A Mad Hatter Tea Party (and Mad Hatter Cake #3)

Oh dear, here is one cake that I didn't get around to share with you all from last May - A Mad Hatter Hat Cake with a modeling chocolate figurine of the birthday girl.

A chocolate cake filled with strawberry Italian Meringue Buttercream
and covered in Chocolate Ganache dusted in green, brown and gold dust

Last May we made the 6 hour drive to San Jose to spend Easter with my cousin and to also help with her daughter's 10th birthday party.  It was the most amazing Mad Hatter Tea Party.

the girls huddled in front of the cake while eating some treats =)

This was the 3rd Mad Hatter Hat Cake that I've made and if you would like to see them, check out my previous blog posts here:

Mad Hatter Cake #1

Mad Hatter Cake #2

We also made a bunch of decorations to top the cupcakes with...
- Stacked teacups which I later filled with chocolate ganache
- Mad Hatter Hats with her birthdate
- Clocks with her birth time
- Eat-Me tags
- Ribbon Roses
- Clubs, Clovers, Hearts and Spades
- and butterflies

The chocolate cupcakes were frosted with a swirl of purple and pink Italian Meringue Buttercream and topped with an assortment of decorations.


We also made cake pops and skewers of fruit and placed them in tall vases stuffed with colorful tissue paper.

My cousin did an awesome job with the table setting:  A couple unique tea pots and a different teacup for each setting - not one of them looked like another...it was perfect for the theme.  She also found some really colorful and bold plates, cups, napkins and little trinkets to make for a super colorful and perfect tea party.  I went overboard tying a bow onto anything that could hold a bow (I loved the red/black/white printed ribbon) - it's even up around the windows and wall decor too =)

She even setup a table for the little ones.

And the doily lace trimming around the cake stand is a paper border that my cousin had bought a while back.  It came precut and folded up inside a little packet by Martha Stewart.  I attached it to the side of the cake stand with some double sided tape.  I loved how it dressed up the stand - so simple too.


We had all hands were on deck from family and friends in putting this together and it turned out quite lovely.  An incredibly beautiful birthday for an incredibly beautiful girl.

Mad Hatter Hat Cake #2

My 2nd Mad Hatter Hat Cake.  The 1st one was for my niece, this one was for her best friend.  A lot of improvements made from the 1st one; One of the many benefits from making the same cake again - learning what to do better the next time around!

I baked 3, 6" round cakes (each layer was 2" tall) with 5 layers of Strawberry Buttercream filling: Chocolate - Vanilla - Strawberry Sour Cream Cakes.

Here are the 3 cakes stacked.  Through the insanity of working on 2 different cakes at the same time, I did an ganache dam then filled the layers with strawberry buttercream.  NOTE!  Don't do a dam when you will be carving the cake!  It made it very messy and very difficult to cut nice, smooth sides with.  Work on a frozen or at least a very well chilled cake - makes it easier to carve.  The hat is sitting upside down here with a 4.5" circle that will become the bottom base and used as a guide to carve the cake to.

 

Next, cover the cake with ganache and make the hat's rim.  I rolled out a 9" round circle and lay it over a 9" board that was heavily dusted with corn starch to keep it from sticking.  I then cutout a 4.5" round out of the middle for the base of the cake to sit in.  Brushed the entire rim with chocolate ganache then let it sit overnight in the fridge to firm up with some balls of foil in various spots around the rim to give it some dimension.
Tip:  Using the same size board as the rim helped keep the hat's rim perfectly round and not get twisted or stretched out of shape.

Once the ganache was set and dry, I used the same technique as on the previous cake by using a ball tool to swirl the pattern all over the hat.  Used piping gel to attach the rim to the cake board then placed the cake over that.  The cake was very tall (7") and not very stable so I hammered a dowel right down the center and into the cake board (you can see the cake bulging at the bottom).  I rolled a piece of modeling chocolate and wrapped it around the bottom (around 1/2" tall and 1/4" thick) to give it some extra support.

