Pumpkin Cake: "Rose's Heavenly Cakes" Cookbook

For Thanksgiving I wanted to take a cake to my parents' house. Nothing fancy or sculpted or fondanted (yes I know that's not really a word). Just a yummy cake. There had been a cake I had been dying to make for awhile from one of my newer cookbooks: the "Pumpkin Cake with Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream" from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes" by Rose-Levy Beranbaum. If you don't have a copy of this book or Rose's "The Cake Bible" you really owe it to yourself to get them. The recipes are wonderful and the books are just packed full of baking knowledge. And my favorite part? Everything is given in weights!!!! YAY!!! I use my kitchen scale as much as possible- way more precise than using measuring cups and less dishes to do. Her website is realbakingwithrose.com; here you can buy her books and there is a wonderful advice forum as well.

I also figured this cake would be a good opportunity to use the Bundt pans that I purchased a few years back and never actually used. I bought them on impulse because they were marked down to $1.25 each at Wal-Mart; I got three.

Usually I am very good at reading recipes through, and setting up my mis-en-place. However, I had been stupid busy this week and when I started to put this recipe together I realized I had no walnuts, and no walnut oil. I skipped the walnuts and subbed peanut oil (The roasted kind that smells like peanut butter, not just the plain peanut oil for deep-frying) for the walnut oil. Here is my finished cake.

The main reason this recipe had jumped off the page at me were the words "Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream", but I was feeling extremely lazy and the buttercream in the book has three parts to it: making a creme Anglaise ( a type of custard), an Italian meringue , and then combining the two with orange juice concentrate and zest. Not this time- some other day, yes. Today, no. I had leftover ganache from other cakes so I warmed about 5 ounces up in a pouring measuring cup, and added a tablespoon each of Triple Sec and o.j. concentrate. This I poured over the cake as it sat on a cooling rack over a jelly roll pan.

The finished cake:

Can't wait to dig in!

Once again, if you enjoy baking, you won't regret buying Rose's books or visiting her website.

Contest Winning Cake (on the 2nd try:)

      I'm pretty happy that one of my cakes won the Halloween cake contest on the Cakes We Bake website. There were a lot of really awesome cakes like Zombie Dog by Paul Joachim and the very creepy Spoils the Clown cake by Tami Chitwood. I won with my "Ghost" cake that I had actually done for the Threadcakes competition this summer and failed to place with any of my 13 (yes I went a little nuts) entries. I still have all the step-by step pictures from that cake, so since I'm in a great mood from the validation of winning something I decided to post about it. UPDATE: I found out today(11/15) that this cake also one 2nd place in the Cake Central Halloween cake Contest!!!

This is the kick-ass t-shirt I based my cake on by Droopy, DRP, if it's still in stock you can buy it here (I did). I started off with a half sheet of chocolate cake flavored with a little bourbon. I had printed out a larger version of the t-shirt, and made a rough waxed paper template and cut out the basic shape

I then cut out other elements out of the original template and used them as templates for the elements I wanted to stand out

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In this photo you can see I've started to build-up the face area as well. After the basics were carved and placed I mixed together cake and frosting to make a clay-ish texture (like cake-pops) that I used to form the hair and other fine elements that would be hard to carve

When I had most of the details I covered it with a chocolate syrup-based frosting.

Next up: covering the whole thing in  a layer of fondant:

After that was trimmed I started painting with gel colors thinned with vodka.

As I worked, I was adding in different elements and layers of fondant, in the next picture I had made the 2nd hand of fondant, as well as the teeth on the first wrist

I just kept adding layers and painting as I went

At this point I thought that the board needed to be black- I was hoping I could just paint it, but the surface was too slick. I took all my scraps of colored fondant and gumpaste and mixed them together- ending with a purple shade. I laid it around the cake and painted it w/ black airbrush food color.

And the finished product:

This one was a lot of fun to do. Painting on fondant is probably my favorite technique. Hope you enjoyed seeing it come together.

This Birthday Cake is Bananas (Or how I shattered the cuteness barrier)

As I mentioned in a previous post, my sister has a Welsh Corgi named Mr. Belvidere. This week was her birthday and I decided to try and make her a cake that looked like Mr. B. I stalked her facebook page awhile and decided that I should do Mr. B. in his banana Halloween outfit:

And away we go. I decided to go with the theme of the picture, and do a banana flavored cake. I had liked working with ganache under fondant for my Guinness cake, so I decided to try and make a peanut butter/white chocolate ganache. I had read that a 3:1 ratio for white chocolate to cream worked, so I guessed that peanut butter chips would work the same as white chocolate.

