Smell My Plate » cake

My First Date With Fondant

Somer Canon — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:56:44 +0000

I like making cakes. In fact, I always have the ingredients on hand so that if the fancy takes me, I can make several different cakes at any time. So when my mother asked me to make her a birthday cake this year, I thought to myself, “No sweat!”

But I wanted to do something special for my mom. I thought about making pretty decorations from icing; flowers and borders and such. Then I saw this cake and thought to myself, “My mom would LOVE this.” That cake is so darned cute and clean that I simply had to try to make it. It has my mother’s two favorite colors and it’s too adorable for words. The only problem was that I had never worked with fondant before and there was simply no way that I could replicate this work with icing.

Thank goodness for the internet.

There are many many many articles and videos detailing how to smooth fondant over a cake. There are several how-to’s for making fondant roses. Fondant bows have their own articles as well. I went into this endeavor feeling well-educated and quite confident. If the project went to hell, I could always just ice it and present my mother with a plain white cake.

I just made a simple two-layered 9-inch round white cake. I made simple white icing to go in between the layers and to go over the cake before the fondant went on. For the fondant, I simply bought plain white fondant at my local craft store (I bought way too much expecting a million and a half mistakes on my part). Following the internet’s infinite wisdom, I also purchased gel food coloring so that I could color the fondant.

The coloring and kneading of fondant is a giant pain in the ass. There, I said it. It takes a LOT of work to get out all of the swirls of color and get a uniform color in the fondant. There is a lot of kneading and back work. Fondant (at least the stuff I bought) is a lot more firm and dense than I had anticipated. It took a very long time to simply color the fondant.

Fondant also needs to be kept moist. I worked with small amounts at a time and kept the rest rolled in a ball under a wet paper towel. It worked well for me.

Another surprise I got was that you do not use powdered sugar to keep the fondant from sticking while you work with it. It was an assumption, really, but I was surprised to learn that the best powder to use is actually cornstarch. A little cornstarch goes a long way and it worked great with keeping the fondant from sticking.

Mostly, making a fondant cake is just a lot of time and work on your part. My first try came out looking rather nice, but a pro could point out my sloppiness and many mistakes quite easily. Fondant cakes will only be a very special occasion on my part. The making of this cake from the baking of the cake to photographing of the finished product took me 12 hours. That DOES include cooling down time, but it’s still a lengthy process. It may also be due to the fact that this was my first time and I wasn’t working very fast.

At any rate, here is the finished cake. Not bad for a first-timer but still riddled with mistakes.

I wasn’t entirely pleased with how the colors came out. I was looking for more cool and muted colors and I ended up with ultra loud neon colors. My own fault, of course.

I like the bow. Speaking as someone who tries to avoid this word, I do think the bow is CUTE.

My roses are a little blumpy and not quite delicate. They look like flowers, though, so it is a success in my book.

Now people, when I place the phrase “If I can do it, anybody can do it” before you, I mean it. I am not a particularly talented person nor am I the most patient person. This takes a lot of time and work and that’s about all. If you can devote a lot of time both reading up on the how-to’s of fondant and the decorating itself, then you can do it.

I will warn you though, it tastes like crap.

Enjoy! Haha!

The Candy Cane Cake

Somer Canon — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 03:48:17 +0000

Years ago I found an old Pillsbury leaflet among my mother’s old cookbooks. It was for holiday baking so I held on to it for future baking. One recipe that I simply had to try immediately was the Pink Peppermint Angel Food Cake. The picture looked so pretty. The cake was adorned with crushed peppermint candies and mini candy canes, thus my calling it the Candy Cane Cake. Also, that’s easier to say that Pink Peppermint Angel Food Cake.

I made it years ago and loved it, which is actually kind of weird. Outside of hard candies, I usually don’t like my food flavored with mint. It reminds me too much of toothpaste and I don’t enjoy eating it at all. But I liked this cake. Perhaps it was the marshmallow-y frosting or just the simple fact that I will NEVER turn down a piece of angel food cake because I love it so much. But this cake is really good. For your enjoyment, the recipe!

Pink Peppermint Angel Food Cake

Pillsbury Holiday Baking and Gifts Nov. 1995 Issue #177

CAKE:

1 package Angel Food Cake mix

1 cup water

½ tsp. peppermint extract

6 drops red food color

FROSTING AND DECORATIONS:

½ cup sugar

2 egg whites

2 Tblsp. water

1 (7 oz.) jar marshmallow crème

2 Tblsp. crushed hard peppermint candies or candy canes

16 (2-inch) candy canes, unwrapped

Heat oven to 350. In large bowl, combine cake mix and water at low speed until moistened; beat 2 minutes at high speed. Divide batter in half; fold peppermint extract and food color into one half of the batter. Alternately spoon pink and white batters into ungreased 10-inch tube pan. Gently cut through batter with knife, swirling to marble.

Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes or until crust is deep golden brown and cracks on top appear dry. DO NOT OVERBAKE! Cool cake upside down on narrow neck glass bottle or heat proof surface until completely cool. Loosen edges with knife or metal spatula to remove from pan.

In medium saucepan, combine sugar, egg whites, and 2 Tblsp. water. Cook over low heat, beating continuously with electric hand mixer until soft peaks form. Add marshmallow crème; continue beating until stiff peaks form. Frost cooled cake.

