Decorating cakes is one of my favorite hobbies. I just love being able to use my hands to make something delicious that looks like something else entirely.
People are always assuming that I love to cook and bake based on my love of cake decorating. To be honest, I have no cooking or baking talent at all. My cooking skills are limited to recipes I find on Pinterest that require 8 ingredients or less, and my baking skills are limited to the instructions I read on packaging. What I really enjoy is the artistic side of it all. I like to bake standard items that I can turn into my own little masterpieces. In other words, I like to make food that looks like other food.
One of the cakes I made a few years ago was a prime example of this. It was a crock pot full of chili. I know... weird. But I didn't just decide to make a crock pot cake one day. I had a reason.
I used to work in an office full of people. They were my test subjects for cakes, cupcakes, cake balls, etc. It was fantastic! I could make desserts whenever I wanted to and not be responsible for consuming them on my own. It was almost a guarantee that whatever I made would get eaten before the toll of the NYSE bell at the end of the day.
I no longer have that kind of freedom. I work in an office with two other men, and there is just no excuse for me bringing in 24 cupcakes on a Friday. I would end up eating them all myself. Not cool.
Back in that other office, I generally made something for every holiday. There were Cinco de Mayo cupcakes, heart-shaped cake balls for Valentine's Day, and a big pumpkin cake for Halloween. We even came up with excuses to do pot luck lunches when there was too much time in between holidays. Those were the best. I got to make some sort of dessert and enjoy all kinds of foods that other people would make. Any meal that doesn't require me to cook is OK in my book.
One of my favorite events we did was the Annual Crock Pot Chili Cook-Off. Clearly I did not enter the contest. Most chili recipes require more than 8 ingredients. Being a taste-tester was good enough for me. I did provide the dessert though. At that point, my coworkers expected me to provide the sugary treats at all events. My last few desserts had been cake balls or cupcakes so I decided to go all out and make a big cake. Naturally, I wanted to stick with the theme, so crock pot full of chili it was!
I used some round cake pans to bake two layers of chocolate cake and two layers of vanilla cake. I used boxed cake mix. It's not enough for my cakes to look cool. I do want to make sure they taste good as well. So I generally spice up a boxed cake with a homemade icing. For this particular cake, I made a thick, creamy buttercream icing to put in between the layers. The recipe I use is below.
Buttercream Icing:
(Makes approximately 4.5 cups)
1 cup vegetable shortening (I like to use the butter flavored kind)
1 cup butter or margarine (2 sticks)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
8 cups confectioner's sugar (one standard sized bag)
4 tablespoons milk
Cream the shortening and butter together in a mixer, then add the vanilla extract and mix. Add the confectioner's sugar one cup at a time until the consistency is creamy again, then add the milk. If the mixture is too creamy, add more sugar. If it is too thick, add more milk.
I like to use any extra icing as a dip. It goes great with Teddy Grahams and can be refrigerated for 1-2 weeks or frozen for longer.
Note: If you want white icing, use regular vegetable shortening (not butter), and clear vanilla extract. The recipe above gives the icing a slight yellow tint.
After I baked the cake layers and made the icing, I began construction. I use a special bread knife to cut the tops off each round to make them flat and stacked the layers on top of one another with gobs of buttercream icing in between. I alternated the layers between chocolate and vanilla to give it a cleaner look. Then I smoothed some more icing on the outside of the cake and put it in the fridge.
People are always assuming that I love to cook and bake based on my love of cake decorating. To be honest, I have no cooking or baking talent at all. My cooking skills are limited to recipes I find on Pinterest that require 8 ingredients or less, and my baking skills are limited to the instructions I read on packaging. What I really enjoy is the artistic side of it all. I like to bake standard items that I can turn into my own little masterpieces. In other words, I like to make food that looks like other food.
One of the cakes I made a few years ago was a prime example of this. It was a crock pot full of chili. I know... weird. But I didn't just decide to make a crock pot cake one day. I had a reason.
I used to work in an office full of people. They were my test subjects for cakes, cupcakes, cake balls, etc. It was fantastic! I could make desserts whenever I wanted to and not be responsible for consuming them on my own. It was almost a guarantee that whatever I made would get eaten before the toll of the NYSE bell at the end of the day.
I no longer have that kind of freedom. I work in an office with two other men, and there is just no excuse for me bringing in 24 cupcakes on a Friday. I would end up eating them all myself. Not cool.
Back in that other office, I generally made something for every holiday. There were Cinco de Mayo cupcakes, heart-shaped cake balls for Valentine's Day, and a big pumpkin cake for Halloween. We even came up with excuses to do pot luck lunches when there was too much time in between holidays. Those were the best. I got to make some sort of dessert and enjoy all kinds of foods that other people would make. Any meal that doesn't require me to cook is OK in my book.
One of my favorite events we did was the Annual Crock Pot Chili Cook-Off. Clearly I did not enter the contest. Most chili recipes require more than 8 ingredients. Being a taste-tester was good enough for me. I did provide the dessert though. At that point, my coworkers expected me to provide the sugary treats at all events. My last few desserts had been cake balls or cupcakes so I decided to go all out and make a big cake. Naturally, I wanted to stick with the theme, so crock pot full of chili it was!
