Adventures In Cake

Sorry for taking so many days off!  I began by planning just two days over Christmas, but then I got quite busy with a project and decided that a few more days were in order.  Then it became glaringly obvious that Christmas was past…and I had a hard time finding a WordPress theme that I was happy with.  I like the lime slice for now, it’s still not what I had been looking for, but it’s functional, which is always a bonus it seems.

So what have I been doing?  I had been volunteered to make a wedding cake for a rather impromptu wedding celebration this past weekend.  I was excited to do it, I know I have some excellent cakes in my repertoire, but I daresay, my cake constructions skills were a little bit on the rusty side.  It was decided that I was going to make a white cake with raspberry filling, and the rest was up to me.  For an nontraditional couple (who I don’t even really know, btw) I decided a square cake was fitting, and headed off to my local cake supply store for the raspberry filling, and several things I needed to decorate my cake.

So imagine the horror that ran through my head as I pulled up to the door of my store and found a sign telling me the store was closed until the new year. Yikes! Double yikes, as my cake was needed in two days, so there was no time to order stuff online, and I blanked on where else I could find the things I needed.  So I headed off to the grocery store to get the necessary ingredients for Plan B, and then Plan C, just in case.

I managed to pull together a rather tasty Raspberry Curd, based on this Triple Berry Curd from Cooking Light Magazine, and I was thrilled that my cake was coming closer to a reality.  Then I started baking, and I baked up my four layers, allowed them to cool, and then whipped together a very basic butter-cream.  Construction began, and I was pleased that I remembered to add a dam of icing on each layer to hold in the filling.  Apparently, it wasn’t enough though, because almost as soon as I added the second layer to the bottom layer, things began to fall apart.  I got clever and decided to put the whole thing in the freezer, in hopes that it would firm up…except that four layers of cake did not fit and I ended up with this:

Disaster!  There was nothing for it except to start over.  I ran to the store to get more ingredients and began baking up my small second layers again, when it occured to me that if I scraped enough off, the bottom layer would be fine.  So I removed cake, frosting, and reached inbetween the layers with my fingers and scraped out some filling.  Another icing dam went in, and the bottom portion of cake did fit in the freezer, so there it went.

I remade my top layers, filled them and gave them their crumb coat of frosting.  I stacked the cakes, was pleased there was no buckling or oozing this time, and started adding another layer of frosting.  It was at this point, that I noticed how off-white the frosting really was, and I thought it would be nice to make it white, except of course, I had no icing white on hand, and I sat for a while and pondered the merits of a winter white frosting…

In a desperate last minute approach, I decided to go ahead and make a Seven-Minute Frosting.  Using egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar, I knew this one would come up a beautiful white color, and spread just so on the cake, it would look fantastic.  A quick rifle through my cake supplies found a canister of clear edible glitter which would give the cake some sparkle.  About 12 hours after I began the cake, I finally finished it.  I had nightmares all night about waking up and finding it collapsed and disintegrated in the morning, but the cake survived, and was delivered a short while later.  I’ve never been more grateful to have the responsibility of a baked good out of my hands.   It definitely looked much more spectacular in person, and while it isn’t even close to the original plan in my head, it turned out well.

I definitely need to spend time practicing the next time I get clever and decide to do a special occasion cake.  I also learned my lesson about procrastinating in picking up specific tools and ingredients.

Tomorrow I will be back to cooking as normal.  I have a few simple recipes to share this week, and I think we’ll look back at my goals for 2008 and have a good laugh.  I don’t think I met a single one, and since the last two years have not gone so well, I think we’ll just skip the goals for 2009.  We’ll let it be a nice and easy year.