Mindy's Cake #13: Confessions of a Lazy Cake Baker

I love cake. I love the idea of this cake project. But, I am lazy. And, I am behind. So when it came time for me to FINALLY catch up with the Ice-Cream-Cone cake, I took a few shortcuts. Like, um..., yeah, not even including the ice cream cones!

In my defense:
1. Trader Joe's did not have any ice cream cones and I didn't want to go to a second store.
2. Sherie had to increase the icing recipe to have enough for the cake and the cones. I just did not want to make more frosting. Especially since, as I have noted here before, my family is not so big on butter cream frosting.

Anyway, I made the cake for Charlie's 5 and a half birthday....which was March 7. So, what can I say about this cake nearly TWO MONTHS after baking it? Uh...it tasted awesome? It did, it really did. And, if I recall correctly it was pretty easy and basic.

Ugh, I'm such a slacker. Here are the pictures. I will now go flog myself for being so lazy both in cake execution and blog-posting.

Off-Topic: April Fools 2010 - Fried Chicken Style

Okay, so this is not one of the 30 cakes.  It is a cupcake recipe from Hello, Cupcake.  For April Fools Day I made the "cupcakes" on the left and served the savory "t.v. dinner" (thanks to KFC) on the right.  The lemonade is fake too.  It is jell-o with a straw.  April Fools is becoming a big holiday at my house.  Special K coats my chicken, starburst are my butter pats, and the peas & carrots are laffy taffy rolled & cut.  

  And it runs in the family.  You should see the "sushi" my mom made!  With Rice Krispies as the rice and fruit leather seaweed.  I guess you won't be surprised when I make that next year.  

Cake #14 - Semi-sweet Chocolate Layer Cake with Vanilla Cream Filling

Good gravy - what do I remember about making this Semi-Sweet Chocolate Layer Cake with Vanilla Cream Filling?  I made it for Valentine's Day weekend.  Inspired by the hearts on it.   I made it for a pot luck where I didn't tell that I was also making a dessert.  So I felt guilty that two other families brought cupcakes and I brought this...and then I felt glad that there were cupcakes so all the kiddos were suckered into eating them while the adults got this bad boy all to ourselves. 

This is the second cake I made where I read all the comments in the recipe before baking - so I can say with confidence I expected the cakes to cave in completely like a stadium with no roof - and they did.  So, I promptly filled in the stadium bowl with frosting to level it out. 

The chocolate cake was nothing special.  In fact it was so deflated and delicate it was annoying.  The vanilla cream filling however was amazing.  Like a Suzy Q filling without the fake taste and sooo much better.  Definitely worth making again and using in other cakes. 

Once again, I realize that ganache is such an easy, yummy and pretty frosting - it seems like a cheat.  Th gloppiness pictured here is mostly due to me filling in with frosting to make the cake more cake-looking.


Finally, for my hearts in confection sugar - I probably should have waited a little while before putting the papers down on the cake (so it was more cool/less sticky), but people were about to arrive so I had to move - and in the process peeled away some frosting with it. 

Everyone loved this cake despite it being a little goopy and caved in.  Make it again, with a different chocolate cake and it would be delish! 

Above, the cakes were just out of the oven, cooling, and not TOO deflated.  After 10 minutes though, see below.  The one in back is actually 2 cakes and the top one is almost see-through in the middle (where it looks cracked).  They really fell.  Even the front one, which fell a little less b/c the batter sat on the counter waiting for my other 8" cake pan to come out of the oven.  I only have 2 and needed 3 again - so I made 2 and saved the batter for the 3rd until the others were out.  This one turned out best.  Huh!  Who would have guessed?

Cake #13 Ice Cream Cone Cake

I love this cake.  This is a HAPPY cake.  It is happy to make.  It is happy to see.  It is happy happy fun fun.    Who cares how it tastes (good, excessive, rich, too much!) - it is just plain fun.  Especially fun since it was made for Samantha's 2nd birthday.

You make cupcakes in ice cream cones!
The middle layer of frosting is cookies and cream!
There is chocolate AND vanilla!

Again, I am writing about this a month after the fact.  Here are the notes I wanted to share with Mindy before she made hers:

I read all the comments of the other bakers and increased the amount of frosting to a batch that is 1.5 times bigger:

THIS FROSTING ALONE HAD 12 EGG YOLKS AND 8 STICKS OF BUTTER.  And, Ben said it was the best buttercream he's ever had.   I don't think I have ever said this before:   it was too much butter for me.

