5 Layer Birthday Cake (an undertaking)

Sifter

Icing

Layers

Crumb Coat Started

Finished Birthday Cake

Bites out of Birthday Cake

BIRTHDAY CAKE! 

 

MAKING BUTTERCREAM ICING

I don’t know how many of you have ever made Buttercream Icing…it is an undertaking.

At first it looks like…oh, some butter (and you better not forget to make it room temperature), and then, oh yeah, some icing sugar, some vanilla (use a blond vanilla for your white icing – I have a Caribbean vanilla which I assume is fabulous because that is where it comes from…why work with inferior materials!) easy.

But there is BIG time commitment. So while I am waiting for each mixing time to finish, I will write this blog entry. I have 5 minutes in between each addition of ½ cup of icing sugar…this is going to take an hour.

I am making an M. Stewart icing recipe - it calls to cream the butter in your mixer until pale and creamy looking and then add ½ cup of icing sugar. With the mixer on medium, beat that for 5 minutes for each ½ cup…after 1 cup has been added, spin it up to high for 10 seconds and then go back to adding your ½ cups at medium speed…after I add the ½ cup, I take my dutch spoon, lower the bowl, and clear the sides and especially the bottom of the bowl and then lay a little icing on top of the icing sugar to try to keep the clouds of dust down to a minimum when I put the machine back on.

Don’t forget to sift your icing sugar as it is full of lumps and will just mess up your icing if you insist on pouring it right in without sifting thoroughly…there will always be small lumps so press any small lumps through the sifter.

Tip: go to a kitchen shop and get a wide, low sifter the size of a cake pan…it is about 2” – 3” high with a circular screen…so much easier to use than churning a wooden handle on an old style sifter…and use a parchment sheet to sift it onto. (see pic)

Tip: make sure when you add each ½ cup that you keep your mixer on VERY LOW, otherwise the icing sugar will be all over you, the counter and anything in between…as it mixes in, creep up to medium to continue the five minutes of mixing until the next ½ cup and repeat with care.

I am doubling the recipe because I am making a five layer cake…so I can see as I write that the oh-so-soft icing in the mixer that it is crawling up the sides to the top…I am hoping that it will all stay in the bowl until it is all incorporated…who knew I had to worry about the size of the bowl…if I was going to do it again I would buy a bigger bowl (if that is even possible) or do it twice (but that would be a huge time commitment.) I still have to add the vanilla and I will put a small drop of colour in to make a pastel colour for the icing…the layers are 5 different shades of red to pink.

As it is, I made the cake layers another day and froze them…today I am making the icing and it will last in the fridge for 3 days if needed, but I do have to ice the cake today because the cake is now thawed and I need it all together tomorrow. (see pic) Take the cakes out of the freezer the night before to thaw out slowly in the fridge. I tried making the cake from scratch last week, but over mixed it and they turned into brilliant coloured hard fisbee-like layers…it broke my heart to throw them out…I even pretended I didn’t have to for a day and put them in the fridge in a hopeful sort of way…the next morning my rational side saw the futility of that and threw them out...I gave up and bought some Duncan Hines cake mixes and started over…only because I ran out of time to make the complicated M. Stewart 10 egg white cake that I was trying for the first time. In a pinch use a cake mix…time is everything.

1/3 of the way through the mixing in ½ cups and the icing is like velvet.

½ of the way through the mixing and the icing is behaving and staying in the bowl as additional icing sugar thickens it and weighs it down a little more. Still like velvet…a cloud of icing.

¾ s of the way through and the icing is about halfway up the bowl instead of threatening at the edge…so it does settle down and you and I don’t have to panic…the weight of the icing sugar is taming the butter.

Add the vanilla and a couple of drops of food colour (one drop of liquid colour at a time or a little of gel colour on a toothpick at the same time and mix) When you take it off the mixer, give the whole bowl a good swipe with the dutch spoon and make sure you get right to the bottom in case there is anything not mixed in below the beaters. (see pic)

Ready to ice that cake!

DECORATING THE CAKE!

Get yourself a cheap or expensive cake decorator’s stand…this can range from a counter level rotating plastic to a 4” stemmed cake stand with a metal rotating plate.

Tip: lay down a piece of rubber shelf cover (you can buy round pieces to save yourself a step of cutting a circle)…the round rubber will keep the cake from sliding around on the stand…you can get these at the dollar store. Put it between the plate of the cake decorating stand and a round cake circle. Cover the cake circle with tin foil sot that the moisture from the cake will not soak it.(see pics)

Put another piece of round shelf cover between the parchment bottom of the cake and the tin foil so the bottom layer won’t move around when you are icing it.

Start layering…in the end I decided to put a skewer down the centre to keep the layers from toppling…as there are five layers and the icing is soft I am worried that it will topple or slide at this point. I realize all of a sudden that maybe I should have made the icing M. Stewart recommended with the 10 egg whites in it…it would be stiffer…Oh Well…too late now!

Tip: The next time I would put on layer on and put it in the fridge for 10 minutes or so to harden a bit an then repeat.

Lay the crumb coat on. This is a thin layer of icing which picks up the crumbs. When you add the finishing layer this crumb coat is buried beneath and you won’t see them.(see pic)

I refrigerate the cake for a bit to get the icing to stiffen up a bit…it is winter and a cold icy day so I put it on the back porch within view in case the squirrels are hungry…then thought better of it in case it froze…I will decorate with a few bobbles and some rosettes after ½ hour or so. (see pic)

Tip: A little while in the fridge solved this soft icing problem as it totally butter and well, butter hardens in the fridge! What a concept!

Okay, lastly I saved a bit of the icing and added a few more drops of colour and then used my piping equipment to make the darker rosettes and little dots and pipe the birthday age on the top…and saved a bit of leftover icing and darkened it some more in case I feel like adding a few more bits before serving cake.

Candles and some little silver bobbles to embed in the rosettes and it is finished. The cake is so high it won’t fit in the fridge. I have to remove a shelf and get creative with what is in there.

Tip: I cut the layers in half and used only half of each colour…another time I would cut the layers into thirds…then you have a shorter cake and you could freeze the other bits for another birthday.

Now I have no idea how a slice of cake that high will fit on an ordinary plate…what was I thinking! It is an American-sized cake! Supersized. Maybe MacDonald's.....