Space Cake

This was a really fun project!  I spent quite a bit of time on it and took pictures of some of my trial & error of the planets.  The cake itself was pretty straightforward.  The birthday boy (not my son; a friend's son) wanted chocolate (and, he wanted the cake to be space-themed).  So, since the cake was supposed to feed a crowd of 50-60 people, I used five Devil's Food cake mixes.

One standard cake mix fits perfectly into a half-sheet pan, so I baked four of those and the fifth cake mix was for the sun.  The final product was quite heavy: about 22 pounds.  It needed a strong base; so I cut up a large cardboard box and hot-glued three layers of regular corrugated cardboard together (and then hotglued foil over the whole thing).  Three layers thick of cardboard ended being just right for this cake.

Most of my cake layers didn't break when I transferred them, but of course the one I took pictures of was the broken one :)  Since I think it helps cakes to be moist, I usually bake-ahead-and-freeze them, but there wasn't room in my freezer for these.  So, to ensure that they were nice and moist I brushed each layer with a simple syrup: just water & sugar brought to a boil, and I added a little vanilla to it before brushing it on.

Following the simple syrup I covered each layer with a full can of store-bought vanilla frosting.

I used canned frosting between each layer, but I made my own buttercream to cover the entire cake (four layers) in a thick crumb coat.  I used part butter and part shortening for a nice flavor and consistency.  After the frosting had had a chance to dry out & set up, I patted it nice and smooth all over with a paper towel so that it would be a smooth finish for the ganache, later.

Once the cake was coated (the whole thing; I just hadn't finished the sides when I snapped the photo above), it was time to figure out how to make the planets.  I looked online for ideas but ultimately only had success with lots of my own trial and error.  I'd planned on making the smaller planets out of balls of rolled fondant, but for the bigger ones (Jupiter & Saturn) I wanted them to be hollow so that they'd be light enough to stand up on a sucker stick above the surface of the cake.

So... how would you make hollow, edible planets???

I mixed up a batch of royal icing and tried covering a greased balloon with it, with the idea that I could let it harden and then pop the balloon.  Well, this was a small, thin, flimsy water balloon and it popped under the weight of the royal icing just a few seconds after I took this picture.  Maybe a more sturdy balloon would've worked.  But I just gave up on that idea.

Then I thought, I'll make two half-spheres and stick them together.  I decided that a tennis ball was a good size, so I made a half-sphere mold out with a tennis ball and greased foil.

 And, I tried the "inverted" version.  Neither of these worked.  Even letting them harden overnight, and doing several of them with different thicknesses of royal icing, either they didn't harden completely, or they were too crumbly and delicate.

 So how about melted sugar?  The standard recipe for homemade hard candy is 2 parts granulated sugar to 1 part light corn syrup, cooked until hard crack temperature.  First I tried using the inverted (bowl-shaped) foil molds, and drizzling melted sugar back & forth to create sort of a nest.  I've seen this done on TV so I thought it would work :)  Well, it wasn't a bad idea but the results all broke -- too delicate.  And, definitely too delicate to cover with fondant, as was my plan.

Then I tried covering the tennis ball with waxed paper and spooning a thicker layer of sugar onto it.  The results were better: a sturdier half-sphere, BUT the waxed paper stuck to it (which meant it would not be 100% edible).

 Finally!  The solution!!  Greased foil wrapped around a tennis ball: I spooned the melted sugar (which was over-cooked by this time, hence the amber color) over the greased foil, and after it hardened (which only took a couple minutes) it was easy to squeeze the tennis ball out of there.  And, the foil peeled off quite nicely.  Hooray!!  The sugar was thicker so it would be strong enough, so it was heavier than I really wanted but it was nice and sturdy.  In the background of this picture below you can see Saturn's ring, which I made by drawing a circle onto a piece of paper and putting it underneath my Silpat, then spooning melted sugar onto the Silpat using the circle as a guide, and then quickly running a toothpick that had been dipped in food coloring through it to give it a marbled color.

Using more melted sugar I glued two halves together to make a circle, and for Saturn I adhered toothpicks (with more melted sugar to make them nice and strong) on either side to later support its ring (after I covered Saturn with fondant, I glued the ring to the toothpicks using - you guessed it - melted sugar).

 For the smaller planets, I'd planned to make balls of fondant, but my fondant was too fresh and not firm enough to hold a good shape.  So, I used suckers for the form and covered them with fondant.  The smallest planets (Mercury & Pluto) were dum dums, and the medium-sized planets were Tootsie-Pops.  Once I covered them in fondant I stuck their sticks into a piece of floral foam so their surface could dry out a little before I painted them.

