Please don’t mind the flower wire sticking out of the side. 😛
So this is actually a very late post, the little girl’s birthday already a coupla months behind. Oh well.
Anywho. Francine’s 5th birthday cake was homemade, baked by yours truly. It didn’t look as good as I planned–
- The frosting on the top and sides were not even nor smooth.
- The ganache drip ran all the way down and pooled on the cake board.
- The cake turned out navy blue instead of the bright royal blue I was aiming for.
But it was a good learning experience on cake decorating anyway. A few things I learned while making this cake:
- It’s okay not follow a recipe to the letter if you feel that something about it is off or seems not applicable to the cake/cupcake/any baked goodie you’re making. Case in point: the amount of gel food color. The recipe I used called for 1 oz. royal blue gel color so I used that amount, and look what happened here. I think it has something to do with the saturation or concentration of the gel color you’re using. Apparently, Chefmaster is wayyyyy more pigmented than Wilton (which was in the recipe).
- How to cut a cake into layers without a cake leveler. I only used a regular serrated bread knife and a sauce turntable mounted atop a cake stand. And I got pretty even layers considering the primitive tools I used. I might even make a tutorial of this later–that is, if laziness doesn’t get the best of me.
- How not to make a ganache drip. So next time I’ll be using less cream and more chocolate. In this instance, I used a 1:1 ratio initially, then added more chocolate chips (did not measure though). Apparently it still wasn’t enough. Or maybe I should have waited for the ganache to completely cool before pouring onto the frosted cake?
- You can never make too much frosting. I thought I already had enough for the cake and thirty-six (36) cupcakes, but I was sadly mistaken. So instead of the nice beehive-like tower of frosting I initially wanted (like the ones here), the cupcakes instead had but a small (but dainty, I think) piped flower and sprinkles, like so:
- How not to make a ganache drip. So next time I’ll be using less cream and more chocolate. In this instance, I used a 1:1 ratio initially, then added more chocolate chips (did not measure though). Apparently it still wasn’t enough. Or maybe I should have waited for the ganache to completely cool before pouring onto the frosted cake?
For a first time attempt at making a layer cake, this experience didn’t turn out quite as badly as it could have. It may have looked more “rustic” than professional, but the important thing is it tasted pretty good nevertheless. 😉
