I figured each flower takes me about 15 minutes. That's once I figured out how to do them. I added a wire on the back because the flowers wound up very heavy. There seems to be much debate about whether it's OK to put wires in your cake. I think the Wilton wires are made to put in a cake but I saw a tip about wrapping the wires in Press and Seal. I love that stuff so of course I have it on hand and went ahead and wrapped the wires for the flowers. Another thing I did was use some sliced up pool noodles to hold the flowers.
Since the birthday girl likes dark chocolate I went on a quest for a nice dark chocolate cake. One recipe I found called for King Arthur Black Cocoa Powder! I suppose I could have ordered it online but my friend recently introduced me to Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder. That's what I used. When I tested Ina Garten's recipe for Beatty's Chocolate Cake adding the dark cocoa made the cake a bit bitter. I was going to put ganache on each layer but it was so rich it really didn't need it. Here's the recipe I used, adapted from
http://orangette.blogspot.com/2004/09/on-not-getting-killed-learning-to-be.html. The recipe was doubled and made two 8 inch and two 10 inch layers.
3 oz dark chocolate, I use Trader Joe's 72% Cacao
1 ½ cups hot brewed coffee 3 cups sugar
2 ½ cups cake flour
1 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
½ cup Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder
2 tsp baking soda¾ tsp baking powder
1 ¼ tsp salt
3 large eggs
¾ cup canola oil
1 ½ cups well-shaken buttermilk
¾ tsp pure vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. If you’re making cupcakes, line the wells of your pans with fluted paper liners, or grease and dust them with flour or cocoa. If you’re making larger cakes, grease pans and line bottoms with rounds of wax paper. Grease paper.
Finely chop chocolate and in a bowl combine with hot coffee. Let mixture stand, stirring occasionally, until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.
Into a large bowl sift together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In another (very) large bowl, beat eggs with an electric mixer until thickened slightly and lemon-colored (about 3 minutes with a standing mixer or 5 minutes with a hand-held mixer). Slowly add oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and melted chocolate mixture to eggs, beating until combined well. Add sugar mixture and beat on medium speed, until just combined well.
Flour and butter all the pans and cut a circle of parchment or wax paper for the bottom. Every time I do this I remember my mom teaching me this trick. Use the Wilton Bake-even Cake Strips on every pan. My significant other is used to getting the trimmings from the domed cakes and was disappointed when the layers came out nice and flat and needed no trimming. Bake in middle of oven for 50-70 minutes. One crucial thing I do is keep an eagle eye on my cakes and test as soon as I think they may be done, taking them out just as soon as the toothpick comes out clean.
The plan was to use the Viva method to smooth the frosting so I was looking for a nicely crusting frosting. When it came to doing the smoothing the colors of the chocolate looked blotchy so I just used a bench scraper to make it as smooth as possible. Super smooth frosting was not one of the requests and there were so many flowers it didn't really need to be that smooth. In the process of looking for how to smooth a cake I found this little nugget. http://sweetnessandbite.com/2013/10/perfect-buttercream-stripes-part-one/which employs a level and flipping the cake to make it perfect. I tested three frostings and wound up using the not crusty and more ganachy one for the filling and the crustier one for the outside. Below are the frosting recipes I used.
Filling:
3 cups salted butter
3 TB milk
2 tsp vanilla
½ cup Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder
12 oz Trader Joe's 72% Dark Chocolate
2 lbs powdered sugar
Mix Butter, milk, vanilla, and cocoa powder in your mixer until thoroughly combined and smooth. Melt your chocolate chips in the microwave on 30 second intervals stirring between heatings. Then pour into the mixer a little at a time mixing as you go. After the chocolate has been added to the other ingredients and you have a smooth consistency, add in the confectioners sugar.
Frosting adapted from this recipe
1 cup Crisco All Vegetable Shortening
3 t. Pure Vanilla extract
2 lbs. (8 cups) sifted powdered sugar, divided
1 cup sifted Hershey's Cocoa
1 TB Meringue Powder
8-9 TB heavy whipping cream, divided
Instructions
Cream butter and shortening, add vanilla, cream until smooth.Sift together powdered sugar and Hershey's Cocoa.
Add Meringue Powder.
Add 1/3 of the powdered sugar mixture, beating well on medium speed until blended (keep bowl covered with damp towel while beating to keep powdered sugar in bowl).
Add 1/3 of the heavy whipping cream, mixing until blended.
Add 1/3 more of the powdered sugar mixture, beating well on medium speed until blended.
Add 1/3 more of the heavy whipping cream, mixing until blended.
Add remaining powdered sugar mixture and remaining heavy whipping cream. Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy.
The plaque for the Happy Birthday was stenciled.
