I always love an excuse to bake a cake. While doing so, I feel transported back in time to my bakery days and I not only have deja vu, but I miss my co-workers and all the funny happenings and jokes that occurred daily. Oh, sigh and a tear.
My mom's birthday was this past week and we celebrated with dinner and cake at our house. She is a chocolate lover, so I made a classic chocolate cake with chocolate icing.
For the chocolate cake, I used a vegan recipe that is killer (no one can ever tell, so I never mention it). I do alter the recipe I have and use coffee instead of water. I think the coffee brings out the flavor of the chocolate. As for the icing. Unfortunately, I never follow a recipe, I go by the look of the icing. When you make icing by the LARGE batch at a bakery, you start to get an idea of what good icing looks and tastes like. I will post more about my icing recipe later this week.
Today, we are going to talk about icing a cake. I think I will have to do a video post about this topic at some point, but for now, I will just give some verbal direction, pointers and tips. Let me preface and say that most of what I know about icing cakes I learned at the bakery, a few tips I have picked up along the way. Here goes!
Let's start with some icing and your half naked cake. First step. Put a generous amount of icing in between your cake layers. Spread the icing out, making sure to rarely pick up your icing tool off the cake. If you pull the spatula off the icing, you can pull cake off with it and have crumbs in your icing. Crumbs in your icing looks so pretty. Not true. Make sure your icing layer is even. Gently place your second cake layer on top. Now cover your whole cake with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for about 30 minutes. This step is very important, it will help your layers set so they don't slide or crack. Once you take your cake out of the fridge put a big glop of icing on top, like the picture above. Slowly work the icing in an even layer from the middle of the cake towards the edge. Again, try to do this without lifting your spatula very much. As you get the icing in an even layer towards the edge of the cake, you can start to bring the icing down over the edge and onto the side like the picture below.
As you begin to cover the whole cake with icing, make sure you are putting an even layer all the way around. The easiest way to ice a cake is by having a cake spinner. While you are icing your cake with one hand, you move the cake spinner with the other, this process helps to keep the icing even. Sadly, I don't have a cake spinner so I just move my cake platter with one hand, which works, but not well compared to a real spinner.
When you achieve the desired thickness of icing on your cake you will want to smooth the top and sides of your cake. You may want your cake to look smoother than this, but that all depends on what you plan to do in the next step.
Shadow slice.
I decided to swirl the top of my cake, but leave the sides smooth. To make a swirl in your icing, it is actually very easy if you have a cake spinner, a bit harder if not. You want to angle the tip of your icing spatula into the center point of the top of the cake. Then spin the cake holder around in a circle with your other hand while working your icing spatula in a circle.
Now for the border.
You can do any sort of border. The one shown above is pretty basic and seen on most cakes. It is a small star tip or 1A icing tip. If you don't have an icing bag, use a zip-lock bag.
After doing the border you are ready to decorate, or maybe you want the cake to be sans decorations! My mom loves raspberries so I decided to add some color and fruit to make the cake pop a bit more.
Hooray for chocolate cake! Stay tuned for an icing recipe later this week. Unless our baby comes... then you will just have to wait.
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