strawberries, I could see the impending doom.  Soon I found myself trying to hold back the onslaught of ganache as the dam slowly gave under the pressure.  Ultimately, I affixed 2 index cards to the side of the cake (stuck em right on, into the ganache) and put the whole thing in the fridge to set.  The next morning, I took off the index cards and the mistake was easily hidden.  Moral of the story: patience and moderation.
  

• Icing the cake:  I made this cake before I even owned a turntable.  This was a bit of a challenge.  Remember the key is to apply a crumb coat (an initial thin layer of buttercream on the outside of the cake in which all the cake crumbs are caught).  You can let the crumb coat set in the open air or in the fridge.  Once it has crusted, apply 1-2 more layers as needed and you won't see any crumbs in your final product (even on a chocolate cake with white icing).  Also, your crumb coat doesn't have to be perfectly smooth-- you can be anal retentive on the final frosting layer... I know I am. :)  This cake was smoothed just using my offset icing spatula.  For round cakes especially, this is easiest if you have a turntable.  I can do a more detailed post on ways to ice a smooth cake in the future.
  

• Basic Piping:  Just what you see on the cake.  Mostly some fun work with a relatively large star tip. 
  

• Chocolate 'piping': Done with the squeeze bottle.  The drips were done using gravity.  Basically you squeeze a dot on the top rim for 1-3 seconds depending on how long you want the drip to go-- I was going for random lengths so I varied the time.  Then, just let the drip run down the side of the cake.  Smooth frosting is key or the drop can bounce around a little.  Also, make sure you leave enough space between the drips or they can run together (I had that happen once).