More adventures in cake

 

 

 

It had to happen at some point. Buttercream is a gateway drug and eventually the kids turn to something more exotic, something with a kick, something a little harder

Buttercream, for those not in the know, is basically butter, icing sugar or confectioners sugar for those on the other side of the Atlantic and then milk or water and whatever flavouring you want to add. It's super sweet, quick and easy to make and hard to mess up. If you do happen to mess it up, it's pretty easy to fix. However, too much of a good thing is just too much and I started searching for something that was not going to be as sweet on the palate. I had started to make larger cakes, taller cakes, wider cakes and the taste of the buttercream just became too much. It was time to enter the world of Swiss meringue buttercream.

 

Swiss meringue buttercream is a bitch to make. There is no way of dressing that fact up. It's meringue, obviously, so it involves cooking egg whites and sugar until the sugar dissolves and there is no chance you'll poison anyone and then beating it until cool, which is about 20 mins if you don't have a stand mixer. Then you add butter, it looks all curdled, you freak out and freeze in horror and it miraculously uncurdles itself and then you sigh with relief and add flavour to it and then spread it on everything that isn't fast enough to get out of your way. It's less sweet than normal buttercream, it's also creamier and it spreads and pipes beautifully, but I only make it for special occasions because it it soooo time consuming. There is an even tricker version called italian meringue buttercream which is basically beating a hot sugar syrup into egg whites then adding a cream inglese and butter. Tastes divine but it's a lot of steps. Swiss meringue is better once you get the hang of it. The cake above there is a chocolate triple layer cake with a crushed malteaser filling and a malted chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream.

 

This little guy represents my next foray into icing. He's my first attempt at getting 3D and he's made out of fondant. I sculpted him for one of my long suffering team who has been paroles for good behaviour and promoted to another role. The loves minions, chocolate and sweet, sweet fondant so this cake represents all three. What you can't really tell from the photo is that his sitting on a double layer chocolate cake with fudge icing which is one foot square. I've made a few cakes this size now, it's the largest size of cake I've made and I've got a little trick to share wih you for baking it. With really big cakes the problem that you face is doming. The cake will cook too fast at the sides where the batter touches the tin and not fast enough in the middle leaving you with dried out edges and a huge dome of cake in the centre. The trick is to keep the edges cooler for longer to give the centre more of a chance to cook and then the whole cake rises evenly. The way I tackled this was by creating a thermal collar. I get wet paper towels and then, laying down the foil I layer the paper towels flat, usually with three or four layers of paper towel then I wrap the foil edges over to seal it in and pop it in the freezer. I try to freeze it overnight usually and then wrap it around the sides of your tin and clip with bull clips before poping in the oven. It works every time. You can get purpose made things that do this for you but they're expensive and if you don't do this often it's a wasted investment.

 

My second foray into fondant was also my first foray into sugar flowers. I've piped buttercream flowers but this is a whole new thing, this is sculptural. This one is a peony, but I also made a rose. And what you see here is the first time I've ever covered a cake in fondant. It's fun fondant, in theory is basically like play dough you can eat but it will turn on you, it can be sticky, sometimes it's too thin, if it's too humid then it starts to sweat. It's not as easy as the cake boss makes it out to be, but nothing is the first time you try it so I'm going to keep going and see how far I can get. Sugar flowers are fun too once you get the hang of them. Just make them with enought time to dry out properly. These are for a bake sale at work tomorrow so I hope someone buys them.

So the adventure continues! Who knows where next but I might have to get to the point where I start charging for this because it's costing me a fortune!