But that middle layer, where I crushed chocolate wafers into it was AWESOME.  I would definitely do this trick again.  Made for a very interesting texture bites.

You fill the ice cream cones with the cake batter & bake in muffin tins.  Totally fun trick.  Would definitely do this again even with a box cake mix just for the fun of sending these to school for my girls.

Here the cone cakes are cooling - before they totally collapsed.  Those chocolate wafers must be made specifically for recipes that call for "chocolate wafers" - sold near the 'Nilla Wafers.  I thought it would be hard to slice the cones in half, but it was a breeze with the serrated knife.  The cones lost their crispness while baking and were kind of stale/soggy/chewy and easy to cut.  I won't lie, their only function was visual, bc they did not add much in the flavor department.

This cake is 2 measley layers that you have to slice in half to frost between, so it comes out to 4 layers.  But, even at 4 layers, it was not very tall.  In fact, I would not agree that this serves 20 people as the recipe suggests.  I do think there are enough calories in there for 40 people, but to cut an 8 inch round cake into 20 slices would test even the best Cutco gear.

Yay for only 2 cake pans!  This was a very delicate /crumbly hard-for-me-to-handle cake.  I almost did not cut it in half.  I did make them the night before and put them in the fridge, so that likely helped.

OH!  But it was taller than the ice cream cones that you have to stick to the sides.  This poses a challenge:  to align the cones with the bottom of the cake plate or to align them with the top of the cake and not have them touch the bottom.  I chose the latter and piped icing around the bottom to not look like they were just floating there - mostly b.c I couldn't imagine how I would frost "ice cream cones" if the cones were not on the top of the cake.

My cones, hovering above the plate, stuck to the side of the frosting on the cake.

Ahhh, the frostings.  There are 3 of them, made from the same base.  Vanilla butter cream on the left.  Then you add chocolate for the chocolate frosting.  You add chocolate wafers for the middle layers.   Oh!  what is the 4th bowl peeking on the right?  Not frosting.  It's matzoh ball mix.   Ben whipped up a homemade matzoh ball soup while we were caking.  

Chocolate on - there were an odd # of cones, so I had to double up and not go every other cone with vanilla and chocolate.  In retrospect, I might do the entire cone part in chocolate - all the kids and adults wanted the chocolate cones when I was cutting - plus there is enough vanilla frosting in/on the cake, that you'd still get to taste it if you had a chocolate cone.

My 2 year old "helper" in her jammies on her birthday.

Mmmmm, cake.  We cut each cone into 2 pieces of cake.  It was pretty easy to do. 

Is the cake a hit if half the room is in awe and the other half (who asked what is in it) was kind of grossed out by gluttony?  I think so.  We'll be seeing versions of this cake again.

Cake #12 Fresh Coconut Layer Cake

Fresh Coconut!  Oh fun!  I picked this cake.  For my birthday.  This will be the only year I volunteer to make my own birthday cake - okay, maybe it won't be, I do like to bake cakes.  This cake looks fresh and white and elegantly festive.  Plus, we got to buy fresh coconuts and learn how to crack them open.

I scoffed at Mindy when she said she was sick of 3 layer cakes.  Well, truth is, she was just 2 cakes ahead of me in coming to this realization.  None of my tupperware supports 3 layer cake pieces so the leftover pieces I transport are big globs of mush.

So many lessons from this cake.  #1, If I make it again, I do not need to use fresh coconut.  Grating it is cumbersome - even though I cheated and used the Cuisinart - I like fresh bagged store bought coconut and I think the consistency would be better.  If I had hand grated it, it might have been finer, but it would have also contained nicks and knuckle parts.

#2 the frosting was glop - too gooey.  Very marshmallowy, but did not hold shape.  Could be fun to use again.

#3 the cake was the whitest I have ever made.  That seemed cool.  It looked like a wedding cake.  That could be worth making again.

#4 I should not try to write about cakes a month after I made them.

This smashed mess below is why I chose to use the Cuisinart to shred the coconut.  I did skip the step about baking the coconuts first...I wonder if that would have had an impact...

Oh right, my middle layer is 8" and the upper and lower are 9".  I thought I would just make up for it with frosting, and I did.   The cake was heavier than the frosting, so the middle layers basically just absorbed the frosting after this first piece was cut.

Cake #7 - Orange Angel Food Cake - FINALLY from Mindy

Finally! Finally I make this Orange Angel Food Cake with Caramel Sauce and Tropical-Fruit Compote that Sherie made back in late November!

