Farewell Rainbow Cake

A friend from our Church is going to England as an exchange student for six months - leaving today, actually!  So I was asked to bake a farewell cake for her at our youth group.  It was the first time I had done a farewell cake, so I hit google to try and find out which design to do.  In the end, this was what I ended up with....

Making the cakes:  I decided to make a rainbow cake.  Well, actually, everyone else decided that I should make a rainbow cake.  I was feeling tired and not too well, so I didn't feel like putting in the effort for a rainbow, so I went searching online for an easier way to make them.  I had made two different types of rainbow cakes before:  the first method is to place all your coloured batter in separate Ziploc bags, snip off the end, and put a drizzle in the bottom of the pan.  Then get the next colour, and repeat.  Continue until all the batter is used up.  This makes the cake come out in little stripes, like in the middle of this cake:

 The other method is to bake the cakes all separately and join them with together with icing later.  Although both methods work well, they are time consuming and I didn't have a lot of that.  So instead, I coloured each cake and poured them into the pan on top of each other, hoping that it wouldn't come out a nasty brown. 

These were my colours:  (I have seemed to lost one of the photos, there were 5 colours...  )

I poured the mixture in on top of each other.  And then tapped the pan several times on the bench to get rid of any air bubbles.  It took a loooong time to cook, and I probably had too much mixture in the pan, but anyways! 

 This is the mixture poured in - and then I swirled it just a little with a knife before cooking it (Right)





And this is after it is cooked: (I cut it open to fill it with icing and also to see how it worked out.)  I was happy - and relieved! - with the results.

 For the icing, I decided to try something new, as you do when you are cooking a cake for a event! :P I read that adding copha to the icing would make it set harder crust better to get a nicer finish.  I had to leave the copha out in the sun for about 9 hours before it was soft enough to be beaten up.  Here is the recipe:

It makes quite a lot of icing, well and truly enough to this cake, and I put a lot on!

Ingredients: 
500g butter
250g copha
1kg icing mixture
Splash of milk

Method:
Beat butter and copha together until fluffy and white.  Add icing mixture and beat well, scraping down the sides regularly.  Add milk if it needs to be a little thinner.  

Then I iced the cake blue, cut out fondant countries, and made a little plane.  I didn't get photos of the process, but here is the finished product: (the lighting isn't great, but by the end I really couldn't care less if the photos came out well :P)

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...!

Making Gravy

I was making dinner last night, and whilst making the gravy, I thought that I could share a few tips and ideas as to making nice gravy that have helped me.  I used to make really bad gravy most of the time and lumpy and thin at the best of times.  But, since being at Tahlee, I have picked up a few good gravy ideas, so here goes... :)

The first tip is NOT to guess that you know how much gravy powder and water you need, but actually measure them out according to the directions on the packet.

1) Measure water in the saucepan  I generally use 3 cups of water because there are a lot of us who really like gravy... but it generally makes a little too much.  Based on the packet, you need 1 and 1/2 tablespoons for every cup.  (except this time I was using a different brand which claimed you needed 3 tablespoons.  Whatever.  :P)





2) Measure out the gravy mix into a separate bowl.  Heat the water on the stove until just simmering.  You don't want it to be simmering or boiling, otherwise the gravy will go lumpy.  It is ready when bubbles begin to appear on the bottom of the pot.  And if you are unsure when to go, earlier is better than later.

3) Whisk in the gravy mix, shaking it into the water.  Keep whisking furiously.  If it doesn't go lumpy in the first few moments of having added the powder, then you are pretty well safe.  If it is going to be ruined, then this will be the time.  It will go lumpy also if your water is too hot.

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4) Continue to slowly whisk until the gravy is thick.  It is best not to let it boil.

And there you have it.  It took me quite a few times to get the temperature of the water right... and for the record, when you are making gravy for 50 people, there are a lot of lumps to pull out before you serve it!  That happened at Tahlee, so I went home and practised.  Now I am quite proud of my gravy making skills.  :P

* Disclaimer - the gravy I made last night didn't work as well as other times, I think that it due to the brand.  We normally just use the home-brand gravy mix, but for some reason we had this other one in the cupboard.  It was also gluten free, which I think didn't help the consistency.  That being said, it was a lot nicer today when I heated it up to put on our chicken sandwiches, maybe it just needed a bit of time!