Cake Decorating Tip: Buttercream polka dots

This weekend, I was coincidentally asked to make both Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse-themed birthday cakes.  These cakes were for two separate parties for two different birthday celebrants!

When thinking about this Disney pair, what comes to my mind apart from the round black ears and Minnie's big bow is the polka dots. Cutting circles from fondant would make the perfect polka dot, but since I don't use fondant anymore, I had to think of a way to make them as good with my Swiss meringue buttercream. Using buttercream usually meant that the dots would look like small mounds or would have peaks and that was not what I wanted, of course.

Let's take a closer look at my polka dots again....

Yes. that's buttercream! Perfectly flat, perfectly round.  There is a super simple way to achieve this and I'm going to teach you how!

1. First, find a polka dot template online.  There are lots of free ones you can print out.  Choose the polka dot size that suits your need.  Mine were about 1/2" circles. This is what I used.

2. Position your printout on top of a tray or board.  Cut parchment or baking paper of about the same size and place it on top of your printout.  Secure both with tape.

3. Fill a piping bag fitted with a round tip (I used a #12) with buttercream.  Using the template as a guide, pipe rounds by holding your bag straight up and just about 1/4" away from the surface.  Don't place your tip too high or your dots will be fat!  Stop squeezing when you achieve the right size then pull away.  To flatten the mounds slightly, moisten your fingertip with a little water then pat them down gently.  Pipe as many dots as you need!

4. Place your tray in the freezer and use only when your dots are completely frozen and your cake has just been frosted.

5. To remove a dot from the baking paper, gently lift it out with a small spatula or just simply peel it away carefully.

6. Turn your dot upside down to reveal the flat side!  This is your right side now.

7. Now go crazy and place your dots on your freshly frosted cake! (Note: I say "freshly frosted" because the buttercream should be soft so the dots will stick and also, so you can push them down a bit.)

Hope this cool little tip helps!

Rainbow (Colour Wheel) Chiffon Cake

I have made rainbow cakes before but never with chiffon. Unless the 6 cake layers are quite thin, I would imagine that stacking a soft and delicate chiffon cake would most likely result in the bottom layers being pressed down and squished. One alternative to doing a rainbow chiffon cake (that I have seen other bakers do) is to bake it in a single pan. The cake batter is divided into 6 and each portion coloured. The portioned batter is then carefully layered one on top of the other in the pan.  When this one cake is baked, it will already have all the rainbow colours in it!

Yesterday, during one of those rare times that I had a bit of extra free time, I thought of doing a rainbow chiffon cake but in a different way.....

Something like this basic colour wheel....

Which, translated into cake will look like this....

Pretty cool, right?

The cake above is an 8" vanilla chiffon (recipe here).  Simple enough especially if you have been making this cake over and over again like me. To do this colour wheel effect though, the process is unfortunately not as simple.  It is actually quite tedious (and there is so much washing involved!). Doing it once in a while can be quite fun though........so......if you are interested in trying it, here's what you need to do.

Before you can begin making the cake, you first need to prepare your pan by making the cake batter separators.  No need to buy anything special here - we are improvising!

Cut out three 8" by 3" rectangles from thin cardboard.  Wrap each piece in foil to make it food safe. Fold two of them in half.

Insert the unfolded cardboard upright into the center of your 8" cake pan.

Position the two folded pieces above and below the center divider such that you will get 6 equally-sized wedges.

As my cake pan has a removable bottom, I did not line it anymore with baking paper.  I pretty much eyeballed the placement of my dividers.  However, if you need to line your cake pan, you can create creases in your baking paper to serve as a guide in placing the dividers. To do this, fold your 8" baking paper circle in half and then into thirds.  Open it up to reveal the partitions created by the creases.  Line your cake pan then place the foil dividers on top of the creases.

To make the cake batter, simply follow the vanilla chiffon cake recipe.  After you have made your eggyolk mixture, divide it equally into 6 bowls. (Weighing your cake batter will give you more accurate results.)

Colour each mixture with rainbow colours.  You will only need tiny amounts of gel paste (like a drop) or powdered food colour (a pinch).

Proceed to beating your eggwhites till stiff.  Divide this equally among the six bowls.  Again, it is best to weigh the mixture for accuracy.

You need to work fairly quickly in folding the meringue into each eggyolk mixture.  Be gentle but deliberate.  Spoon each mixture into your divided pan and push the cake batter into the corners. Give the pan a gentle tap to level the cake batter and to release any air bubbles.

