Daughter's 14th Birthday
The Weather Map cake...
This year my daughter wanted a simple sheet cake that looked like a Weather Map. Time was tight so I had to decorate the entire cake in one night and go to work the next day. So I thought; "This should be an easy cake!"... Famous last words.
Every year I try to do or use something different, so this year I tried to do the following new things:
- Cut the cake into 2 layers and fill with a combination of a Dark Chocolate Ganache and Raspberry.
- Freeze the cake prior to cutting/dirty icing to help with the cake from falling apart.
- Use Coco Pan exclusively since we liked the taste of it last year.
The filling...
Well I didn't get a chance to make it ahead of time, so it was the first this I did. The making of both of the fillings went okay, but took more time than I expected. Then they NEEDED TO COOL!!!. I did everything I could to speed up cooling; placing the bowl in another bowl full of ice water, stirring constantly, putting in the refrigerator. In the end I think it helped cool it much faster that it would have, but it still took an hour or so to cool.
The frozen cake...
My wife was nice enough to make the cake the night before and we wrapped it and placed it in the freezer overnight. This is the first time I tried freezing so I didn't know what to expect. Well, it definitely helps keep the cake from falling apart... In fact, I could barely cut it! It took a lot of time and patients to cut the cake into two layers, but I was finally able to do it.
The Coco Pan...
I used it last year for parts of the cake, so I thought everything would go as expected... well guess again. I don't know if it was warmer in the house or I overworked it, but it was so soft, it wouldn't hold it's own weight. I tried to cover the cake multiple times before I finally mixed the little Satin Ice fondant I had (it wasn't enough to cover the cake on its own, but it did stiffen the Coco Pan enough to allow me to cover the cake.
At this point it was getting really late (I should say early!). Once I air brushed the cake, I started to try to add details with the Coco Pan, but everything I created would crumple, stretch, stick to itself, or just plain fall apart. Definitely the worse fondant experience to date.
So I got a few, (and I mean few) details on the cake and the sun was already up, so I just had to give up. I needed a least a couple hours of sleep before I had to head to work!
The Cake...
Overall I'm not very happy with what was supposed to be an easy cake, and the pictures make it look even worse. :(
