Wednesday, May 02, 2007

I Would Like to Formally Apologize to Blue Bonnet

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket



I just have to say it. Are you ready? Drum roll please.....

I am pleased with this cake.

*Collective GASP*

I know, I know. It's a shocker. I actually LIKE a cake I made and can admit it. No self-defacing comments in this post. Well, at least not yet.

The cakes are as follows:

First tier 8" - Chocolate Fudge Cake with Natalie's own concocted chocolate buttercream. The chocolate flavor is derived from cocoa powder, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and chocolate extract. It came out a bit dryer than expected, but crusted very well (for smoothing).

Second tier 6" - Sour cream white cake with raspberry flavoring. Frosting is lemon-y buttercream.

Third tier 4" - same as the first. Someone gets a personal sized cake. Kinda like a personalized pizza, but with a lot more calories. Scary, I know. How can anything contain more calories than a personal size pizza? Well, here it is. In the flesh. Erm..in the frosting. I dare not estimate the reality of the calories and fat inside.

As you can tell, my flavor of the moment is scrolls (specifically pink and brown). I wanted to make a small three-tier cake with scrolls and I wanted to do it quickly. The baking was done last night after work, the decorating, tonight. It took, all in all, from warming butter to room temperature to the last buttercream rose, about six hours. Yeah, a lot of time, but a lot less than the full day task I am used to. I want to get used to doing cakes quickly, as it's a possibility I may be doing it for real in the future.

Now for the title of this post. Last night I ranted and raved about Blue Bonnet margarine and how I felt a bit misled that it would work well in buttercream. I used all butter tonight (with a small amount of Crisco-blech), and had the same results. I now know it was the stinking butter and NOT the margarine that was giving me crappy results. I was still able to ice this cake successfully enough, but something in the butter seems to cause the powdered sugar to crystallize so that you get "chunky" frosting (it's not the sugar because I used two different brands last night and tonight). Eeeeew, sounds gross, but it's similar to tasting granular sugar in something, and it royally pisses me off! As a result I didn't bother to smooth the frosting as well as I could of, but it's all good.

So there it is, my official apology to Blue Bonnet. I am sorry, I shall not give up thee just yet!

As for the cake. I wasn't so sure at first. The largest layer went well, the smallest, not so great. Thankfully I had planned roses on top and knew that the little mistakes on the smallest layer would probably be a moot point by the time the top was encrusted with pink buttercream. I think I was right. I have to learn that no cake looks great until it's finished. When I am making these "little" mistakes, it really gets me down; until I see the big picture. I just have to learn to see the big picture a bit sooner!

To close this post I must share a picture that really exemplifies how messy cake-making really is. I now know I am a powdered sugar buttercream frosting kinda gal, and as such, powdered sugar is the single most messy ingredient in a cake. The picture below shows just how well powdered sugar can infiltrate your kitchen. I promise this cake had no alcohol in it! How powdered sugar got there is anybody's guess, but if you've never tried powdered wine, I highly suggest it.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is stupendous. I had a neighbor once who made cakes but they were all done up in white frosting. This is gorgeous!

Anonymous said...

*Drool* I am SO coming to your house if I ever get to AZ!