Wedding Cake: tier 1 and 2

Project Wedding Cake: It starts!

If you have read my blog before you'll know I somewhat foolishly? decided to bake my own wedding cake. I'm doing a full trial run before committing to do this for the wedding and decided that the only place I could possibly offload that much cake would be my next orchestra dress rehearsal (how's that for a Friday night surprise!). This deadline sort of snuck up on me and last Friday I realized I needed to get busy baking.

I've decided on 3 tiers and the largest 12" will be chocolate ,then 10" vanilla then 8" pumpkin chocolate chip.

I started with the chocolate. I've never made a 12" cake. I learned alot the hard way such as:

• dividing the recipe into at least 2 batches for my mixer


• making and using my own homemade cake/magic strips really makes a difference


• the idea of a transformer, bake multiple sizes from one pan is a good, one but batter does tend to leak through (see vanilla cake pic) -- and no magic strips around that configuration unless I chop them to fit especially

• 







• make sure you have something larger than 12" (preferably two somethings) to help turn out the cakes!




• substituting cake flour for AP less 2 TBs plus 2 TBS cornflower seems to work fine




• a carrier bag makes a great disposable mixer bowl cover for those tricky moments when you first add liquid and they want to slosh all out of the bowl and onto the window, the egg rack etc etc
  

Here are the remnants of the first layer of the first tier of chocolate cake.. i tried to invert it from its pan and hold together two (too small) cooling racks... they of course split and chopped the cake as I inverted.. leaving crumbs.. BOO!

An action shot of me mixing up the vanilla cake batter

Below you see my pan with my 'homemade' magic strips..

A final parting shot.. one of these cakes was not baked with magic strips.. wonder which it could be?!

I've now got to wait to make the last tier as there isin't anymore room in my freezer! I've already make the most complicated frosting on Sunday so that just leaves the top tier, cream cheese frosting, white ganache and all the chocolate plank coverings!

Oh yeah and figuring out how to transport it and set it up..(at the moment I thinking I can fill and ice each tier and put into separate cake boxes.. have the planks ready and maybe make a little bit of chocolate ganache adhesive to stick on!

I also thought perhaps I could mark out (using outlines of pans) where each tier should go on the one below it and pre-drill/place my straws to support
All suggestions and tips welcome!

Daring Bakers: Chocolate Armagnac Cake

Chocolate Amagnac Cake.. aka the cake that got Dori Fired!

I almost didn't make this weeks recipe as we are not really fans of alcohol-ly desserts (and a bottle of Armagnac was £15!), but with some friends leaving town and donating their cooking Brandy to the cause I gave it a try. I mean this cake got someone fired so it must be a wicked little piece of cake.

I've never flambe anything before either, so being the pyro that I am I was psyched to get to light things on fire in the house!

I tried to get some pics of the flaming prunes, but alas you can just see some wierd red halo on the pic below. I was really suprised just how long these flamed for!

The cake baked up just perfect for the minimum stated time. I've had quite a few baking flops recently so it was nice that this one came out so pretty! (no sinking or undercooked middle!)

I must of taken the chocolate glaze off the heat too soon, as mine was always a frosting consistency. But it was damn tasty and it almost looks as pretty as the one in the book!

This was a very sophisticated chocolate cake. Very moist with a complex flavor (should be for using so many mixing bowls!). If I made it again the only change I'd make to the recipe is to sift the confectioners sugar before adding as it gave some tiny lumps!

YUM! Be sure to check out the rest of the TWD bloggers efforts!

Daring bakers: Flourless Chocolate Cake

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge. February’s challenge is a Flourless Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Valentino, inspired by Malaysia’s “most flamboyant food ambassador”, Chef Wan. Recipe comes from Sweet Treats by Chef Wan

I started out this recipe and things were looking good. I was using Tesco Finest dark choclate and I will never use it again. It didn't taste so great plain, I just hoped it would bake up better with other things in the mix..

Here it is ready to go in the oven.. it had a slightly strange foamy texture.

It came out of the oven with alot of oil or something percolating around it but after resting a few minutes it turned out of its pan fine. But it was terrible this cake was crumbly with a terrible taste. I threw the rest away.. obviously I did something wrong or it was poisioned by tesco chocolate....

TWD: Caramel Crunch Bars

This Weeks recipe looked very good as ice cream bars, so I decided to go with that. I always thought that Heath bars were very english, yet here i am in England and the only thing I could find with toffee were very large thorntons chocolate covered toffee bits. you can see them there sorta not melted on top. Lets just say they made for very good jaw calisthenics!





Once they were made into ice cream bars it was very tasty, but just too much! the cookie/shortbread bit was super hard (I kinda felt like my dog trying to get at the marrow of a bone) Full marks for taste on this one, but maybe not so pratical as an ice cream bar.

Be sure to check out the TWD blog roll to see how everyone else got on!

Practicing the Wedding cake Covering

As you might know I've got high hopes to make my own wedding cake. I was inspired by a Martha Stewart idea where instead of messing about with trying to get smooth buttercream or putting on horrible tasting fondant. In this recipe you make a sort of choclate wood grain siding. This is my second attempt at it and while making a plank is easy getting the wood grain clear is a bit trickier. This was made with white chocolate ganache and then dark chocolate. I unfortunately dropped some water on it (from the bottom of the double boiler) as I was putting on the layers so the top one you can see the shape of 3 drops dissolving the wood grain.

I've obviously still got some work to do to get it perfect. But even at this state (only my 2nd try) I'm sure I can make something very lovely and impressive!

A Valentines sleep in Omelette..

For Valentines Day last Saturday I wanted to make my fiance a nice breakfast in bed- but I also wasn't interested in having to do a whole lot of cooking that morning either. I was searching for something that uses alot of eggs (as our hens seem very happy at the moment) and came across one of Pioneer Woman's recipes that used 10 eggs!--Jackpot--

I love to read Ree's blog its like if I could of had my horsey dream life that I wanted from 7-14 I'd be there in heaven on the ranch.. (though some days I do think it might be fun.. except for the meat eating.) If you don't already read it do go check it out- or at least get into her love story "black heels to tractor wheels"-- its a page turner!

But back to food- I've used Ree's standard American (I grew up in the Midwest, so making her recipes reminds me of being a kid/family functions etc) recipes to pull off my first Thanksgiving here in England and it was a great success. So I choose the sleepin in omelet for valentines day.

It was fannnnnntastic I'll definitely be making it again, but with half the butter!

The shite I do in cake class

Isin't it lovely?! I signed up for a cake class hoping it would help me out in doin the wedding cake. But instead we make this sort of tat..
Its so kitch I have no idea what I would do with it. We spend all this time to make 'edible' flowers that no one would actually want to eat, and that probably take more effort than just getting some fresh ones from the florist.. i don't get it but here is my first attempt at a floral spray..