The Wedding Cake Experiments - 2

It is Monday, the day after the first complete cake.

Wow what a weekend. I thought I would have time in between things to take pictures of steps and write about the trials and tribulations, but it wasn’t so, simply because of the amount of dishes to be cleaned to keep the kitchen reasonably accessible.

After lots of thought and reading, plus several youtube videos and Cake Boss, a trip to the store was in order.

First, after a visit to Michaels Craft Store and D&G Occasions I have purchased a number of things:

·        3 tier pan set, 14”-10”-6” at a depth of 3”. These were the largest sizes available at the time and I decided I could always cut them into different shaped if I wanted. Turns out if you go on a sale day the cake decorating isle can be cleared out pretty quickly of thing you are looking for.

·        Fondant – black, 5lbs

·        Red Velvet Cake mix, by Duff

·        Pattern Presses

·        Icing Scraper

·        Petal Dust, 4 colors

·        Fondant mat

·        Fondant smoother

·        Etc

The Plan:

Friday Night: Work on baking the actual cakes, cool trim and store in refrigerator

Saturday: Dirty ice the cakes with a thin layer, aka crumb coat the cakes and mix butter cream and royal icing

Sunday: Assemble and decorate the cakes. Have a little family party and fill out survey sheets.

What Actually Happened?

Friday Night: Tired and hungry, I decided to go to D&G Occasions right after work since I didn’t have everything I need to start the cakes and they were only open till 7. Motivated and even more tired, it is very late and time to bake. It turns out I still didn’t have everything I needed to start the particular recipes I wanted to make so we picked new flavors to try that I had the ingredients for.

Duff Red Velvet Cake for the top tier and White/Vanilla Cake for the bottom tier from scratch. Just before mixing the red velvet I discovered obstacle 1: a 3” deep pan of a strange size has particular capacity, temperature, and bake time requirements that cannot be found in any of the batter recipes that I have. *sigh*. Alright time for research.

Solution 1: A chart on a website pointed me in the right direction! (will edit this post later once I find the site again)

The duff box cake was wonderfully easy to mix but I’m wondering how good it’s going to taste.  Pro Tip 1: Before getting too far I read that you should grease and line the pan on the bottom and sides with a collar of parchment paper that extends an inch from the top of the pan. Done. Measure and pour 3 cups of batter into the pan and let’s get it in the oven. And boy was that tip a good one, the cake started rising much higher than the pan and ended up needing that collar.

Mistake 1: I used the temperature from the box and the cook time from the website with the chart and when my timer went off the cake wasn’t done…. Oops I look at the website more closely and the temperature was listed differently. So I increase the temp and start checking every 5 minutes for doneness. Pro Tip 2: Use a clean toothpick inserted in the center of the cake to see if it is done. Also try tapping the top of the cake and see if it bounces back. Another way is to tap the side of the pan and see how jiggly the cake is.

Time to write is up for today, I will continue next time.