Making the board was tedious but well worth it.  I was trying to come up with something in the movie and fell in love with the checkered board and had always wanted to make one.  I used a diamond impression mat to cut out the squares and then patched up the pattern directly on the cake board.  Another reason to use a diamond impression mat and to also get perfectly uniform and perfect squares....worked like a charm!

The entire hat and rim was dusted with patches of Dark Chocolate Brown Petal Dust and Avocado Luster Dust.  The little trinkets were dusted with gold, pink, and white pearl dust and the modeling chocolate ribbon was dusted in pink pearl dust and painted with white gel colors.  The stick holding the date is a skewer while the other 2 sticks (black and white) were dried pieces of spaghetti painted with gel colors.  The feather was made out of fondant and dusted in various colors.

I used the Alice In Wonderland font for the name and age.  And made 2 dozen assorted "Eat Me" Petits Fours to go with the Hat Cake.

The "Eat Me" Petits Fours were cut from a Vanilla Sour Cream Cake baked in 10" square pan = 24 pieces each 2.25"L x 1.5"W x 1.75"H.  They were filled with Strawberry Buttercream then covered in MMF.  Royal Icing was used to pipe the white swirls and "Eat Me".

My other Mad Hatter Hat Cakes:

my first Mad Hatter Cake

My third Mad Hatter Cake

Mad Hatter Hat Cake

My niece tuned 9 and loves the new Alice in Wonderland movie.  Her only request for a cake was to have "Eat Me" Petits Fours in different colors.  I surprised her by including some cake truffles and a Mad Hatter Hat Cake.

Making the Petits Fours was difficult but I think that my cake may have been a little too large and soft (2"x1.5"x1") to cover with poured fondant.  I also tried using melted canned frosting and melted chocolate.  The photo above shows the cake covered with a layer of MMF and then coated in chocolate.

All 3 techniques failed at giving a very nice and perfectly smooth covering so I ended up just covering them one by one with rolled fondant instead.  I have to give Petits Fours another try with poured fondant and hopefully in the much more traditional, 1"x1" size.  JoesPastry.com has a nice blog with detailed instructions on poured fondant and petits fours.

In addition to the Petits Fours, I made some cake truffles (aka cake balls) dipped in white chocolate dyed pink then drizzled with dark chocolate.  Bakerella.com has the basic recipe but I don't like mine being too sweet so instead of using a can of frosting, I use a little bit of simple syrup and cream cheese...just something to give it a little bit of added flavor and a little moisture to help the cake stick together.

The hat was made by baking 3, 6" round cakes:  2 layers chocolate and 1 layer vanilla filled with Nutella buttercream.  I froze the cake for a few hours to make it easier to carve.

I then covered the whole thing in chocolate ganache, let it set for about an hour then used a warm ball tool (just rub the tool against a hot, moist towel for a few seconds to warm it up), and created various swirls around the cake.

For the hats rim, I rolled out the MMF, cut out a hole in the middle to match the size of the bottom of the cake, dusted the cake pedestal (or cake board) with corn starch to keep it from sticking, spread some royal icing directly in the hole in the middle for the cake board to stick to, then placed the ganache covered cake over on top of it.

Cover the hats rim with ganache, add the swirls, wait for the ganache to set then dust with moss green petal dust and gold dust all over the cake.  I then added the ribbon and rolled up balls of foil and lifted the hat's rim in various spots for it to dry with a little dimension to it.  I then put the cake in the fridge overnight to set and get it nice and cold for the drive to the party the next day.

As for the little details:  Painted the ribbon with white gel color thinned out with almond extract, piped out her name to match the Alice in Wonderland font with royal icing, and used skewer sticks to hold all the other little decorations.  For the tag, I dusted it with an assortment of colors (moss green, sunflower yellow, gold, lavender) to get it to look aged, poked a hole in the corner, let it dry overnight then thread it through one of the skewers.  All the little trinkets at the end of the skewers including the feather were made in fondant and painted with various colors and gold dust.