Painting them was the most fun part of the whole thing!  I decided this method would be easier to get the colors I wanted, rather than mixing up several colors of fondant.  I used mostly food coloring gels, thinned out with a little water.

 I made the sun the same way as when I made Noah's basketball cake, a few years ago: baked 3 small rounds, stacked them, and had my husband carve them into a half-sphere for me.  I didn't take any pictures of the creation of the sun, but it's just chocolate cake with vanilla frosting between the layers, crumb coated all over, and I put it in the fridge to firm it up for a while before it was time to put it on the cake.

Oh, and as you can see, the cake is covered all over with chocolate ganache (chocolate+cream).  I wanted the backdrop to be dark, without having to make something like black fondant.  Ick.  This was much better and I think it was dark enough for the "space" effect.  A little ganache goes a long way, as it's quite runny (I made WAY too much of it) -- but I knew it would be viscous enough to flawlessly cover the white frosting underneath it.

Once the ganache was on and had firmed up a bit, I put the sun on, and frosted it with yellow buttercream that I'd made to a pretty thick consistency so that I'd be able to make it all spiky-looking.  I added some dabs of orange food coloring gel to try to make it look more sunny.

Since most of the planets were on suckers and therefore already on sucker sticks, I hot-glued longer sucker sticks to the ones that I wanted to stand up higher.  Jupiter & Saturn proved too heavy to be more than barely above the surface.  I rolled out some yellow fondant for the stars and painted the letters on them with food coloring gel.

 This was a really fun cake and it turned out pretty similar to the sketch I'd drawn out ahead of time.  I heard that the birthday boy loved it (I wasn't able to be there to see his reaction) and I heard that it tasted good, too :)



How-to: Lattice Top Pie Crust

I love making lattice-top crusts on pies; it's not very hard and it definitely makes a good impression! The last time I did this (Thanksgiving) I took step-by-step pictures; hopefully this will help if you've even wanted to do this but been unsure how.

Start by rolling out your pie crust; it doesn't have to be pretty. I prefer to cut mine with my fluted pastry wheel (seen right off to the side in this shot below). You can just as easily use a paring knife. If you're a perfectionist, use a ruler to make nice straight lines... this wasn't a particularly pretty batch for me. The reason I didn't just cut straight lines all the way across my crust is because I rolled this out quite a bit bigger than the diameter of my pie, so I knew I wouldn't need such long strips. I start with shorter pieces and lay one on top and one on the side, like this (this was a creamy pear pie... most of the time your covered pies won't be so liquidy!) Time to start weaving! Add another slightly-longer strip across the top, below the first one, and another one next to the side one. Each time you add a new piece, look to see where it's supposed to go under or over each perpendicular strip... taking turns every other one. So, this new piece I'm laying here needs to go OVER the bottom horizontal piece, but UNDER the one above it. So, no big deal; I just lifted that horizontal piece up with my other hand, and held it up while putting the vertical piece in place. Then, lay it gently back down. Here, I've lifted up a vertical piece in order to lay the bottom horizontal one underneath it.And right after that, the horizontal piece is in place and ready for the vertical piece to be replaced across it.
Voila! Just keep going like that until the whole pie is covered! Horizontal, vertical, horizontal, vertical. Now, for this pie I chose to lay the pieces pretty close together. For a nice red berry pie I like to have some of the pretty color showing through, so I would leave more space between the lattice strips. With this creamy pear pie being so liquidy, I didn't want all that liquid to have much chance to escape. Once the pie is covered, trim around the outside of the pie plate with a paring knife, leaving about 3/4" hanging over. Going around the circumference of the pie, roll & tuck in the crust inward so that the edges are sealed shut and so that it looks nice and even. You can even make a pretty edge if you want, but I think with a fancy lattice top it doesn't need pretty edges.

For this pie I brushed it with melted butter and sprinkled it with cinnamon & sugar before baking it. And look how nice it turns out.
Here's an apple-blackberry pie I made a few months ago, using the same type of crust. You can see the lattice better on this one since I spaced out the strips better. This pie was brushed with butter and sprinkled with plain sugar before baking.
So there you go; happy pie-making!

Crew's Cake - Spiral Cake Tutorial

UPDATE: I received a nice email this morning from a reader in Malaysia (Hi, Deepa!) asking for more advice/help on how to carve the spiral. Unfortunately when I made this cake I didn't take any pictures of the carving process, darn! So, I took my little circles diagram below and made some notations on it about how we went about carving the spiral and I emailed that image back to Deepa. Meanwhile I thought I'd include it on this original post too in case anybody else might benefit from it. Happy cake-making!

