So, I’m baking a cake. It’s a birthday thing for a co-worker, and it has to be chocolate (of course). I have all the ingredients for a cake that looks yummy, but it’s also ugly. It’s baked in a loaf pan, so it’s all loafy and lumpy (but gooey and very, very chocolate-y).
How can I make this cake look good using stuff I already have? That means I can’t go out and buy any fresh flowers or icing or other decorations. I have confectioners sugar, pearl sugar, chocolate (including very large chocolate chips), and a microplane grater so I can grate stuff. Any ideas?
Yep. Make some icing with the confec. sugar, butter and water. Do you have food coloring to give it some colour? That might be nice. Layer it on thick enough that it covers the bumpyness of the cake, and maybe use a knife tip to make some swirly patterns on the top and sides. You could use your grater to grate up your chocolate and sprinkle it on top.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler with some oil (maybe a couple teaspoons per cup.) Use it like a frosting. The oil keeps the chocolate from setting up too hard, to make it more like an icing consistancy. Or maybe just use a real recipe, like this one.
You can also cut it in half height-wise and stick soemthing inbetween the layers. Goo choices include:
[ul]
[li]Jam/jelly[/li][li]More icing[/li][li]Whipped cream[/li][/ul]
Also, here’s a trick:
When it’s done baking, trim it. Take a large serrated knife and trim off any large lumps that look unsightly. Once you conver it in the aforementioned icing, who’s going to know it didn’t come out of the oven that perfect? This is what the pros do, so no reason you can’t. Also, some tips to mkae the icing look cool (but don’t do all of them):
[ul]
[li]Take the tip of a butter knife, press it lightly into the frosting, then pull out, making a little “nipple” of icing. Do this over the whole cake for a weird, hedgehog-like look.[/li]
[li]Grate some fresh citreus zest over the top[/li]
[li]Use a knife with large serrations to make a rippled look in the icing by lightly going over the cake with it.[/li][/ul]
Thanks for the ideas! Dark chocolate icing sounds good, cause you can never have too much chocolate. I have lots of butter. I keep thinking I don’t have butter and buying more, so I’m stocked up with buttery goodness! I also have food coloring (green paste food coloring and the more traditional red, blue, and yellow). Little swirls in the icing would look nice. I might have a few icing bags and tips around somewhere, if I want to do something really fancy.
bouv, I like the idea of putting something in the middle (if it’s tall enough). I could do a minty layer in the middle and chocolate on the outside. Maybe a buttercream in the middle and chocolate glaze on the outside.
Ice it with the most godawful colors…purple, orange and lime green…then put some sad looking electrician’s candle on it. The lumpier and more sideways the cake, the better!
My aunt was famous for her ugly cakes, and people would stand next to them to have their pictures taken and it is always a huge laugh at any party…plus, everyone is dying to try it to see what it tastes like and yours sounds like a pleasant surprise for all.
That’s a great idea! But it’s at work, so we can’t drink.
DMark, I like the way you think! Embrace the ugliness. That’s my new motto! I like to bake, and it usually tastes good, but sometimes it doesn’t look so good. So maybe I should make the most of it. The uglier, the better!
Melt the chocolate. Roll it in sheets between peices of wax paper so its 1/8" thick. About four sheets. Refrigerate till hard.
Frost cake (with anything, you just need something to stick the chocolate to - jelly will work.)
Take the sheets of chocolate and using your blowdryer, gently melt the chocolate until it bends around the cake. If you stand it straight up on the sides, it will sort of “collaspe” to the middle. You can break the chocolate in peices to get it to fit, but the idea is to do an overlapping, casual, collasped chocolate look.
This is a birthday cake I made for myself. First, I didn’ have cake tins; so I used a straight-sided frying pan to bake it in. Next, I didn’t see the bit about having to let the cake cool first before putting the icing on. But ya know? No one else was going to see it, and I didn’t care what it looked like. That yellow cake with chocolate icing tasted just fine to me!
The following year’s cake did turn out to be more attractive. I bought a pair of cake tins, and I let it cool before I put the icing on.
It’s supposed to be baked in a loaf pan. In a square pan, it would be flatter, and not as gooey inside. The right amount of gooeyness is crucial. Without the gooeyness, it would just be brownies.
The cake is done and it’s cooling. It doesn’t look too bad so far, but strange things could happen when it cools. It has a funny crusty spot on top, and it’s probably going to sink in the middle when it gets cooler. I’m waiting for it to get cool before I make the final decision on how to dress it up.
Dangerosa, I like the melty chocolate sheet thing! I probably won’t have time to do that tonight, but I’m going to try it soon. I might just do a chocolate icing with stuff sprinkled on top so you can’t see how crooked it is.
Now, who wants to wash the dishes? Anyone? I’ll give you some fresh chocolate cake!
vetbridge, you are bad. Very, very bad! No cake for you!
DMark, do you have any photos of your aunt’s cakes? I need some ideas for ugly cakes!
I made a cake one time with a mouse on it–I got a little plastic mouse that’s supposed to clip onto your pocket, so it’s basically the top of a mouse with a clip on it (it looks a lot like a real mouse). I iced over the clip, so it looked like the mouse was sticking out of a hole in the cake, and I put little icing mouse footprints all over the cake. But sometimes I make cakes that actually look good!
Find a very open lacey doily. Plastic or lace will do. Place it carefully on top of the gooey chocolatey goodness. Next, Sprinkle powdered sugar through a sieve onto the cake. It will go through the lacey doily and create a really pretty lacey design on the cake. Remove the doily and serve the cake.
I used to make a really gooey chocolate cake with a boxed cake mix, a package of chocolate chips, and some cherry pie filling. Yummy but ugly. It didn’t need one bit of icing, but the delicate powdered sugar lacing dressed it up.
[QUOTE=MagicEyes] vetbridge, you are bad. Very, very bad! No cake for you!
DMark, do you have any photos of your aunt’s cakes? I need some ideas for ugly cakes!
QUOTE]
My other aunt might have some…but the key is to experiment with your food coloring and add it to the icing until you yourself laugh out loud. I believe Aunt Carole would then “glop it on” and then go in search of another color that would glow in the dark and glop that on as well. She usually had at least three wildass colors on the cakes, although I vaguely recall a very lopsided, two color - hot pink with yellow polka dots - that was one of her classics.
You know you are successful when you can’t help but stare at it and smile a goofy smile.