Carefully remove the dividers by lifting them straight up. Do not bend them sideways or any other way - just pull straight up. Some of the cake batter will stick to the dividers in this process.  Don't attempt to put them back into the pan as you might risk messing up the colours!  You can reuse the cardboard pieces for next time.  Just remove the foil wrapping!

Bake and cool the cake inverted as per usual.  (My 4-egg chiffon cake recipe usually bakes up to the top of the pan.  However, in this case, as some of the batter was lost, my cake was slightly shorter.)

As with any cake, there will be some browning on the cake top and sides.  I find that simply rubbing my fingers gently back and forth against the cake removes this caramelized layer rather easily.  When you do this, you will reveal all the vibrant colours! Yey!

I wasn't planning on frosting this cake but here's one idea of what you can do.  Cut the cake horizontally in half.

Spread your filling on your bottom layer.  Before topping with the other cake layer, rotate it one colour to the right so that the top colour will be different from the bottom.

This way, you will have six different colour combinations in your cake slices!

You can also combine slices to make up a taller slice with all the rainbow colours!

As with most rainbow cakes, the "wow" factor lies mostly on the appearance.  The cake itself is pretty much very basic.  To take this cake up a notch, you can flavour each colour differently - strawberry for red, orange for orange, lemon for yellow and so on and so forth.  Alternatively, you can fill each cake segment with something different.  Maybe different fruits or different flavoured frostings?  I know it will even be more work than it already is, but it will add some element of surprise to eating this cake, don't you think?

Hope you learned something new today and get to try this yourself! Enjoy the rest of your week :)

Piping stars

I don't buy fondant or gumpaste anymore.  For my purpose (which is just to mould simple figures or cut out letters), it's simply a complete waste of money.  I buy a whole packet, use up only a little bit, then keep the excess, which in most likelihood will be past its expiry date before it's to be needed again. So, I'm not buying that thing ever again.

Lately, I've taken a liking to piping stars with buttercream instead! The process is a bit back-breaking BUT the results are as effective and beautiful as using say, an edible image or fondant cutouts.

Spongebob Squarepants

Minecraft creeper

George Pig

Deadpool

I have actually done this technique several times before (ex.  this Hello Kitty cake and this Octonaut cake) but it is only lately that I have really come to enjoy it plus I think my piping has gotten a little better too!

To do this type of cake, all you really need is an image to copy from. Also, a small star tip (#16) is best as it will give a more even and not too thick layer of icing on top. For more detailed designs, it might be good to trace it into the crumb-coated cake.  But for simpler ones, like the Deadpool cake above, doing it freehand is no problem at all.  I used to think this was difficult but really, once you have outlined the image, all you will need to do is fill them in with stars, much like colouring by numbers.  How hard can that be?

Try it sometime.  You will love it!

Watercolour buttercream cakes

Over the weekend, I had to make the cakes for my niece's big 18th birthday party. Just as with her older sister's cake, I was given free rein with everything, from the cake flavours down to decorating. Sometimes I find it hard when I am not given any idea of what I exactly need to do.  When this happens, I always look for inspiration from the invite design.

Unfortunately, I can't show the actual invitation here but to describe it simply, the background had splashes of watercolours in violet, electric purple and olive green. I've seen watercolour cakes on Pinterest, so I thought, why not do that! Admittedly, although it seemed easy enough, I was afraid to try this technique because I've never done it before.  What if the colours don't blend properly? What if it turns out messy? What if my niece doesn't like it?

Well, after all that was said and done, I'm soooooo happy that I decided to it.

Instead of doing a 3-tiered cake, I made three separate ones, all in Neapolitan flavours of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, and frosted in Swiss meringue buttercream.

Here is the 6" cake...

...the 9" cake

...and the 12" cake.

All in all, it was a great experience doing these cakes and I won't hesitate to do something like this again in the future.  The three cakes looked beautiful together and everyone loved them!

If you'd like to try this technique, there are loads of tutorials on the web.  These are the ones I found most helpful - here and here.

A good week to all of you!