My extended family got together for my nephew's 2nd birthday this weekend. My sister asked if I would like to make the cake instead of buying present, and of course I said yes! The theme was Cars (the movie) so I looked online for some ideas. When I found pictures of a Cars-themed spiral cake (like this, but much bigger and fancier) I knew I had to give it a try! As always, this cake took quite a while but I did as much ahead of time as I could: baked the cakes and froze them, and made & colored fondant and buttercream to help the decorating go faster the day of the party. The decorating was a lot of fun! Above you can see that my fondant mountains got saggy after it had sat for a while; most likely because each cake layer underneath was split into 3 layers with pudding in between. Everything was edible except for the three cars, and the sign on top. The blue sky is buttercream, along with the cacti, clouds, & piping detail. The road, road strips, Route 66 sign, rocks, mountains, and traffic light are fondant. Everyone loved the rocks; they were the easiest thing to make! I had made gray and tan fondant; to make each rock I just took a little bit each of gray & tan, and smushed/rolled them together and into a rock shape, and gave each rock a little texture from a frosting tip, a knife, or whatever was handy.

To figure out ahead of time how to successfully make the spiral while cutting off (wasting) as little cake as possible, Aaron & I stacked up the 3 cake pans I used: a 10", 8", and 6" round. We figured out that by stacking the cakes as shown below, the shape lent itself to a natural spiral. So, looking at my lovely diagram below, you can compare to the pictures above and see that the start of the road, where the Route 66 sign is, is just barely to the left of the bottom of the circles.
I used one cake mix for the 10" and split a second cake mix between the 8" & 6". I froze them overnight. The next morning I let them thaw a little and then assembled them: leveled the tops, split each cake into 3 layers, "dammed" the edges of each with a piping of thick frosting & filled layers with pudding, opted to do each cake upsidedown for the nice straight edges, stacked them all as shown in the diagram above, and returned the whole thing to the freezer for a couple hours to firm up before carving.

If you click to enlarge the diagram below it may help with carving your spiral cake. You can see how we stacked the 3 cakes, and the arrows show the way the road curved around all the way up to the top! Next time I'll take pictures of the carving process!

Aaron, who is much more artistic than I and a capable sculptor (he does all the cake carving for me when there is a need!), carved the spiral road. I covered the whole cake in chocolate frosting (it was a Boston Cream; our family's favorite) and returned it to the freezer again to firm up so the chocolate would be ready to take on the exterior buttercream & fondant.

The hardest part was making the road; I did it in 3 sections. I rolled out the black fondant and cut the inside curve with a pizza wheel, then laid it on the road and trimmed off the outside of the curve. That was the best way I could figure how to do it.

It was a really fun cake to do; it's always time-consuming but I really do enjoy it!

Rolled Marshmallow Fondant

I have done cakes with regular fondant in the past. I have bought rolled fondant at the craft store, which is convenient but a little pricey; and I have made homemade rolled fondant, which is a little more cost effective but quite labor-intensive. Either way the fondant makes the cake look great, but in most people's opinion (including mine), it doesn't taste very good. So a year or two ago I searched online for an alternative and found Wilton's recipe for rolled marshmallow fondant. It was easier to make than traditional fondant, less expensive because there are no "specialty" ingredients (like glucose and glycerin) and it tastes GREAT! The consistency is slightly different but to the amature cake decorator the difference is negligible.

Wilton's Rolled Marshmallow Fondant

1 package (16 oz) white mini marshmallows (good quality)

2-5 T water

2 lbs (about 8 cups) sifted confectioner's sugar

1/2 c solid vegetable shortening

flavoring, such as clear vanilla (optional)

Put marshmallows in a microwave-safe container, and add water.

Microwave in 30-second intervals, stirring after each. After about 2 1/2 minutes total, marshmallows will be smooth and melted. Add flavoring at this point, if desired (such as clear vanilla flavoring).

For ease of use, put measured shortening in a small bowl to be able to dip your hand into as you're mixing it in (later on).

Add powdered sugar to melted marshmallows, folding/stirring it in, the best you can. You won't be able to add all of it at this point; try to mix in 2/3 to 3/4 of it. Using your pre-measured shortening, grease your hands and the counter, and dump the whole mass onto the counter. Knead the remaining powdered sugar into it, as well as all of the shortening. (Looks like mess? Yep, it is!) Continue kneading, as you would knead bread dough, adding powdered sugar and re-greasing counter and hands until dough is smooth and not as sticky. If it tears easily, it's too dry. Add a little more water... a teaspoon at a time. Knead until it becomes a smooth ball, and is elastic without tearing easily; about 8-10 minutes.

