Transformer Cake!

Oh my goodness, what a weekend! I got my first wedding cake order, and I decided I needed to practice.  My sister had asked me to make a cake for her and some of her friends this weekend, so I thought it would be a great practice opportunity.  Wow, was I in for a night of surprises and lessons (learned the hard way). Would you ever guess that these two cakes are, actually, THE SAME CAKE?

Yep! This is the same cake.  The first picture is the final product (obviously), and the second picture is what I attempted to do last night.  I woke up this morning to a crack and droopy fondant circles! It was horrible. After reading around on cakecentral.com, I figured out what I had done wrong and decided that I was going to fix it.  SO, I disassembled the whole cake (dowels and all!) and started over.  I removed the broken layer, which is why the final cake is shorter.  I must say, that even though the final cake is not what my sister asked for, I love it.  The maroon fondant on the cake turned all the icing a nice shade of pale pink ... so I just went with it!

The recipe I used rendered horrible results, and I believe that it was the reason for the cake's downfall.  The cake took forever to finish in the middle, but the outside formed a hard crust that had to be carved off.  Even after baking over an hour, these cakes were still mushy in the middle.  Three out of four of them sunk. The difference in the soft middle and the hard outer edges made for discourse within the cake, resulting in the crack.  When I took the cake apart and removed the faulty layer, all was well again!  Needless to say, I won't be sharing the recipe I used until I make some adjustments ;-)

This adventure gave me LOTS of practice and I feel a lot better about my buttercream skills on the final cake - all those youtube videos I watched while trying to figure out what I did wrong the first time really  helped! Here are some more close-up pictures:


Pretty monogram and reverse shell border



Royal Icing Roses

 Happy Baking!

Wilton Flowers and Cake Design Final Cake

Tonight was my last class for the Wilton Flowers and Cake Design course.  We learned the basket weave and got to use our flowers on a cake.  Since my birthday was yesterday, this is my "Day Late Birthday Cake" for myself, so, naturally, it was chocolate!  Due to lack of time, I used a cake mix (gasp!) that I doctored up, and it turned out wonderfully. 



Devils Food doctored cake mix with chocolate buttercream filling and vanilla buttercream frosting



Close up of royal icing roses (made during the Greys Anatomy premiere last week!)



View from the top - I LOVE the reverse shell border!



Our class manual told us to bring 3 cups of frosting, needless to say, it wasn't enough - only half my cake got the basket weave!  My teacher was really surprised that the  manual thought 3 cups would be enough, I guess now we know! You can see where I had the rest of the cake marked for the basket weave.

 Doctored Chocolate Cake Mix Cake:
1 package of Devils Food cake mix
1 package of Dream Whip
1 tablespoon of Meringue Powder
1 small (individual serving size) container of applesauce
1 cup of water
4 eggs
Method:
Mix all ingredients in a large bowl.  Beat on medium low speed for 5 minutes and pour into your prepared pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 50 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. This recipe filled my 8x3 round pan very nicely, but would be plenty for two 8x2 pans, as well. 
**After much experimentation, I have learned that greasing and flouring your pan and lining the bottom with parchment paper makes for the PERFECT cake release!

This doctored cake mix saved me SO much time - I baked, cooled (in the freezer), made frosting, and lightly iced this cake in just 2 hours. Next Monday, I start the Fondant and Gumpaste course - I am so excited!

Happy Baking!