December was another great cake experience. This time I was asked to make a cake for my friend's second son and he wanted his theme to be Diego. By this time I had nearly perfected the frozen transfer recipe and I was still in love with it. Being able to create such detail and have it turn out was such a great feeling. Unfortunately I do not have step by step photos of this project, or most of my projects honestly (something I will be working on in the future) but I think the finished product is all anyone really wants to see anyway. I will though, rack my brain as much as possible to give you the tips that I used and the recipes so you can try to recreate or design something of your own using the same kind of tools.
THE CAKE
As a cake decorator, I am still in the process of working on the baking end of the cake business. I have been trying to find recipes of homemade cakes and cupcakes that are to my liking before I will just whip something up and sell it or give it away. The last impression, or the first, I don't want to be "Wow, this is really dense", or "this has no flavor", so at the time being I am still using boxed mixes. But most of the time, anyway, it is about the look of the cake and the taste of the frosting that is really the focus. I do make my own frostings, though.
Step #1: So I started this cake out with baking two chocolate 9 x 13 inch rectangular cakes. Letting them cool completely before assembling them. Since I only had one 9 x 13 pan, I had to bake one cake, then the other.
Tip: I found that when I would bake a cake, it would always get stuck and a piece would pull out from the bottom which I would have to patch back up with frosting or crumbled cake. I found as a tip online that if you take some shortening and spread it on the bottom of the cake pan and nicely on the sides, then cut out a piece of parchment paper the size of the bottom of the pan, that the cake would come out perfectly each time. Make sure that the parchment paper is at least the size of the bottom of the pan or slightly smaller, never bigger because of the puckering in the corners. This will create a weird shape or a pocket of air.
Step #2: My next step was to make the frosting while the cake was cooling. I started using a Pure White Buttercream frosting that I absolutely love. The only real drawback was how long it would take to actually make the frosting which is nearly 40 minutes for me due to sifting the powdered sugar into the bowl. This frosting is pretty sweet but it is really nice because it is pure white and it is easy to color.
Tip: This frosting gets pretty warm from the 20 minutes that it is supposed to mix in the standing mixer, so it works better for decorating purposes to cover it and place it in the refrigerator for a while to let it cool down and get a bit stiffer. It also warms up pretty quickly in your hand while decorating and you can see that it is starting to separate. So at that point you will want to put it in the refrigerator for about an hour or so. When this happens, I just move on to a new color while the other sits in the fridge.
Step #3: Once the cakes are cooled, take a cake leveler and slice off the top portion of the cake. I use a wire cake leveler that I purchased at Wal-Mart and it works pretty well, though I am thinking about upgrading to another Wilton cake leveler.
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