Allison was so excited and absolutely loved her cakes.  The Mad Hatter Hat Cake is one of my all time favorites....I would love to do this one again.

Update:  Had the wonderful opportunity to make this cake again for her best friend, see Mad Hatter Cake #2

Link to another:  Mad Hatter Cake #2 

and another:  Mad Hatter Cake #3

Dental School Grad Cake (and Pink Lemonade Cake Recipe)

Very unique and very fun to do! A friend’s husband graduated Dental School and asked if I could help make the cake. A few months ago, I had helped her 2 friend’s make her a Safari Baby Shower Cake and at the same time showed them how to do it all; baking, making the marshmallow fondant (MMF), Ganache and decorations to torting, filling, covering it…all of it! Now, she wanted to have the same opportunity to learn too. What better way than with a carved cake and of course, for her husband! There wasn’t much we could do ahead of time aside from making the MMF. On my Facebook Page, I have the MMF recipe with tips and hints on how to work with it. We used Strawberry Jello Mix to color and flavor the MMF. It gave it a light pink base and we added about ¼ teaspoon of red gel color to it. It tasted more like bubblegum and smelled super delicious.

The cake was Pink Lemonade (see recipe below), filled with chocolate mousse, and covered with semi-sweet chocolate Ganache.

Two 9x13 cakes were baked. The cakes were stacked together 1st with a piece of parchment paper in between each layer then, carved. They were then taken apart and filled with chocolate mousse. The pieces cut off the corners were used to build the roof of the pallet and the ridge along the top then, the whole cake was covered in Ganache.

We covered the cake with the MMF and then cut out each tooth, smoothed it into shape, then attached it to the cake. The teeth were a little heavy and kept sliding down but we just keep shoving them back into place until it set. I must have printed out about 4-5 different pictures of teeth to get it right.

We also covered the 16”x16” cake board with a grayish-purple MMF (a mixture of what I had left over from other cakes) then sprayed the whole board with a can of the Duff Cake Graffiti in Metallic Silver: 1 can was barely enough to cover the board with…the instructions said that it would lightly cover six 8” round cakes – yeah! The spray worked perfectly, so much better than trying to brush it manually. An airbrush would have worked perfectly too but I didn’t have one…quite yet (but it's on my wish list).

She made the tools at home and then we painted them with silver luster dust. I heard the cake was a hit and she’s going to try to make a cake on her own. I love this…teaching others what others have taught me!

Pink Lemonade Cake – adapted from MacsMom’s “Lemon Cake”

2 white cake mix boxes

2 c cake flour

2 c - minus 2tbls - sugar

1 ½ t salt

1 t baking soda

1 1/3 cup frozen pink lemonade concentrate

1 1/3 cup water

2 c sour cream

6 whole eggs

¼ c oil

½ t vanilla extract

½ t lemon extract

Rock n' Roll Guitar Cake

I love the design of this cake. My little niece asked for a chocolate cake and a pink guitar standing up and her mom asked for a small, 6" cake and she would bake the cupcakes.

Here are some pictures I used for inspiration: Rock and Roll and girly, lots of pink and black, a guitar with some swirls of hearts and butterflies.  I also found these adorable cupcake toppers that I wanted to try replicating (check out, Cakes by Steph, she also made the cake in the picture).



I designed a template over Photoshop using all the cool brushes and fonts.



 I have not had much practice with piping aside from some writing and very little decorations over a cake. The guitars for the cupcakes were made using Wilton Color Flow Mix since I read it dries harder than with royal icing. The colors were all made the night before so the black could have a chance to mature completely – the black was more of a murky gray the day I made it but turned perfectly black by the time I needed to use it.