Prune Walnut Cake

Today, the 27th of October 2015, would have been my mother's 91st birthday.  She passed away more than 6 years ago but my memories of that sad trip back home on February of 2009 has remained vivid to me like it happened just yesterday.  Before I headed back to Melbourne, a brother asked me to look through my mom's things to see if I had wanted anything.  I took with me the simplest of things...mostly things that reminded me much of my childhood - her 1960s pinking shears, a rusty, broken Our of  Lady of Lourdes rosary (which I quickly repaired when I got home), old photographs, hers and my dad's wedding rings (for safekeeping), and this tattered cookbook...

Nora Daza's Let's Cook with Nora

The fact that I can remember this book in our kitchen shelf from when I was a child must mean that it's likely a first edition (the book being first published in 1969).  Surely, I have browsed through these pages hundreds and hundreds of times in my lifetime!  

One of the cake recipes in the book is that of a prune cake. To be honest, I never was interested in trying out this cake BUT since it's my mom's birthday and I particularly remember that she loved snacking on prunes, I thought, why not?

If you are familiar with the prune walnut cake of Becky's Kitchen, then you'd most likely recognize this. 

Actual prune walnut cake of Becky's Kitchen (Image credit: Flickr)

To make the cake this way, I did not follow Nora Daza's recipe to a T. First of all, I had to obviously add walnuts to the cake batter. Also, I had to scale the recipe down as I only wanted a small cake.  

One thing I found unnecessary was stewing the prunes (as instructed in the recipe) because the prunes I bought were already pitted and very soft (as in mashable soft).  

I made a few other minor changes to some of the other ingredients then I was ready to bake.  If you are skeptical like I was before about a cake with prunes, then you have got to just trust me on this one - you will love it! The cake is tender and moist and because it has prunes, it must be good for you, right? :)

PRUNE WALNUT CAKE (suitable for a 7x7 pan)

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups sifted cake flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup caster sugar, divided

2 large eggs, separated

3/8 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup soft, pitted prunes, chopped/mashed

1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

**optional: 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (if you like a touch of cinnamon taste to your cake!)

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 180 degC. Grease and flour a 7x7 cake pan and line the bottom with baking paper. 

In a small bowl, whisk  cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt (and ground cinnamon, if using). 

In a mixing bowl, using a paddle attachment, cream butter and 1/2 cup of the caster sugar until light and fluffy. 

Add in the eggyolks one at a time. 

In three additions, beat in the flour mixture and buttermilk alternately. 

Blend in the prunes and beat just until combined. 

In a separate bowl, whisk the eggwhites until frothy. Gradually add in the remaining 1/4 cup sugar. Beat until eggwhites form stiff peaks.

. 

Fold eggwhites into flour mixture in three additions. With the last addition, fold in the walnuts as well. 

Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean and/or the cake sides are just starting to pull away from the pan.  Do not overbake!

Take cake out of the oven and let rest in a wire rack for about 10 minutes then invert and release from pan. Let cool completely in the wire rack.

NOTE: Unlike chiffon, this cake does not rise much so don't expect a tall cake!

To assemble the cake:

1. Make Swiss meringue buttercream using the procedure here but with these ingredients:

2 eggwhites

1/2 cup white sugar

150 grams unsalted butter, softened

pinch of salt

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Alternatively, you can opt to make the easier Old-fashioned butter icing with these ingredients:

150 grams unsalted butter, softened

pinch of salt

1/2 cup evaporated milk

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2.  Fit a smalll piping bag with a petal tip 104. Or if you have a ruffle tip 88 (like the one I used), you can also choose that.  Fill it with about 1/2 cup of the buttercream.

This is tip 88.

3.  Beat in 1/3-1/2 cup of mashed prunes into the remaining buttercream.  Now you have a prune flavoured version!

4.  Cut your cake horizontally in half.  Place top half, cut side up, on a cake board.

5.  Spread a thin layer of prune buttercream.

6.  Top with the other cake half, cut side down.

7.  Cover the whole cake with the rest of the prune buttercream,  (I skipped crumb coating this time.)

8.  Using  a cake comb, make wavy patterns on the cake sides and top.

9.  Using the buttercream in your piping bag, pipe ruffles/garlands along the cake sides.

10.  Divide the cake top into three sections by piping straight ruffles from bottom to top.

11.  Take 6 whole pitted prunes, flatten them slightly and cut 2 slits on one side of each.

12. Arrange half walnuts and prunes alternately on top of the straight ruffles.

Yey, that's it!  A prune walnut cake that looks similar (and hopefully) tastes just like Becky's Kitchen's!

Give it a go!