Russian Cargo Threadcake

In our now second annual tradition, my wife and I made another Threadcake.  Threadcakes is an awesome online competition where you make a cake based on a shirt by Threadless.  Last year we made a walrus and ice cream truck cake and I wrote about it here.

This year’s cake is based on the shirt “Russian Cargo.”  It’s inspired by Tetris.  The Cyrillic text on the side of the cargo ship is the first name of the creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov.

Unlike last years entry, this year we made the entire piece out of nothing but cake, fondant, and gum paste.  There are also a few pieces of structural support where necessary, such as the crane arm, the wire to hold the floating Tetris piece, support in the Tetris piece itself, and some wooden dowels.

The cake is again made out of vanilla chiffon cake from Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft from the Culinary Institute of America. This cake is rather firm, which makes it easier to carve and stack, but still moist and tasty.  The frosting is a simple vanilla buttercream frosting.

Here is the mise en place for the cake itself.

All the dry ingredients get sifted together.  I actually sifted this year rather than just mixing them as I normally would.  I’m not sure it made a difference since the batter gets mixed so much anyway.

Here are all the eggs yolks required to make this cake.  This is enough for one half-sheet cake (13x18”).  I ended up needing two half-sheet cakes to make this cake.

And here are the egg whites separated out and saved for later.

The wet ingredients all get mixed together.

The wet ingredients get slowly mixed into the dry.

It all gets mixed for a few minute and everything is smooth and well incorporated.

The egg whites get turned into a meringue.

The meringue then gets gently folded into the cake batter.

A half-sheet pan is prepared by lining it with some parchment paper and then coating it with a flour and oil spray.

The batter goes into the pan and then immediately into the oven.

After baking for about 40-50 minutes, the cake is done.

Then, after cooling for a few minutes in the pan, the cake is turned out onto a wire rack and allowed to cool completely.

The cake recipe ends up with extra egg whites.  We turned them into a slightly over mixed meringue to make clouds.  Over mixing them gave it a more uneven and “cloudy” texture.

Here are the clouds after drying in the oven for a while.  Unfortunately we forgot to attach them to the smoke stack on the ship.

Now it was time to make the buttercream frosting.  It was a simple mixture of butter, milk, and powdered sugar.  While not my favorite frosting, it does make excellent frosting for carved cakes.  It also takes substantially less time than a “real” buttercream frosting.

Here is the completed frosting.  We ended up needing about twice this amount to ice and fill the whole cake.

Next up was stacking and carving the cake.  Each cake was cut to just about the right size, then the rounded top was removed with a sharp bread knife.

Frosting was then added to the top of the pieces.

And another piece was laid upside down on top.  The second piece is upside down so that the top can be perfectly flat.  The bottom of the cake is always going to be flatter than anything you can carve.

Here is a three piece high stack.

And here is all the cake stacked for all pieces of the ship and cargo.

The hanging tetris piece would never last as just cake.  It needed some structural support.  For that support a one inch wide strip of aluminum was bent and cut into shape.

The shape was then filled with cake.

All the cake pieces then needed carving.  Cereal boxes make for excellent impromptu guides to make sure that you carve perfectly vertically.

Here is a carved piece that will end up being one of the two Tetris cargos on the ship.

The form of the cargo ship itself also gets carved.

All the pieces then need to be iced.  The icing here shouldn’t be very thick.  It is basically just there to allow the fondant to adhere to the cake.

The ship itself also gets iced.

The ship, then, needed to have a hole carved out of the rear section.

This was to allow us to put a block of baked Sculpy to serve as an anchor for the crane arm.  Without this, the crane arm wouldn’t have been able to support the weight and would have fell over.

The hole was covered up with cake and re-iced.  A wooden skewer marks the point where the crane arm will anchor.

Everything then goes into the fridge so that the icing can harden up a bit to make it easier to cover with fondant.

Then we hade to make all the colors of the fondant we needed, except black.  It’s really hard to make a good black color at home without making the fondant too liquid.  Instead, we just purchased a small amount of black fondant.

You can wear gloves to mix the gel color into the fondant if you are worried about dying your hands.

The Tetris square were cut out using a clean Exacto knife.

This made for perfect and uniform squares.

The squares were laid out to dry over night.

The lettering for the ship name also was cut out of fondant.

The next day, each of the cake pieces was covered with white fondant to form a base.

Then the Tetris squares were adhered to the piece with just a light brushing of water.

Here is the completed smaller Tetris cargo.

And the larger Tetris cargo.

This is the front tower of the ship with the smoke stack in front.  Unfortunately we ended up having to cut this piece in half.  We had planned to make a larger cargo ship, but shrank the ship since we ran out of cake.  So, to get everything to fit on the ship, this piece made the ultimate sacrifice and was cut in half.

The ship also got covered with fondant.  The crane is also coming together here as is the lettering on the side of the ship.

And here is the completed cake.  The crane arm is a metal rod to help support the weight.  The Tetris piece is suspended with some wire.

 

Here is the cake again at a different angle.