I printed out a template and taped some parchment paper over it on a cutting board. These little guys took me 3 hours to get done…30 guitars, 3 hours, not very efficient but what a learning experience! The 1st 2 hours alone was spent trying to get the right consistency. I tried to outline the guitars 1st then fill with a softer icing but it was so messy and looked just awful as you can see in the picture.

The ones on the left were outlined first then filled; the ones on the right were just filled in without an outline…so much better! I pitched the outline method and went straight to filling these in.

  

All the black, pink and light pink was done in one night and the white details added the following day...30 guitars for 30 cupcakes! Phew!

  

The cake was chocolate filled with chocolate mousse, coated in milk chocolate Ganache and then covered in hot pink marshmallow fondant. The background was painted with pink and red gel colors mixed with almond extract. I had made the black cutout decorations 2 days earlier.

A trick I learned while at a 3C’s meeting in January was to wrap the fondant cutouts and store in the freezer until you need them: The freezer keeps them soft and pliable. I pulled them out of the freezer and used them right away…they were perfectly soft and bendable like the day they were made and not hard at all….lovely tip! The photo here is of the cutouts sitting on parchment paper inside a freezer bag.  All the details was hand-cut (stars, 7, guitar, leaves), no Cricut here but it would have been so easy to have had a Cricut to make these. Silver dragees were added in the middle of the stars and to make out the name.

 

The guitar standing on the top was hand-cut out of marshmallow fondant mixed with Tylose (to help it dry harder). I don’t like using toothpicks in cakes and instead, use dry spaghetti as you can see here.

Kayla loved her cake and her big sister has already put in her request for her cake, baseball’s and bats - ideas are spinning in my head.



08/24/10 Update - The big sister changed her mind and wanted the Alice In Wonderland Eat Me Petits Fours...I surprised her with a Mad Hatter Hat Cake. 

Covering a Cake in Ganache

Love, love, love using Ganache under fondant! It tastes incredibly delicious and it’s so much easier to get nice, straight sides and edges with compared to using buttercream.

Here is a link to Rylan’s blog, Art and Appetite, (one of my favorite cake artists) where Ganache is explained perfectly.

Like Rylan, I weigh the chocolate and the cream using the 2:1 ratio for dark and semi-sweet chocolate and the 3:1 ratio for milk chocolate. I have to honestly say that I am confused about white chocolate. I have read that some people use the 2:1 ratio and others use the 3:1. I decided to try making the white chocolate Ganache for the 1st Communion Cake using the 2:1 ratio.

I used 40 oz Nestlé’s Toll House Premium White Chocolate Chips to 20 oz Heavy Whipping Cream (a little more than ½ qt). It was just enough to fill and cover the 9” round cake 4” tall. It set a little softer but it still worked out perfectly…I have to give it a try with other brands of white chocolate since results may vary….note, note, note!

For the filling, I whipped ½ cup heavy cream then added 1.5 Tbsp of the Ganache and whipped a little more = super delicious and easy chocolate mousse. I only did 1 layer of filling since I didn’t want to cake to be too sweet with it being covered in Ganache and then in marshmallow fondant.

Below are the step by step photos showing the process as well as my wordy descriptions. It’s been a learning journey and with each and every cake, I’m learning more…for now, this is how it’s done; at least, this is how it’s done MY way :)

Step 1: Make the Ganache: Heat the heavy cream until it just starts to bubble, pour over chocolate and let it sit for about a minute to melt. Use an emulsifier (Immersion Blender) to blend it all together for about 30 seconds, set aside to cool. After cooled, cover and let it sit overnight at room temperature to set. The Ganache will set into a thick but smooth peanut butter consistency.

Step 2: Torte and level the cake. Smear a little bit of Ganache on the cake board to act as a glue and lay the 1st cake layer on it (the cake will bake slightly smaller than the board but that’s ok – a 9” cake = 9” board). Pipe a ½” snake of Ganache around the edges of the cake to create a dam, pop the cake into the fridge for the dam to harden (about 5 min – this step isn’t necessary but I like to do it this way since it makes it easier to spread the filling without having to worry about mashing the dam accidentally), remove from fridge, then fill with the filling. Top with the next layer of cake and repeat if needed. I then piped more Ganache around the outside seams to fill in any gaps then smoothed that out as you can see in the photo above.