Sprinkle top of cake with crushed peppermint candies. Arrange candy canes around sides of cake in 8 groups of two candy canes each, placing curved end together to form hearts. YIELD: 10 servings.

I don’t decorate the cake with hard candies. That would drive me freaking insane to have hard candies on an angel food cake. Sure it looks pretty for pictures. It looks beautiful actually, but I didn’t make this cake for pictures. I made this cake for eatin’! No way am I putting something that might slow down my inhalation of this dessert!

Do they make packaged angel food cake? I have never noticed. I always make my own angel food cake here and take the recipe from there. Angel food cake really isn’t hard to make, it’s just a little time consuming. As long as you do EXACTLY what the recipe tells you to do, you’ll have a wonderful cloudy chunk of sugar lovin’s for your face-stuffing pleasure.

I just use the recipe from my ever present Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. No, I’m not giving you the recipe right now because I am TIRED. I’ve been baking all day….all week actually and I want to get a cup of decaf coffee and go to bed! I wasn’t even going to do a post tonight until I noticed that some of my lovely internet family had, without my knowing, become a rabid bunch of angel food cake-craving zombies who were out for my blood if I did not post this recipe soon. It all worked out in the end. If it weren’t for the cake zombies, I would not have touched that cake tonight, but because I needed to photograph it, I cut it open and ate a slice while writing this post. Let me tell you, it is a cake that you actually say, “OM NOM NOM” while eating it, it’s so good.

It’s also really pretty. That kind of pretty is hard to mess up. That pretty pink and white marbled cake with the fluffy and shiny white icing are irresistible. I hope you try this recipe. It’s really quite wonderful.

Enjoy!

A “Holy Crap” Dessert

Somer Canon — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:06:28 +0000

My husband has been griping for the past few days about wanting a chocolate cake. I kept deflecting his belly-achings and going about my business. Today, however, I decided to humor him and make a chocolate cake.

At any given time, I always have the ingredients handy to make several different baked goods. It’s a nice way to put a peaceful note on a stressful day and, hey, sometimes you just want some warm cookies. So I was very not worried when I went online to look for recipes on how to make a wonderful chocolate cake and chocolate icing. What I came upon was a recipe that, at first glace, appeared to be the recipe for your average run-of-the-mill cake. I had all of the ingredients on hand and decided to try it anyhow. Besides, I trust Hershey. It’s the only chocolate (Besides Ghirardelli and Neuhaus) that I really like.

The recipe was super easy. The icing was super easy to make. When we had finished our dinner and I served this, my husband looked at me after his first bite and said, “I hope you’re keeping this recipe.”

I took a bite and WOW. It’s a REALLY good cake. It’s almost like brownies but in cake form. VERY chocolate-y and VERY moist. Give it a try.

No, there are no pictures of this. I had no intention of making a blog post about a simple Hershey’s chocolate cake, but after eating it, I knew I had to share it. Seriously. If you like chocolate, try that sucker. You will thank me.

Enjoy!

Wilton Birthday Cakes for Kids

Somer Canon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:52:35 +0000

When I was little, my mom would always get me birthday cakes from a local baker. She would do any design that was my fancy at the time. They always looked and tasted wonderful and thanks to her extreme disorganization, the cakes were always a little late but she always threw in a dozen delicious cookies to apologize for the tardiness. Now that I have a child of my own, I was curious as to how I would handle cakes on his birthdays. Do I go to an unorganized baker? Do I buy from the grocery store? Do I make simple cakes myself?

It was my mother-in-law who got me turned on to Wilton cake pans. She made character-themed cakes from Wilton cake pans for her sons when they were children and they both reminisce about them to this day. I decided that I wanted to do cakes like this for my son.

For his first birthday, Cookie Monster was the cake. Cookie Monster was a theme to his party. I got the Wilton food coloring gels to get the colors nice and deep.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have neither the patience or the talent to make a fancy cake. If you look closely you can see mistakes that I made, but all in all it was an adorable cake. The blue icing had that muppet fur look, and the basic picture is recognizable. My son isn’t going to look at a cake like this and say, “Geez Mom, you made a ton of mistakes! It looks so sloppy!” It’s supposed to be fun, and it was.

It was very fun.

This year, the birthday party theme was dinosaurs. Again, I turned to Wilton for the cake pan, and again it appeared that my novice abilities and minimal patience didn’t ruin the party at all.

Again, I used the Wilton gel food coloring because of the depth of color they achieve. The cake and cupcakes were a rousing success and I’d like to encourage anybody out there to try these for a little one. If it’s a niece or nephew or a son or daughter or grandchild, etc. and you want to do something special, make them a cake. If you’re abilities worry you, just go out and buy a set of tips (Wilton makes these as well) and go to their website and pick out a cake pan that will thrill your little one the most. They have hundreds of cake pans and many of them are in the shapes of today’s favorite children’s characters. Each pan comes with specific instructions on how to decorate the cake and what tips to use, etc.

Also, Wilton is a big name and can be found just about anywhere. It’s not hard to find. I know that times are tough for some people and sometimes splurging on the bakery cake might be a bit much for some so I’d like to encourage you to look into these cakes for parties. They are fun, make a great centerpiece, and it’s a personal think to bake a cake for someone like this. I know that I always feel touched when I put one of these cakes before my son. Sure, I’ve only done it twice, but it’s such a sweet tradition and I hope others might try it.

Crab Cakes