Another week, another experiment. This week's foray into cakedom was a cake for a luncheon celebrating 3 adult graduations. I wanted to make the lemon cake again but thought that if it was a bigger cake the cream cheese frosting would be way too sweet if used throughout. It wound up being 4 layers 2 with strawberries, 1 with the lemon curd frosting mixture I've used before. It was a good combination. Next time I may use a stabilized whipped cream frosting in combination with the beloved lemon curd and still add the strawberries.
The main thing that came out of this event was the little mortar boards I put on the cake. I wanted a chocolate version of the decorations I had seen and had grand visions of draping white chocolate ganache over mini muffins for the base. At around 11:00 pm I discovered white chocolate doesn't work like regular chocolate in the world of ganache. I had three sticky little muffins to show for my efforts. There were no square molds around that would work for the mortar boards themselves so I just melted some chocolate and spread it on foil to harden. When I tried cutting them they were too hard and broke. That was around 5:30 this morning. Writing Congratulations even with my bleary eyes worked well piped with melted chocolate but I had intended to luster dust it gold and forgot to do that. I made another attempt at the mortor boards and found they cut easily when the chocolate was just barely warm. Leaving them in a slightly warm car for an hour this morning worked perfectly! The tassles were another matter. In my mind's eye they would be made of royal icing that draped beautifully over the side. The royal icing somehow never materialized and the hats really needed something. Luckily the white chocolate was at just the right maleability to create little tassles that could be set up to curve over the side of the chocolate square. A big blob of frosting served for the base of each hat. I'd like to do more with molding white chocolate. I hear fondant is nasty tasting and have seen some cake decorators use white chocolate.
The main thing that came out of this event was the little mortar boards I put on the cake. I wanted a chocolate version of the decorations I had seen and had grand visions of draping white chocolate ganache over mini muffins for the base. At around 11:00 pm I discovered white chocolate doesn't work like regular chocolate in the world of ganache. I had three sticky little muffins to show for my efforts. There were no square molds around that would work for the mortar boards themselves so I just melted some chocolate and spread it on foil to harden. When I tried cutting them they were too hard and broke. That was around 5:30 this morning. Writing Congratulations even with my bleary eyes worked well piped with melted chocolate but I had intended to luster dust it gold and forgot to do that. I made another attempt at the mortor boards and found they cut easily when the chocolate was just barely warm. Leaving them in a slightly warm car for an hour this morning worked perfectly! The tassles were another matter. In my mind's eye they would be made of royal icing that draped beautifully over the side. The royal icing somehow never materialized and the hats really needed something. Luckily the white chocolate was at just the right maleability to create little tassles that could be set up to curve over the side of the chocolate square. A big blob of frosting served for the base of each hat. I'd like to do more with molding white chocolate. I hear fondant is nasty tasting and have seen some cake decorators use white chocolate. 