For the ganache:

1, 10 oz. bag peanut butter chips

14 0z. white chocolate, chopped

8 oz heavy cream

6 Oz peanut butter

Combine chips, white chocolate and peanut butter in large bowl

Heat cream until bubbles form on sides- just to the boiling point

Pour cream over chocolate, cover and let stand 5-10 minutes

Mix it together until well blended, then cover and let sit overnight

On a Sunday night I baked the cakes (one 10", 3" high, and 1 9" 1.5" high), made the ganache,  2 batches of MMF(marshmallow fondant), and a batch of modeling chocolate. After the cakes were cooled I wrapped them in plastic and threw them in the freezer. (I always freeze my cakes before decorating because I think it makes them moister).

On Monday, I transfered the cakes into the fridge a few hours before I got started to let them thaw a bit. When I was ready I got out my cake drum, cake, ganache, and photos of B. to get started:

I split the bigger cake into 2 layers and filled with some ganache. I carved off the two sides to start forming a dog shape. Since the last dog cake I attempted had the head fall forward destroying the cake, I tweaked my support by adding a cardboard in the middle of the cake. Later, a dowel will go through the cake and cardboard, and into the head. The cardboard should help keep the head where it belongs (I hope).

More carving:

Cover with ganache (I nuked it in 15 second interviews until it was nice and spreadable):

Now Mr.B. needed some front legs. I made a batch of rice crispy treats and slapped them in place, smooshing them together and onto the cake:

Then I covered the legs with ganache also; let it set up a few minutes, then popped into the fridge with a plastic bag covering it, and started carving B's head out of a styrofoam ball. Can I just say that I HATE carving styrofoam! It's expensive and a pain to carve, but I needed something lightweight so B. wouldn't lose his head. I carved the head with upper jaw out of the ball, and used part of a cone-shape for the lower jaw- which I secured in place with 2 toothpicks

Day 3: The home stretch:) I started by covering B's body with fondant:

That was a real pain in the butt with an irregular shape. Helpful tip: always check your nail length before working with fondant, and trim accordingly. I never have really long nails, but just a little too long and you'll end up with fingernail marks in everything. After it was covered I added back paws made of fondant.

Now the part I was dreading, covering the styrofoam head with fondant. First I added some eyebrows and covered the neck hole with fondant pieces.

Then I covered the whole thing with a layer of fondant and added some fondant eyeballs:

To attach the head to the body I sharpened a dowel on both ends, jammed it through the body and into the base, and then impaled the head atop:

Now for my favorite part: painting! I use gel colors and thin with 190 proof vodka (such as Everclear). Helpful tip #2:  use a test piece of fondant to see the colors before putting them on the actual cake. The brown I had weren't giving me the right shade of brown, which actually ended up being the Wilton Ivory gel color.After painting I added a modeling chocolate nose

Then it was time to make the banana costume. I used fondant for the yellow, and modeling chocolate for the white, since I wanted it to be stiffer. I made waxed paper templates, cut the pieces, and attached

The next part was the hardest: the cone-shaped hat. I took the un-used portion of the styrofoam cone I had used earlier for B's lower jaw, and stuck it to the top of his head with a toothpick. I rolled out more modeling chocolate and guesstimated a shape to cut out. In hindsight I should have added more filler material under the cone. I underestimated the give of the modeling chocolate. I did manage to stuff some fondant on the sides to fill it out a bit more. and  added a back piece and tried to blend as best I could. Normally modeling chocolate blends together easily, but for whatever reason this batch was crappy and lumpy so it didn't work perfectly.

I made modeling chocolate ears, and attached them with toothpicks, and painted. Very cute, but there was still something missing. So, since I had a gallon size Ziploc of rice crispy treats I had no use for in the forseable future, I decided to make :

A banana! (but not Hand Banana, that would be inappropriate). But how often do you see a lone banana? Two more coming up. (the bananas were covered in a 50/50 fondant and modeling chocolate mix)

Are you ready for the cuteness?

I hoped you liked seeing this cake in progress. I think it turned out awesome- now it just needs to survive a car ride and we're good to go:)

UPDATE:) All doggie parts survived the car ride and my sister liked it so much she went and got the dog and the banana shoot for a photo shoot. Poor Mr.B now knows what the celebrities feel like being stalked by the papparazzi, as me, my dad, and my sister were all taking pictures at the same time:)