I’ve looked at, and used, some of the YouTube tutorials about knitting, especially the ones showing how you graft one side of an object to another. I can sit and start and stop the video as I work my way across a knitted teddy bear’s head, for example. Watching someone, at least for me, is way more helpful that merely trying to follow written instructions. Last year, I saw one for a cute cake that looks like a Canadian flag when you cut out it into wedges. So all this past year I’ve thought that maybe I could make something similar, but for a July 4th cake. The tutorial made it look easy (don’t they all), but she did mention, at one point, that she had to make SIX cakes before she got it right. I neglected to take that into consideration.
I spent quite a while searching for the cute Canadian flag cake, needing several different tries to Google the exact phrase for the cake I wanted. At first, I got the recipe and instructions for a fall Canadian Maple Leaf cake that was made in a loaf pan. When you sliced that up, you got festive fall-colored leaves in the center. Finally, I got the word combination (some variety of cake, Canadian, maple leaf in the center) right and watched the video again. And again and again. And I thought I could make something similar for July 4th, something with a red star in the center. Or two layers, each with stars, and a middle frosting layer of blue. I was ambitious. Overly ambitious.
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- The first step was to mark the colored layer with toothpicks, to designate the cutting line.
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- Then you should slice around.
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- And I had two round slices from which I should be able to cut into star shapes with a cookie cutter.
At this point I began to see why it might take someone six tries to get this right and how I thought my own modifications would probably work (way overly ambitious). I did continue on with that modified version of red stars in white batter as a round layer and it seemed like it was going to be disastrous. While that one was baking, I made a new plan. Which required, of course, new red cake batter and new white cake batter.
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- At the top, that sad little round cake layer, with some sort of red starish thing in the middle. Maybe. But, no one could know exactly what it would look like until it got sliced. At the bottom of the photo, from a red cake baked in a loaf pan, chunky slices.
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- Then the chunks got cut into stars.
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- This is white cake batter in a loaf pan
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- And the red stars, marching through the center of the white batter.
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- Stars covered up with more batter and baking in the oven.
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- Leftover white batter in cupcake papers in a muffin tin, topped with leftover stars.
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- When I was checking everything in the oven, I saw that the white batter, as it was baking, was rising and pushing the cute little red stars up and out, so I poked them back down into the batter.
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- A friend gave me a handmade cake tester broom. Lots of straw got pulled out and used. Where should you poke a testing straw? Not in the center. The red stars there are already mostly baked from the beginning. The sides are pretty thin and it’s hard to know if I’m getting a good sample there. I needed lots of tries to try to determine when this thing was done.
The challenge with these sorts of “surprise” cakes is that you don’t really know what it’s going to look like until you slice it, and it seemed poor hospitality to serve guests a dessert that had already been cut into. So, I frosted both the round cake and the loaf cake. When the lunch guests had eaten their hamburgers and/or hot dogs, I brought out the cakes for the big reveal.
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- The cupcakes actually turned out the best, but only one got eaten. Maybe everyone else was choosing the option WITH frosting.
I don’t know that I’ve ever made anything that came out exactly right and perfect the very first time I tried preparing it. But I keep on thinking that I can pull it off.
Hard work always pays off; mere talk puts no bread on the table.
Proverbs 14:23 (The Message)
Or cake.
Kudos for continuing with the cake project! I would have given up I’m sure, as I should’ve with a 7-up Cake I recently attempted for Julie’s friend’s Father’s Day Dinner. Always, Bill’s favorite as he remembers his mother making it, my version was overcooked & dry instead of light & and moist!
Possibly it’s the sort of thing that also needs six tries (or at least two or three) to get it right. But then, what do you do with the first couple of disasters? But, things made with love usually taste pretty good.