Savecake: HUGE ME
zillabean had asked me to make a cake for her to give her bf on Valentine's Day. It was based on the fail cookie found on Cake Wrecks (8th one down) which she finds hilarious.
This was a relatively simple cake. White cake which I colored pink and vanilla buttercream. So why is this a "savecake"? Well you'll see a little later.
I'll spare you the boring details of making buttercream yet again and the cake and just talk about what was different with this particular cake.
So here's the white cake batter which I colored with food coloring gel. I used "rose" instead of "red".
I used a heart-shaped pan to save me headaches. It's possible to cut a cake into the right shape but there will be cake scraps and crumbs will end up in the frosting. It's not that much of a problem it the cake will be covered in fondant. This one was not going to be since Zilla doesn't like fondant.
Okay, it's hard to tell from this angle but the cake puffed up. A lot. So I tried out a technique I saw in YouTube. Normally you would cut off the poof portion to make it level. This causes cake scraps and we never want to waste cake. In a bakery the scraps get saved in a bucket and become crumbs which is then used for cheesecake crust or other things. Nothing goes to waste. So anyway the technique was to take a wet cloth and squish down the cake and flip it over immediately after it's taken out of the oven and then let it cool for a bit. Then remove the cloth and put it on a cake board. The squishing makes the cake a little denser since you're essentially crushing the little air pockets. For this cake that was fine since it was really fluffy to begin with.
Oh boy! The serrated knife! Time to split the cake trim the round cake board to fit the cake a bit better. I haven't seen any heart-shaped cake boards around. The last time I trimmed a cake and it's board I also cut my finger. Deep. It sucked. Thankfully that didn't happen this time. :D
So pink!!
I originally wanted to split it into three layers but I wasn't sure if I would have enough buttercream so I did two.
Since the cake was pink I thought to leave the buttercream on the inside uncolored. I considered putting heart sprinkles on this layer but I couldn't find any at the grocery store. I think they had some at the baking shop but I didn't think of it while I was there.
This was the first time I ever frosted a cake that wasn't round. It took a lot longer than it normally does becuase in some areas the cake extended further than the cake board so that's why you can see the cake peeking out at the bottom. It was too fat for the board it was on. I had to put the cake in the fridge for a little bit before trying to fix that. It took about 30 minutes to get the sides right and when I was finally satisfied with it it was time to transfer it to the pretty board....
*gasp*
D:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
FAIL CAKE!!! ;_;
It flipped over as I was trying to set it down. Amazingly I didn't freak out quite as much as I thought I would've. I suppose if it had landed on the floor instead I would've been much more upset as I would've had to start all over again.
I tried using the spatula to flip it back over but becuase it was going so deep I thought it was going into the cake and leaving a dent which freaked me out. It turned out that it was just the buttercream and it was ridiculously thick on top. I made a mental note to not use quite as much when I refrost it. The cake portion was undamaged and the buttercream didn't have a ton of crumbs in it so it was salvageable! A cake that could be saved! SAVE CAKE!! :'D
Frosted again and about as smooth as I could get it.
I also noticed that my left hand does not not like holding things. It cramps up painfully when I hold a bowl to pour and when I frost a cake. The last time I noticed this was when I had to pack the crumbs to make the cheesecake crusts. That hurt like hell. In both hands. ;_;
So to pipe "HUGE ME" I took some of the uncolored buttercream and added some powdered sugar to make it a little stiffer.
So there you go. The photo I took right after I finished was too blurry so here's the one I took the next day while the sun was out. That's why the color is so different from the rest of the photos.
Of course with the frosting I had to draw crappy Laytons on the counter. XD
And speaking of Layton....
Of course Revol-Layton had to come out to see the cake. To him it was pretty huge indeed.
And poor little Tiny Turtle.... he wants to be huger. Isn't that cute? :')