Ganache is ...

Ganache is a wonderfully tasty but evil thing to add to your cakes. It is essentially chocolate, heavy whipping cream and butter melted and mixed to form all sorts of fun and yummy things. I made some for two of the four layers of the topsy turvy or "mad hatter" cake I'm making for tomorrow.

Here are the four cakes (3 layers a piece). The chocolate looking ones are the ganache ones. I find it is MUCH easier to work with and get a clean (smooth) crumb coat than icing from a can.
You can see that the first layer I attempted was not quite cooled (refrigerated enough so it looks a bit, well bad...) but the other 3 layers make up for it.

Here is an example of how the cake is engineered. The bottom layer is cut so that the upper layer fits in flat. This helps keep the cake stable while proving the illusion of crookedness.

Here's what the crumb coat looks like before the cut is made.

This is the top layer covered in homemade marshmallow fondant. I still need to learn how to do this part correctly.

Here is the ganache just before being refrigerated.

I'll post photos of the finished cake tomorrow... I'm still keeping the receiver of the cake in the dark as to the final dazzling cake.

baking, baking, baking, baking, baking....

Yep that's right... 5 Boxes of cake were baked this morning/afternoon. I am in the process of making a topsy turvy cake and needed 3 layers of each size. SO, 3 layers of 10 inch round, 3 layers of 8 inch round, 3 layers of 6 inch round and 4 layers of 4 inch round were baked. Yep... Biiig cake. They will be stacked and covered in homemade fondant tomorrow. I'll post pictures of all the cakes once I cool them and have a chance to take and upload them...

the joys of Fondanting...

So I was having a conversation today at my local restaurant supply store, about which was better for finding affordable tools. We started talking about cakes and fondant. I was saying that I managed to find a decent and easy recipe for homemade fondant. The woman I was talking to said she'd found a recipe for marshmallow fondant but it was confusing and she didn't think she'd done it right. I told her about mine and she seemed to think it was easier, so I figured I'd share it on here. So here it is...

1 16oz bag of mini marshmallows
1 bag of confectioners sugar
2T water
Crisco

Put the water and marshmallows in a microwave safe bowl and nuke for 30sec then stir and repeat until all the lumps are gone. Add some powered sugar and stir. Once the mixture has cooled a bit put Crisco all over your hands then coat in confectioners sugar. In a slightly smaller bowl add 1/4 of the bowl of powdered sugar. Pull out a pool ball sized hunk and plop it in the bowl of sugar. Fold and kneed in as much sugar as the ball will take. It should become the consistency of gum that's been chewed for like an hour and no longer sticky. Set the ball aside (I use another bowl with a dusting of sugar in it) and repeat the process in pool ball/softball sizes until all of the marshmallow stuff is gone. Combine the little balls into a big ball and put it in a Ziploc or other big seal-able bag. It's best if you can make the fondant a day or more ahead of time but it can be used as soon as it's made. Best if its cooled to room temp.