I used some round cake pans to bake two layers of chocolate cake and two layers of vanilla cake. I used boxed cake mix. It's not enough for my cakes to look cool. I do want to make sure they taste good as well. So I generally spice up a boxed cake with a homemade icing. For this particular cake, I made a thick, creamy buttercream icing to put in between the layers. The recipe I use is below.
Buttercream Icing:
(Makes approximately 4.5 cups)
1 cup vegetable shortening (I like to use the butter flavored kind)
1 cup butter or margarine (2 sticks)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
8 cups confectioner's sugar (one standard sized bag)
4 tablespoons milk
Cream the shortening and butter together in a mixer, then add the vanilla extract and mix. Add the confectioner's sugar one cup at a time until the consistency is creamy again, then add the milk. If the mixture is too creamy, add more sugar. If it is too thick, add more milk.
I like to use any extra icing as a dip. It goes great with Teddy Grahams and can be refrigerated for 1-2 weeks or frozen for longer.
Note: If you want white icing, use regular vegetable shortening (not butter), and clear vanilla extract. The recipe above gives the icing a slight yellow tint.
After I baked the cake layers and made the icing, I began construction. I use a special bread knife to cut the tops off each round to make them flat and stacked the layers on top of one another with gobs of buttercream icing in between. I alternated the layers between chocolate and vanilla to give it a cleaner look. Then I smoothed some more icing on the outside of the cake and put it in the fridge.
While the icing was setting in the fridge, I made my own marshmallow fondant. I do not make my own fondant anymore. I buy the Wilton brand fondant in the big tubs. It doesn't taste nearly as good as the homemade marshmallow fondant, but it cuts out at least an hour of work on each cake.
I chose the different colors I wanted, split the fondant into parts, and mixed gel food coloring into each. I chose to do gray for the base of the crock pot and black for the trim. I also mixed some red, yellow and green parts for ingredients.
I used a large rolling pin to roll out the gray fondant. I cut it into long strips that were much more manageable than trying to cover the whole cake with one piece. Then I rolled out the black fondant into long, thin strips that I used as the trim on the top and bottom. When rolled out and cut, the black fondant looked more like purple. I can never really get a true black fondant color.
I used a large rolling pin to roll out the gray fondant. I cut it into long strips that were much more manageable than trying to cover the whole cake with one piece. Then I rolled out the black fondant into long, thin strips that I used as the trim on the top and bottom. When rolled out and cut, the black fondant looked more like purple. I can never really get a true black fondant color.
Once I had the gray and black fondant placed on the cake, I started crumbling the extra cake that I'd cut off the tops of the layers. I added some red food coloring to the mix in order to make it look like ground beef. I sprinkled that on top of the cake so it would look like chili in an actual crock pot. Then I got out the red, yellow, and green fondant that I'd set off to the side. With the green part, I rolled and cut tiny little rectangles to resemble chunks of green pepper. I rolled and sliced the yellow part into shredded cheddar cheese. Then I made little red beans out of the last bit of red fondant. I used the remaining black fondant to create a knob that I used edible glue to attach to the front, and the rest of the gray was used to make a piece for the front that would serve as the product label. I used an edible marker to write "Hi, "Med", and "Lo" on the knob, and "Crock Pot" on the product label. I needed to be sure it would be recognizable for what it was.
The last step was to try and darken the trim on the crock pot. I really wanted it to be closer to black than it was. I mixed some black food coloring with a little bit of vodka. Vodka is a good medium for creating edible paint. It thins out the food coloring gel and allows it to be painted right on the fondant. Using water tends to dry out the fondant and make it crack. Vodka gets soaked right in.
The last step was to try and darken the trim on the crock pot. I really wanted it to be closer to black than it was. I mixed some black food coloring with a little bit of vodka. Vodka is a good medium for creating edible paint. It thins out the food coloring gel and allows it to be painted right on the fondant. Using water tends to dry out the fondant and make it crack. Vodka gets soaked right in.
I was super pumped with the final result. The cake weighed about 10 pounds. It was enormous! I brought it into the office and set it down next to all the other crock pots full of chili. For a little while, people didn't even notice that it was a cake. The sheer size and shape of it made it blend in. Once people started figuring it out they were all over it. That's what I loved about working in a big office. There were so many people to enjoy my cakes and ask tons of questions. I felt like a mini celebrity.
The cake ended up tasting even better than I imagined. I find that to be the case with a lot of fondant-covered cakes. The different layers of cake soaked up all the moisture of the buttercream icing, and the fondant acted as a wrapper to keep all that moisture in. So by the time we cut the cake, it was so rich and decadent that no one would have ever been able to tell that it was made from a few $1 boxes.
Needless to say, that was a fairly unproductive day at the office. Not only did we have 8 different types of chili to try, we had a cake with 4 layers! We were all falling asleep at our desks by 2:00. Good thing it was a Friday!
The cake ended up tasting even better than I imagined. I find that to be the case with a lot of fondant-covered cakes. The different layers of cake soaked up all the moisture of the buttercream icing, and the fondant acted as a wrapper to keep all that moisture in. So by the time we cut the cake, it was so rich and decadent that no one would have ever been able to tell that it was made from a few $1 boxes.
Needless to say, that was a fairly unproductive day at the office. Not only did we have 8 different types of chili to try, we had a cake with 4 layers! We were all falling asleep at our desks by 2:00. Good thing it was a Friday!