For this birthday, I convinced the boys to let me do one big cake instead of two separate ones. In order to make this work, it has to be "the biggest cake in the whole world" (or "wuzzelled" as they pronounce it. Yes, we're moving past cute baby talk and into speech therapy material, but it's still pretty cute. Just ask Mim who gets them to say the word "squirzzel" as many times as she can). I have grand plans for this year's cake. It's a three tiered "whimsy" cake (meaning the layers appear lopsided... kinda like a "mad hatter" look to them). In theory, it will be covered in fondant, with the bottom teir in a giraff print, the middle layer a zebra print, and the top layer a leopard print. Yes, fondant is gross tasting... so I plan to make a whipped chocolate ganache filling between each layer (each tier is made of three layers, which actually only acts as two layers for each tier, which I will HOPEFULLY get to later) and to cover the cake with before I apply the fondant. This way, everyone can just peel the fondant off and eat the yumminess inside, if they want.
Yes, this is a monsterous undertaking. But, I am up for the challenge. I will be using 12" pans, 9" pans, and 6" pans. I am making the cakes 2 days ahead of time and keeping them in the fridge. They will need to be chilled when I slice through them to keep them from crumbling. Tonight, I hope to finish making the cakes and attempt to make the fondant... so I can see if it will be successful or if I need to head to Michael's or Hobby Lobby and buy some. I also need to practice "drawing" on it to make sure that whatever I go with for the decoration won't just harden and slide off the cake, or bleed through, or any other manner of disaster occur.
First, I traced the bottoms on the pans on waxed paper to line the bottoms. I used shortening and floured the sides. It was a lot of work, but let me tell you, they came out PERFECT. No cracks or anything. I was pleasantly suprised that a 12" cake pan could fit on a normal sized roll of waxed paper, too.
It's the end of the night and my fridge is full of cakes. I have cakes coming out of my ears. I attempted to make the fondant tonight, as well. It started off okay, but then things got... well... sticky. I was supposed to knead the mixture in the end until it no longer stuck to my hands. Well, that never came. I tried kneading it with my hands and, no joke, my hand was so encased in the stuff that I could lift my arm and carry the bowl around without supporting it. It was like cement. There is no way I could have rolled this stuff out. I went back and reread the recipe and it turns out I put in too much water. I may have salvaged the batch by adding more powdered sugar, but I guess I won't know until tomorrow when I try to roll it out and work with it. I really don't want to start over. 8+ cups of powdered sugar is too much to throw out.
I'm now exhausted, covered in white dusty sugar, and about to give up on cleaning the kitchen in order to catch a few extra zzz's.
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