The cake of all Cakes

Ok…so I promised I would blog about this crazy undertaking.  Here it is.

*Don’t try this at home.  Or, at least, don’t try it without supportive friends and people to help lend a hand.  Or five.  J  These things are necessary.

So, the objective was to effectively surprise our friend/Camp Director on her birthday with a massive cake that depicts some major elements of Camp La Jita.

This started with a brainstorming session, followed by lots of planning.  IT was intense.  We thought through every detail, wrote a materials list, made a hand drawn and digitalized model of the cake design.  I didn’t photo that.  You’re welcome.

Here’s a tip from me to you:  When making massive cake in the middle of nowhere, don’t forget the eggs.  Yes, that happened.  After returning to Camp with all of our purchases of pans, fondant, cake mix (yes, I admit I used it—was a safe bet when so much could have gone wrong), coloring, and decorating materials I realized that we had forgotten the most important part:  eggs and oil.  Luckily, we had oil at Camp…but eggs; that was another story.  Lesson learned.  And thank God the Pico had a couple dozen to get us started.

Step one was baking.  Starting at the Bottom:  Storybook Tree.  This is the inspiration.

We wanted to get the hole, because that is the most important part of the tree.  I knew it needed to be big, so we decided upon 4 layers-2 yellow and 2 chocolate, filled with vanilla pudding, chocolate icing and butter cream between the two flavors.  Advise?  Buy more than one 16in round to bake it in.  You’re welcome.

Stacking of the layers came next.  More Advise?  Don’t try to be a hotshot.  Things will collapse and crumble on you.  That’s right kids.  I thought I would be smart and stack the yellow layers and then the chocolate layers and then pile them together.  Not my best idea.  Carving came next, rather quickly.  It’s a good thing this layer was supposed to look like a tree, the crumbling made it more life like.

Luckily icing is like glue.  It’s holds things together…in this case bits of cake that crumbled on my as I tried to be super awesome.  Luckily.

We stuck the cake in the freezer for about 30 minutes to further hold things together, and then Livy rolled out 4 lbs of chocolate fondant to cover.  We molded the fondant to look bumpy , then used a knife to mark up the sides a bit and finished by brushing on black food coloring with a paper towel.  Some tools can’t be bought in a cake shop.

Here is the 360 of that layer.

Let’s take a short break to discuss what happened while I was waiting upon the tree layers to bake.  Fondant figures.  It’s like play dough for grown ups.  Only, it melts in the humidity.  This is where the walk in refrigerator became our best friend.

Here is the progression of mine.

And here is Twinkle.  I told her it looked at little “come and get it”.  She crossed her legs in the end.  J

Then came the Archery Field layers.  These would be marble with peanut butter filling.  Yummo.  This was by far the easiest layer.  We leveled the tops, stacked them together and iced.  Easy. 

This is the icing done on the sides, and top, and just needs to be blended.  A small spatula will do the job.  Just roll it down on the sides and smooth away. 

A quick cool down in the fridge while we rolled out the Green fondant.  More advise?  Be nice to your fondant.  Keep it cool.  It’s best to roll out fondant in a cool place, on a cool tabletop.  Not like I did, at 3 pm on a 100 degree day, with 50% humidity.  After 3 failed attempts, we put our melting, ripping fondant in the freezer to chill out.  Then we rolled it out once more and smoothed it out.  Yes, there were a few holes and some ripping but we decided it was as good as it was going to get.

The Archery pieces were easy as pie, roll out fondant, paint, apply to cake.  Confession?  I was worried about stacking the layers together.  I should not have been.  Super easy.  We ordered Boba Tea straws (the Charm City Cake blog recommends them) for this purpose. 

We stuck one in the cake all the way down, marked about 2mm above the top of the cake (so the cardboard from the next layer didn’t stick to the fondant).  Scissors allowed me the snip off the excess and make sure all straws were the same height.  Once they were all cut, we stuck them in the cake and plopped the Archery Field on top.

That same day we being the crazies we are decided to work on the Council Rock layer.  I so wish I had an inspiration picture of this, unfortunately, I forgot to take one.  Maybe I’ll do that this week so you can see that I’m not crazy.  Go with it.  Council rock is an area right next to the river that is carved into steps.  We have our weekly campfire here.  It’s also one of my favorite spots on camp to go when you want to be alone.  Good times.

We baked up some lemon layers and filled it with lemon pudding.  The carving of this one went slightly better than Storybook tree.  Icing was simple, but if you try this, be careful.  Lemon cake has a higher moisture content so it tended to crumble more than I expected.  Covering with fondant was simple.  We used white fondant.  Then we shaped and molded to make it look rocky.  And then came the fun part.

We bought Wilton Grey Spray Food Coloring and PME Silver Luster Spray to use to make it look two toned and rocky.  I recommend using the Grey and then Silver.  This is one thing we did right the first time.  Yea us!  More Advise?  Don’t use the PME Silver Luster Spray to paint your teeth into a grill.  I hear it is not pleasant.  You can double check this with Livy, but I think she’d agree.

The fire was also made with fondant, and this layer was stacked the same way.  That spot with the trees?  Yeah, It cracked and looked a little lumpy, so I covered it with another aspect of camp...the nature trail.  These things happen.

You still there?  Good.  It was about this time in the cake making when I wanted a break too.  Hang in there, it’s almost done.

Our final layer was the bell tower.  Again, I forgot to photo this inspiration, but trust me, the final product looks almost identical.  Minus the shape is a square and not a rectangle.  And Minus the real thing has a real bell.  But identical.  Trust.

I found a handy little house pan made by Wilton at my local Michaels store.  This was dandy, cause I was worried about how to make the roof overhang without it toppling over.  This part was super easy…just bake, ice and fondant.  We rolled out extra fondant to make the windows, roof and bell.  Just cut out and attach with icing, or piping gel if you don’t forget to pack it like I did.

Other must haves?  A fondant smoother.  Definitely don’t forget that one in your kitchen drawer.  You might have to make do with extra cardboard circles.  J

My final advise to you?   Just try it.  Playing with cake is fun!