Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Faux Book (Fourth Fondant Foray!)


Who knew the nerdiness of the game Magic: The Gathering would ever coincide with cake decorating?

Thanks to Paul (oh, he was so close to escaping this cake!) for carving out most of the letters from fondant to spell out "Magic" across the top of the book. Of course, it was for his Day o' Magic, but that's beside the point.

Although this is a decent start for my first book-shaped cake attempt, I can see the zillions of flaws in my decorating job. It's something positive to build on, for the most part, though. I'm pleased with how several of the colors came out, and the pages too.

For any Magic purists: yeah, ok, I didn't recreate the box precisely. No "The Gathering" lettering, no red bookmark on the side (even though I really wanted to do that, oh well), no "Revised Edition" lettering (yes, they're that old), etc. Deal with it.
So anyone want to learn to play so that Paul actually has someone to play against? I'd love to teach you, just let me know... Back to cake. (Way more important anyway.)

Cake was still a little too dry, but the taste was good. I really have to start messing with soaking syrup because I'm making them so far in advance.

Details of the cake:
One batch of All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake from The Cake Bible, baked in my still-fabulous, still-new Calphalon 9 x 13 pan.
Used new Magi-Cake strips (but the Wilton knock-off ones), which worked great! Flat, evenly baked cake. No doming = less waste.
Cut the cake in half to get two 9 x 6.5 cakes, about 1 1/2" tall, each, maybe a little taller.
Stacked the small cakes so that I had one 9 x 6.5 cake with 2 layers, about 3.5" total height.

Used the really fantastic Mousseline BC, as noted in the previous post with the cupcakes.

Fondant dyed with Wilton's gel colors.

Fondant made 2+ weeks before decorating.
Cake made 3 days before serving.
Cake layers assembled and crumb coated 2 days before serving.
Cake decorated and tiers assembled the night before serving. (Does 2 am still count as night before?)

Developed several book-specific decorating techniques on the fly:
1) After rolling out fondant to correct size, placed it on the cake board (don't use BC next time, it'll adhere well enough), cake on fondant, and then brought fondant up and over cake, covering spine and cover of book.

2) Used small, old, rubber (not silicone) spatula to work fondant. Folded it under itself for the book covers. After adhering pages (sides), folded them under the front and back covers (top and bottom) the same way.

3) Dry brush technique for the pages.

4) Painted edge of metal bench scraper with diluted color mixture to apply outlines around rectangular section of fondant on cover.

5) Painted edges of letters and other raised fondant parts with toothpick dipped in diluted color mixture.

Bottom line:
Next time, carve the rounded side of the book spine. (Too straight on this cake.) Decorating cakes takes a lot less time if you don't mess it up, which I did several times. Must try syruping cakes soon!

1 comment:

  1. It looks fantastic! I like that you used a 9 x 13 pan, I'm going to try that myself and stack it as well. I'm trying to go for a deck, not a book, and hoping to use butter cream with fondant "Magic". Thanks for posting!

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