My First Cake Competition : #4 Icing an Actual Cake

Day 4 – and I am doing okay so far.

Considering everyone at the office seems to think the moist chocolate cake is yummy, I went ahead and made a chocolate butter cream icing for the 6″ cake I prepared on the weekend. I am pretty sure I botched the recipe, but it seems to be holding up well enough. I attempted to use the extra icing to pipe out butter cream roses (testing out my new flower nail and was feeling a overly confident with my piping skills) and it did not work. Hahaha … everything kinda flopped over coz the icing is not of piping consistancy.

The icing has a nice flavour tho. However, I am concerned about the grainy-ness of the texture. Is that normal?? Anyone? I have no point of referrance so I have no clue (but I have a hunch its not supposed to be that way). Its not overtly obvious that there are grains of sugar in there since I used powdered sugar, but upon smearing some between my fingers it doesn’t feel as smooth either, not like Swiss Meringue Butter Cream. Hmmm … need to get to the bottom of this and perhaps make a batch of Swiss butter cream and compare. If both fail then I will move on to covering the entire cake with white fondant … another daunting task. Sigh.

 So here is me icing my first cake. LOL. Please try not to laugh.

Step 1 – Prepare the surface upon which to ice the cake.

Step 2 – Remove cake from fridge and unwrap the cake from plastic wrap. Place in center of board; butter cream at the ready.

Step 3 – Pile on the icing … LOTS of icing …. in between the cake and on top of it.

Step 4 – Smooth out as best you can. Do not pick up crumbs!

Step 5 – Scrape off excess icing using an off-set spatula or a side scrapper. Level off the top of the cake.

Step 6 – Chill the cake and add a final layer 30 mins later.

So that’s as far asI have come in my icing today. The cake is in the fridge and tomorrow I will cover everything in white fondant. God help me! I tried being a smarty pants and start piping butter cream roses but the icing was way too soft to hold any shape or form. Hahaha … and I cannot bring myself to post picturesof my failed flowers coz they look like blobs of icing, and not like flowers. By the way, if you are wondering what piping nozzle to use in order to pipe roses, use a ‘petal tip’ ~ the one that looks like a teardrop.

 On a side note, some sketches of what will eventually become my logo was sent to me today and they are AWESOME!! I have gone the damask route and frilly font. Will hopefully get the finished product within a week or two.

 To be continued …