70th Birthday Cake, Days 1-3

I intended to post this series day by day as I completed each step, but due to being extremely busy and my computer not wanting to log in, I am going to post the first three days all in one go.

I am in the middle of making a 70th birthday cake for a surprise birthday party after church this Sunday.  I make special birthday cakes using the Planet Cake method, which is generally a three day process.  However, because of a 'unique' feature of this cake, as you will see later on, I have stretched it to a five day process.

Uncle Paul (for whom the cake is for) is a sports fan, and particularly likes the West Tigers from the NRL, so I thought that I would make a Tigers football jersey cake.

Day 1 - Planning and Shopping

Although I have put this down as the first day, I actually do the planning for cakes some weeks ahead, just because I like to be well organised and totally know what I am doing.  So, the first thing I do is find my inspiration picture.  I am not very good at designing and visualising a cake in my head, so I always like to search the web and find a picture I can base my design off.  Sometimes I use the basic ideas and change the colour scheme or design a little, but this time, because there is really only one design of jersey, I just chose a picture and will (hopefully) replicate it fairly directly.

This is the inspiration picture.  The things I will do differently is I won't have the NRL shield-trophy-thing or the Tigers logo on the stripes nor will I put the grass around the edge.  That's the plan anyway, I might change my mind, but I don't think I will.

'The chosen ones'

The first thing I did was choose my baking pans and trace them onto paper, making a life size map of the the cake, and then I coloured it in to make a paper replicate for reference later on.  I don't normally do this but because it is a shaped cake, and I have only done one other shaped cake, I wanted to see how the cake pans would 'shape up' (so to speak.  :P)

 The paper cut outs..

 After I had sketched on the design...

 And the coloured in version.  I got tired of colouring black part way through, and had to enlist the help of some willing younger siblings.   :P

After I did that, I worked out how many cakes I would need to make, how much ganache, how much icing and then wrote my shopping list.  And went shopping!  BTW, you can expect some funny comments from the checkout people when you buy 7 blocks of chocolate!  This time, the lady asked if I was doing some cooking, or was just buying some chocolate to nibble on.  Umm.... I am cooking.  Mum laughed and said she hoped it wasn't just to nibble on, and the checkout lady's comment was 'You'd be surprised.'  Which makes you wonder what other people buy...perhaps 7 blocks of chocolate isn't so bizarre after all!

Day 2 - Baking the cake and making the Ganache

I didn't take any photos of the making the cakes.  But here's one of once they are cooked and cooled:  They are dark chocolate mud cakes, and I doubled the recipe for the big one...

 Ganache is a icing like mixture which is made by grating chocolate and pouring nearly boiling cream over the top and whisking until smooth.  You let it set overnight (or at least several hours) and then spread it onto the cakes to make a smooth, yummy surface to place your fondant on.  I one and a halved the recipe for the ganache - so it was 1.8kg of grated chocolate and 900ml of pure cream.  

 This is what 1.8kg of chocolate looks like as a block and then grated.  Thank heavens for electric graters!

When it is all mixed together....

 This is what happens when you pour boiling cream into grated chocolate - steam from the cream fogged up the lens of the camera for the first few moments, so it is hard to see, but it does clear shortly...

Day 3 - Ganaching the Cake

To get the angle of the sleeves of the shirt right, I cut the sleeves off from the paper cake I made, and then used the paper cut out to slice the cake.  Then I assembled it...

I cut all the pieces of cake in half longwise and filled it with a layer of ganache, and then covered the cake with the ganache.  The purpose of ganache is to make it taste nice, and also to create a level, smooth surface to lay the fondant on.  Whatever imperfections or rough edges are left in the ganache, show up in the fondant, so the aim is to make it as smooth as possible.  I didn't take any photos of the process because I was doing it last night from 8:30 to about 10:30 pm, and I was tired and over it... so that's that.  :P

But here is a photo of the cake in the morning, after the ganache has set hard.  I went over the cake again this morning with a hot knife and some more ganache, trying to fill out any crevices or marks which I might have missed.  The sleeves are not quite even, and the top of the shirt curves slightly, but other than that, I am pretty happy with the shape.  The ganache also is fairly smooth and there aren't any glaring rough sections that I have noticed as yet.  I could have covered it with fondant today, but I chose not to because it is not needed until Sunday and once the fondant is on, you can't keep it in the fridge because the fondant will sweat and go soggy.  And I didn't want the colour to fade.  Hence, I will cover it with fondant tomorrow, and do the final decorations on Saturday.  And I will be using an interesting technique to make my fondant black.  I am partly excited and partly apprehensive about using said method.... so stay tuned as to what happens tomorrow...!