Vision in blue

Preparing for class number two was much more onerous than I had expected. The instructions seemed simple: bake two cakes, slice both in half, torte and stack the layers, do two coats of icing, and make icing to be used in the second class. Was I ever wrong! It took close to twelve hours after I factored out lunch and dinner, a trip to visit my new accountant, and a shower. In straight time, I went from 10:30am to 3:00am the next morning! Whoever takes Wilton Course 1 thinking it will be a nice diversion from a busy schedule is in for a shock. In fact, I was lucky in that I had the day off yesterday, but won't next Friday and am not sure how I am going to squeeze prep time in. I am seriously wondering if it would be a good idea to wait a while before I sign up for Course 2. In any case, here is a recount of yesterday's kitchen adventures along with some photographic evidence to show I'm not making it up...

I found a recipe that promised a moist chocolate cake and decided it was the way to go after spending the previous evening making two very dense French toast cakes that had to be thrown away. That recipe worked for mini cupcakes, but just didn't cut it for 8" round pans. The new recipe called for oil instead of butter so I was intrigued, and this is what the mixing bowl looked like before I added the flour mixture:


Once all the ingredients were added, I had to prep the pans. This involved rubbing a little butter on the inside surface and coating it lightly with cocoa powder:


Next, I secured pre-soaked bake-even strips around the outside of each pan. These strips allow you to do exactly as their name says by keeping the perimeter of the cake cool. This way, the edges won't finish baking first and force the middle to push up and crack. These were the strips soaking in the sink:


Thirty minutes later, the cakes were done and the top was relatively flat. There was still a gentle rounding at the edges, but the cake was mostly flat and beautiful. The bake-even strip is still attached to this pan:


Once the cakes had cooled enough, I inverted them onto wire racks with a sheet of parchment paper in between to avoid dents from the rack. I learned the hard way that if the cake and pan have not cooled enough, the bottom will rip. The picture below shows a small "hole" near the 2:00 position. The other cake had a giant crater-like rip and I had to fill it with extra cream (more later).


Just before beginning the icing stage, I cleaned up the work space and prepared a 10" round cake board to support the cake. It is just a piece of round corrugated cardboard and I wrapped it with aluminum foil, shiny side up. I taped the sharp edges down on the underside with clear wide tape. It is sitting on a turntable here:


And the top looked like this:


Torting a cake means to alternate layers of cake with yummy goodness and I sliced each cake into two layers using a cake leveller. I had serious doubts about the tool until the instructor showed us how easy it was to use in the first class. The first (bottom) layer of the torted cake needed a flat bottom and I ended up using the top half of one of the cakes since both of my bottoms were ripped (what a convoluted sentence!). Then, using a decorating bag filled with icing, I piped a dam on the first layer. This is to prevent the good stuff from squeezing out by accident the way I always do with sandwiches.

Using the dam as a guide, I filled the middle with stuff: there was a light layer of blackcurrant-pomegranate jam (it was a gamble at Superstore and I really like that it is just a little sweet) and then filled the rest with a cream made from the same jam. At that point, I noticed that the filling got a little high so I did a second dam before stacking on the second layer of cake. Next time, I will probably also add some icing to the "naked" part of the cake to make the crumbcoating easier.


Since there were four layers of cake, there were three layers of torting. I used the ripped cake bottoms in the middle of the cake and made sure the "holes" were filled with cream and then placed upside down. After the final layer went on, I slid strips of parchment paper under the edges of the cake to prevent the cake circle from getting dirty with icing. It would have been easier to do before torting, but I forgot at the time. Then it was time to ice! This is supposed to be thin, called a crumbcoat, and is used to trap the crumbs. Without icing the "naked" parts of the layers I had to first pipe icing between the layers to avoid air bubbles and to prevent the edges of the cake from dropping. When the crumbcoat was done, I popped the cake in the fridge to let the icing chill. The cake is sometimes still visible under a crumbcoat as seen here:


After dinner, the remaining icing went on and I ended up with a fully iced cake to bring to my second class:


Although it took forever to get to this stage, I really liked the results and would only make two small modifications next time. The first is icing the naked part of the cake while torting as already discussed and the second is to put a little icing on the cake circle before putting on the first layer. This is because my cake slid 0.5" off center sometime between torting and finishing the crumbcoat. It was too late to do anything by the time I noticed so I will treat it as a lesson learned.

Another thing I noticed was that there is a lot of icing in the cake (and it's heavy!). It's delicious, but it has 2 cups of shortening and 7 cups of icing sugar altogether so I am incredibly happy that I have found a birthday girl to give the cake to after decorating. I am also glad I got certain items even though they weren't listed as must-haves... The bake-even strips meant I didn't waste any cake because I would have had to cut off dome tops. The other items I am glad about are the cake leveller (my friend Elisse told me about the floss method but it seemed too complicated and risky) and the turntable (rotating the cake an inch at a time would probably have tripled my icing time!).

Next time (or perhaps the next few times), I will write about decorating the top, slicing and eating the cake, and the recipes for the cake and jam-based cream filling. In the meantime, I had better buy some more decorating bags since I seem to have trouble gauging how much to cut off or I somehow rip them at the seams!