Hey everyone,
So this past week was my friend Tasha's 24th birthday and I wanted to do something real special for her. Now honestly, I don't have as much disposable income as I want to get a her nice present so I had to look at my more DIY/crafty side to figure out what to get her. I was browsing Pinterest when it clicked! I was going to use the skills I had started developing from class to make her a birthday cake!
Now I wanted to go all out and I figured the best way to do that was make a 2 tier cake with some sort of frosting and fondant layer. My first thought was doing some sort of chocolate cake but I ended up landing on the red velvet option- which was in hindsight so much better.
So I had the cake, now I had to decide what kind of frosting to use, and it really was a no brainer; I had to use a cream cheese frosting!- Luckily my friend Maria, had a real simple and really amazing cream cheese icing she recommended that I used.
The recipe entails beating 4oz of softened cream cheese and 1/4 cup of room temperature butter until its nice and fluffy. Then you beat in 1 cup of icing sugar and 1 tsp vanilla to taste and voila and real simple and delicious icing! For my cake I tripled the recipe to make sure I had enough to cover 2 whole cakes.
The package of red velvet cake mix I purchased allocated me to make 2 8"round cakes but I opted to substitute a 6"round pan and a 9"square pan. So I baked the cakes according to the instructions on the box and after letting it cool, I used my handy dandy Wilton cake slicer (I purchased at Michaels) to cut the cakes horizontally to make room for the filling.
Using a generous amount of the icing, I began torting the cakes, making sure it was leveled all around.
After torting the cake, I placed the top half back on and started to ice the top and the sides of the cake using 2 metal spatulas; One was a straight edge and the other being an elevated spatula.
Once I had finished putting on the crumb coat on both cakes, I put them back in the fridge to let the icing settle and sort of firm up. *Note, if you find your icing a little runny in the beginning, feel free to add more icing sugar than the recipe calls for to add firmness.
Using premade fondant from Wilton which I had previously purchased the night before, I began covering the cakes. First when I opened the package, I had to knead the fondant to a pliable consistency. Then using a rolling pin lightly dusted with icing sugar I began rolling out the fondant to the size of the cake plus height of it too. So for my 9 inch cake, the diameter of the rolled fondant had to be at least 13 inches (that includes the height of the sides) I ended up making it 15 inches. I used the rolling pin to help place the fondant on the cake then starting from the top slowly pressing around the cake, making sure to release any of the air pockets that may have formed after you place it.
Once the fondant was on, I had to go to work, so I wrapped the cakes with plastic wrap and left it out at room temperature until the next day.
The next day was all about decorating. I first stacked the cakes on top of each other. Then I got sugar paper from Michaels which had this lovely black design I knew my friend would love. I then cut the sugar paper in even strips and after applying a bit of water as a glue on the back (using a pastry brush) I evenly placed it along the circumference of the cakes.
I also got these lovely white sugar pearls that I knew would add the right amount of class to this cake.
Earlier that week, I melted a bunch of chocolate and starting piping out some letters to place on the decorated cake. I had gotten a lot better at keeping my hand steady when piping chocolate so I was really proud of how they turned out.
And once I had placed the chocolate piping on the cake and finished with the pearls, I threw (not literally of course) the cake into the fridge just to let everything I had put on settle.
The final result was a cake I was very proud to present with my little experience. I think I can say everyone who tried it at the party really enjoyed it and not to brag or anything but I think with a little more finesse this could be one of those $60 cakes you order from a bakery haha. All in all this whole cake cost me a grand total of $35 but I gained lots of experience from it!- plus, it was fun ;)
Follow me!
Youtube: youtube.com/mglalvarez13
Twitter: twitter.com/mglalvarez
Instagram: instagram.com/mglalvarez
Cheers,
-Miguel
No comments:
Post a Comment