This is some of the aftermath of eating the cake.  It was a fun cake to make, but we’re certainly glad to not have had to eat it all ourselves.  It was taken over to a friends house to share and then to work with me where it was finally finished.

Zombie Wedding Cake (Part 1)

When some friends got engaged my wife and I jumped at the chance to make their wedding cake. The couple decided they wanted a zombie wedding cake reminiscent of the cake made by Mike’s Amazing Cakes.

This and the next post is about the making of that cake. This time I’ll focus on the baking and making of the cake and fillings. The next post will be about the decoration and assembly of the cake.

The wedding cake was a four tier stacked cake. The top and bottom layers were a chocolate cake with an orange filling and vanilla buttercream icing. The two middle tiers were red velvet cake with a Nutella-Valrhona ganache and vanilla buttercream icing.

For the chocolate cake, I used the High Ratio Chocolate cake from Baking and Pastry: Mastering The Art And Craft by the Culinary Institute of America. The cake contains more sugar and butter than a normal cake. It turns out very moist and quite chocolaty. The orange filling was adapted from a lemon filling from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook.

For the red velvet cake, I adapted the Joy of Baking’s red velvet recipe. The Nutella ganache was adapted from the ganache recipe in Baking and Pastry: Mastering The Art And Craft. The vanilla buttercream was also adapted from that book.

Here are the cake pans for the four tiers. Each tier was made from two layers of cake. The tiers were made from rounds that were 14 inches, 11 inches, 8 inches, and 5 inches in diameter.

This is a shot of a majority of the ingredients. Not everything is pictured here since I forgot to include some things, but this gives you the magnitude of the ingredients needed to make a cake of this size. Though it turns out I didn’t need quite that much cocoa, flour, eggs, or powdered sugar.

Each pan needed prepared before receiving the cake batter. The pan’s bottom needs sprayed with a spray canola oil. Then a parchment circle is placed in the bottom. Then the whole thing get sprayed with a flour infused spray oil such as Baker’s Joy. This ensures that the cakes will release effortlessly from the pan after baking.

The first cakes that I made were the chocolate cakes. First the dry ingredients get measured and mixed, including the cocoa.

Then the wet ingredients get measured and mixed.

A third of the wet ingredients and the softened butter get mixed into the dry ingredients.

Another third of the wet ingredients gets mixed in, followed by the last third.

Here is the final cake batter after mixing in the last third of wet ingredients. At this point the batter is much lighter in color and ready to bake.

The batter goes into the prepared cake pan and then baked. The 14 inch cake took about an hour and a half to bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit, while the 5 inch cake took about 40 minutes at 350 degrees.

Here is the cake after baking.

And a close up shot of the edge of the cake. You can see that it baked out and over the top of the pan and formed a bit of a mushroom top. That is okay and just gets trimmed up right before decorating.

After cooling for a few minutes in the pan, the cake should be turned out and cooled to room temperature on a wire rack.

This is a close up of the chocolate cake again, showing the fine texture of the cake.

Next up is the red velvet cake.

Red velvet cake is made slighly differently. First the butter gets beat in the mixer until it’s light and slightly fluffy.

The dry ingredients get mixed separately.

Sugar, eggs, and vanilla get mixed into the butter.

A red food dye gets mixed with some buttermilk and then set aside.

Then the dry ingredients and buttermilk get mixed in, alternating between the two in rough third. Baking soda and white vinegar get quickly mixed together then incorporated into the cake batter. The whole thing gets quickly put into a prepared cake pan and baked.

After baking, the cake cools for a bit in the pan then, again, flipped and cooled on a wire rack.

Here is a close up of the cooling red velvet cake.

After the cakes have completely cooled, they were wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and stored in the fridge overnight. This stops them from drying out and gives you more time to make all the other pieces of the cake.

Next, the fillings get made.

The Nutella-Valrhona chocolate ganache is the first filling. It starts by chopping the chocolate into small rough pieces. I find that a sharp serrated knife works well for this. I use a strong, sharp bread knife.

The chocolate goes into a metal bowl and then set aside.

Then, heavy cream is brought just to a boil.

And poured over the chocolate. After about a minute, the mixture can be slowly stirred until it comes together.

Here is what the ganache looks like after coming together.

Then the Nutella gets mixed into the ganache. This also takes some time as the Nutella has a very different consistency. You can vary the ratio of Nutella to ganache to get a different final consistency and taste. I ended up using two 13 oz jars of Nutella for about 2 pounds of chocolate and 32 ounces of heavy cream. It resulted in a semi-hard ganache that could be spread easily at room temperature.

The second filling is an orange curd filling. It starts with juicing and zesting about three oranges.

A water, sugar, and cornstarch mixture is heated over medium-low heat until it boils for about a minute.

At that stage, the mixture will get really thick and be translucent.

Butter, orange zest, and the orange juice get mixed in. At this point the mixture is done, and just needs to cool. It should be moved to a bowl to cool with plastic wrap pressed down on it and placed in the fridge for a few hours.

That’s all for the cake ingredients (see this previous post for the vanilla buttercream). Next time I’ll write about the decorating and assembly of the cake.