Step 3: Cover the top of the cake with Ganache: I like using the upside down method to get the top of the cake smooth and leveled. Top the cake with a 1/2” layer of Ganache, smooth it out a little, then place a piece of wax paper over it.

Use a scraper to smooth out any air bubbles.  Add a larger cake board over it (in this photo, I used a 14” board with a piece of foil over it – you can also use cling wrap or parchment paper…anything to keep the board clean and reusable) and carefully flip the cake over so that it is now upside down.

Check to see if it’s leveled, if not, gently press down around the cake until it is.

Step 4: Cover the sides of the cake with Ganache: You want to always add more than you need at the beginning because it is so much easier to just scrape off the excess and be done rather than to keep adding then scraping then adding then scraping…etc. As you can see, the 9” cake board is slightly larger than the cake (9” cake shrinks a little after cooling). I like using the extra lip of the board as my guide to the thickness of the Ganache. Once you have added the Ganache along the sides, use a metal scraper or similar tool, to scrape the excess off a little at a time, layer by layer as you turn the turntable.

Tip: I set my turntable (it’s a 20” Lazy Susan) on the counter next to my stove. I turn on the gas burner/flame to super, super low and wave the edge of the stainless steel scraper over it for about 5 seconds to warm it up (here is the link to scraper I use), scrape the Ganache off the sides of the cake, scrape the excess off the scraper into a bowl, use a moist towel to wipe the scraper clean, then heat it up again over the flame and repeat…repeat…repeat until you are completely happy with the sides.  Always scrape the excess Ganache off the scraper before laying it back up against the cake again. Heating the scraper helps it glide smoothly over the Ganache. You can also dip the scraper into hot water instead of using the flame but be sure to dry it really well; water and chocolate just don’t do well together!

Step 5: Place the cake into the fridge for at least a ½ hour or more, remove, then carefully flip the cake back over onto its correct side and peel off the wax paper. You may need to smooth away the little imperfections or fill any air holes with a little bit of Ganache. I had forgotten to take a picture of this step so instead, I included the only other picture I had of this step...and my 1st Ganache covered cake (semi-sweet chocolate).

Step 6: Let the cake sit overnight at room temperature for the Ganache to completely set. It’ll get a nice shell that gives a little when you press on it (although you don’t want to be poking into the cake). Before covering in fondant, you can either brush or spray the cake with a little bit of water or vodka (it evaporates away anyways) or some type of syrup (apricot jam diluted with water). I personally like to rub the surface with a very thin layer of shortening before laying the fondant over it. Lay the fondant over, smooth away and finish decorating.

Try it…once you do, you’ll never want go back.

Here is another great site about the science behind ganache: Chocolate Ganache and Truffles

Why I like my Sur La Table Dough Scraper:
- It's stainless making it easy to heat up either over a low flame or with a hot, moist towel
- It has measurements on BOTH sides for easy measuring (Especially when you're balancing up a cake with 1 hand while trying to use the other hand to quickly and evenly measure around the cake so it lays centered over a cake board)
- It's sturdy and has a straight edge on all 4 sides
...I just love it and it's been the worth every penny ($7 USD)

Here is an example of an Immersion Blender.  I bought mine years ago but this is similar to the one I use to emulsify the chocolate and cream together.  A few quick short zaps of this thing and everything is nicely blended and smooth.

Side note: My typical cake schedule starts in the evening after the kids are in bed… Day 1 bake & make the Ganache, Day 2 torte/fill/cover the cake in Ganache, Day 3 final assembly and decorating….I seriously love my evenings - peace and quiet…and of course, nothing but cake.