It's best to allow Marshmallow Fondant to sit, double-wrapped, overnight. Prepare the fondant for storing by coating with a thin layer of shortening, wrap in plastic wrap and the place in Ziploc bag. Squeeze out as much air as possible. Will keep in refrigerator for several weeks.

My Tips:

My package of marshmallows was 10.5 oz so I use a little less than the whole bag and halve the other ingredients, or I use a bag & a half with the regular amounts of the other ingredients.

Living here in AZ, I start with 1/4 c water (4 T) and usually don't need too much more, unless my marshmallows are stale.

When ready to use, knead it until its smooth and roll out to 1/8" thick. Sprinkle powdered sugar on the counter & rolling pin before rolling out. The way I color fondant is to put on plastic/latex gloves (like medical gloves) and knead food coloring into small amounts of the fondant.

That's how I got the red, yellow, and black for those little Hello Kitty faces shown. Those, by the way, went on top of each cupcake for my twin girls' 6-yr-old party guests. Such fun.

I have used this for several cakes since then, and been very happy with the results. My favorite thing about it is that it tastes good, as well as looking good.

Dinner rolls - tutorial

For anyone who is nervous about making yeast breads or rolls from scratch -- here are my detailed instructions for delicious dinner rolls, which my family prefers to eat in crescent shape. Enjoy!


Ingredients:
1 pkg dry yeast
1/4 c warm water
1 c milk, scalded
1/4 c sugar
1/4 c butter (you can also use shortening, but I prefer the flavor of butter)
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 c sifted flour
1 egg

Step 1. Put 1 cup of milk into a small saucepan, over high heat. Watch it; it won't take long to scald. You know it's scalded when small bubbles form at the edges, as shown below, and it hasn't started boiling yet. When it reaches this point, remove it from the heat. If you don't, it will soon boil over and make a huge mess.

Step 2. You'll need 1/2 stick of butter. If it's cold, cut it into small pieces and put into your mixing bowl (you can use a stand mixer or a hand mixer; but if you're using a hand mixer you'll need to stir the last of the flour in by hand). Pour the scalded (hot) milk over the butter pieces; this is what it looks like as the hot milk melts the butter.

Step 3. Get your yeast ready. Measure 1/4 cup of very warm water. Not too hot to the touch; maybe like a hot bath. Sprinkle the yeast over the water, you can stir a bit if you want, but then leave it alone and after a few minutes it gets all bubbly like this. This means the yeast is coming to life and ready to go to work!

Step 4. Back to your mixing bowl: add 1/4 cup of sugar and 1 tsp salt to your milk/butter; mix.

Step 5. Add 1 1/2 cups flour and beat well. Now it will look like this:

Step 6. Now that your yeast is ready, add the yeast/water and one egg to the bowl. Mix well.
Step 7. Add the rest of the flour (2 cups) and mix well. The finished dough will look like this:
Step 8. Time to let the dough rise! Spray a clean medium bowl with non-stick spray. Scrape the dough out of your mixing bowl and into your new bowl. Turn the dough over once so that all sides are lightly coated with non-stick spray. This will help prevent a hard "skin" from forming on its surface.

Step 9. Cover with a clean dishtowel and leave it alone for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

...and voila! Look how pretty it is now!

I always make my rolls into crescents. You can roll it into balls and bake in greased muffin tins, or you can form it into thin snakes for breadsticks; there are many possibilities. I will show you how to do crescents.

Step 10. Sprinkle some flour onto a clean flat working surface and get out your supplies. Rub a little flour on your rolling pin too.

Step 11. Divide the risen dough in half. If it deflates substantially, no biggie. Roll out half the dough into a large circle (doesn't have to be perfect).
Step 12. Using a pizza cutter (or a paring knife would be fine too), cut the dough into quarters.
Step 13. Then cut each fourth into 3 pieces, making 12 in all.

Step 14. Beginning with the base of each triangle, roll tightly toward the pointed end.

Repeat steps 11-14 with the other half of your dough, so you end up with 24 crescents total. 24 will fit nicely on a large sheet pan like this one (a "half sheet" by professional baking standards). If you're not using a Silpat sheet like I do, just spray the pan with non-stick spray so the rolls won't stick as they bake.

Step 15. Cover with the towel again and let rise another 30-45 minutes; they will plump up like this:
If you don't think they look big enough, they will still rise more as they bake.

Step 16. Bake at 400 for 12-15 minutes.

You can brush the tops of the rolls with melted butter before baking if you want. Or, to make them look shiny, beat an egg and mix a little bit of water or milk into it, and brush that on top of the rolls before baking. I would do that if I were bringing them to a fancy party. For my family at home, I leave them alone and we eat them with butter and jam. They are so tasty leftover for breakfast with jam... or heated up, dipped into butter and then into a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. Delish!