And, more importantly, I FINALLY made a great cake! It was easy! It was tasty! I didn't throw any away! Huzzah and hooray! Yes, that's a lot of exclamation points, but I am happy ! ! ! ! ! !

I needed this cake to reinvigorate me to the project. Really, really needed after the last few cake disasters.

Only a couple of notes, mostly in response to Sherie's post:

Carmel: Thanks for the tip to let it cook Sher, I really let it go until it was, well, caramel color, and it turned out perfect. I did, in fact, add the cardamon to the sauce even though you really didn't like it (oh, and I got just the right amount from the bulk tubs at Whole Foods, and it only cost a few cents). And, while I didn't love the caramel and cardamon by itself (which is probably good or I'd still be eating it out of the fridge by the spoonful), I did think it complemented the cake very well.

The Compote: I was lucky and was able to get all the required fruit (although I did go with no kiwi and more mango because one of our diners is allergic to kiwi), and it made for a really beautiful side to the cake. I might leave out the passion fruit next time (first time I've ever bought or used it) only because I didn't love the crunch of the seeds. But the color was beautiful and very refreshing.

Overall, I'd make this again, for sure. I had forgotten how easy angel food cakes are - they might become my go-to cake for future birthdays. Easy and very little guilt!

Oh, thank you, angel food cake, for restoring my faith in the cake project. I can't thank you enough.

Cake #12 - Fresh Coconut Layer Cake

I had such high hopes for this cake. I really love coconut. The recipe as written was quite easy and did not require a half pound of butter and twenty-two steps and multiple cooling times. So, where, oh where, and how oh how, did my cake go horribly (I thought) wrong?

The answer: basic chemistry and the surprising floral notes of fresh coconut.

It all started great and very promising. How fun is it to lay out your tools for a cake and include a hammer, two screwdrivers and real coconuts?

And, while I thought dealing with the coconuts would be difficult, it was surprisingly easy and a lot of fun. This is what a coconut looks like after it's been baked in the oven, shell cracked off and peeled. You can see an unpeeled coconut right above the white one.

One tip - the recipe recommends that you shred the coconut on the large holes of your box grater. Maybe my grater is dull, but it was extremely tedious work. Halfway through one coconut, I switched to the shred function on my food processor, and the work was done in seconds rather than tens of minutes.

The cake portion of the recipe was simple and produced delicious and light batter and gorgeous light cakes. Although, I did use three 8" pans because I don't have three 9" pans, and I absolutely refuse to buy any more bake ware! I didn't take any pictures, but believe me, they were fantastic, and my mouth was watering waiting for them.

So far, so good, right? This is when CHEMISTRY reared it's ugly head. First problem, maybe. I ran out of white sugar and had to substitute raw cane sugar.

Oh neighbor, I should have asked to borrow a cup of sugar!

I don't think it was the sugar substitute that made a huge difference - maybe a little flavor difference, but overall seemed okay. The real chemistry problem came with the fact that I do not own a hand-held mixer. We have a standing mixer. We have a stick blender. Usually, I am able to get by with one of the two, but in this frosting recipe, you are supposed to:

"Beat together egg whites, sugar, water, corn syrup, cream of tartar, and salt in a large deep bowl with a handheld mixer (clean beaters if necessary) until combined. Set bowl over a pot of simmering water and beat mixture at high speed until it holds stiff, glossy peaks, 5 to 7 minutes."

I attempted to use my hand mixer in this step, and even after 10 minutes of mixing, I never saw stiff, glossy peaks. I abandoned the step and moved onto beating with my standing mixer for the second part of the recipe, and things looked pretty good as evidenced by the picture below.

The frosting tasted great (very meringue) and had great consistency. Quickly, however, I learned that all was not right with the frosting. As soon as I mixed in the shredded coconut into a portion, it began to sink and weep.

The frosting is already starting to ooze out due to the weight of the second cake layer.

After I frosted the entire cake, I could tell I was in trouble. Sliding, oozing, not the elegant cake I had been going for.

By the time we ate the cake a few hours later? Full on ooze.

It's hard to see, but there is NO frosting left between the layers, it has all oozed out and is sliding around on the cake plate. Boo hoo.

And, how did it taste? The cake part tasted great, I thought, but I hated the coconut. So very floral. Like eating a bottle of sun tan lotion. Uck. The general consensus was the same, although Sam really liked it - he even came back later in the night for a second piece!

We ended up dropping 3/4 of a cake into the trash before the night was over. *Sigh* It's times like these that this cake project gets really frustrating.