"Piece of Cake" Cake

Aaaaaaaaahhhhh.

That's the sound of me working on a cake after a two-and-a-half month dry spell. Between work and travel, and work travel, my cake supply cabinet was in a sorry state of neglect.

Cake supplies amid some cobwebs.

This week I finally had some time to dust off my turntable and rev up the KitchenAid, for not one, but two mini cake projects, just for fun.

One was a design I had been eager to try for a while: a "Piece of Cake" cake.

I've seen this concept on several Web sites, usually as part of a multi-tiered cake. Take the one below, made by CakeCentral user, "lilo_taart" who credits one of "The Whimsical Bakehouse" books. (I found these books at my local library.)

Just doing the top slice is a great way to make use of a single leftover cake layer, or to create something small that still makes a statement.

One layer, cut into 6 segments and stacked (I only used 4 of the segments)

As you can probably tell, I wasn't too concerned about being neat or mixing the right colors - I really just wanted to "flex my muscle", try some new things and practice some little-used techniques. Like making white chocolate ganache...

My ganache kept separating... 

... and ended up a little gritty.

... and working with modeling chocolate.

I had also been dying to play with one of my new cake toys, a KitchenAid pasta roller attachment that I got for Christmas.

I tried feeding some modeling chocolate into the roller but it just crumbled into a messy pile.

I wasn't discouraged, I just wanted to play and really hadn't taken any time to research this technique. My guess is the modeling chocolate was too dry to be workable. I have the "Wrapped Cakes: Extraordinary Stripes" DVD from Baking Arts, where they use the pasta attachment to  roll out the modeling chocolate. I'll probably give this another go after watching it.

Click on the video below for a sneak peek.

The second mini cake I made this week had a little more care put into it. More on that in a later post.

I Love Daiso: Fondant Cutter

This small pizza wheel was a recent Daiso aquisition which I planned to use as a fondant cutter.

It wasn't till weeks after bringing it home that I noticed the words "special issue for cooking cake" on the packaging. Really, a store after my own heart.

And then, when I busted it out to use it, I discovered the other end looked like this!

A fondant crimper, perhaps?

All for a buck fifty. Dude. I LOVE DAISO!

Is there a Daiso near you? Click here for a list of Daiso's U.S. locations.

Game Changer - Filling Piping Bags

You will never fill a piping bag the same way again after reading this post.

I wish I could take credit for this idea, but I actually came across it on a blog some months back (can't remember which one, or else I'd link back to it.) I finally put it to the test this past weekend, and I'm not looking back. All you need, besides your prepared piping bag and frosting, is plastic wrap (aka cling film, Saran Wrap, or in my case, "Kirkland Stretch-tite".)

Start by laying down a length of plastic wrap. Plop down some of that frosting on it, closer to one edge (i.e. not right in the middle.) 

If you need a lot of frosting, this technique will allow you to fill the bag with more than you would ordinarily. As you will soon see, the excess will not squirt out the top. More frosting in the bag = fewer stops to refill.

Step 2: Wrap the frosting in your plastic wrap, into a roll that will fit comfortably inside your piping bag.

Next, twist the end of the plastic wrap that's longer, nice and tight, like so:

Now simply feed your roll of frosting into your piping bag with the open end going in first. You see where I'm going with this.

Squeeze the back end of your frosting roll so the frosting breaks out into the piping bag.

Now you can start piping as usual, without having to wash your  greasy hands from filling your bag the old way! Also, as I mentioned earlier, there's less risk of frosting squishing out the top of the bag because you twisted the plastic roll shut. Good, right?

But wait! There's more!

Check out how easy it is to clean up when you're done:

Just pull out your plastic roll and discard. And if that wasn't enough, my piping bag was in much better shape to reuse, which means less waste, which means happy Gitu.

I bet this technique would make "striping" a breeze (I may have just made that term up, but I'm referring to the technique where you fill your bag with 2 colors of frosting.) Ooh I might try doing 3 or 4 now that I have this handy trick up my sleeve.

Oh, final step: Get a manicure already.

Cooper's Fire Truck

My 5-week cake hiatus is finally over! This week I got to make a fire truck cake for my co-worker's nephew, Cooper, who is having his 3rd birthday party tomorrow.

I broke out a new toy for this cake - a brick-patterned impression mat that I bought at a craft store. I stumbled upon it in the copper tooling section, of all places! 

I'm starting to learn that craft stores are a great resource for caking - a lot of the clay tools work just as well as fondant tools (e.g. my handy dandy Makin's Professional Ultimate Clay Extruder, that I use for everything!)

My handy dandy Makin's extruder

I'm told Cooper had been asking for a fire truck cake for months, ever since he saw someone make one on Youtube (apparently this 3-year-old shares my pastime of watching cake tutorials on the internet?) His mom sent a picture of the cake he wanted, and I set off to find some guidance on building the structure of the cake. Here's a video from Betty Crocker Kitchens, and here's a link to instructions I found at Disney Family Fun magazine online - it has has nifty graphics showing how to cut and stack your cake.


The cake was rainbow inside. Here's a picture collage showing how easy it is to make a rainbow cake (except for the lots of extra dishes, as shown in the last picture.)

Et voila!