So my second fancy fun cake was for my sister's St. Patrick's Day birthday. I wanted to put fresh flowers on her cake and she likes cutesy things so I decided on a gnome cake, using David the Gnome for inspiration. I made the gnome, mushroom, and lady bug cookies ahead of time. I also made "buttons" from chocolate covered Oreos, but the chocolate I used was thicker than I expected so they don't look as nice as I was hoping (I think they make up for it in deliciousness though.) She wanted some chocolate in her cake, but not all chocolate so I decided to go with a ganache frosting and, since she loves coconut, a coconut cake. Well the recipe for the coconut cake is just a the Magnificent Moist Golden Cake and a coconut soaking solution. This time I used the two stage method recipe with half the sugar for the cake. The soaking solution had a surprising lack of liquid and thus did not soak into the cake really at all (in retrospect I believe the coconut I was using was shaved finer and thus responded differently than expected.) But the "solution" made a great filling between layers. This was my first try with a smooth ganache frosting and I felt like the ganche cooled and hardened before I got a chance to get the texture I wanted, so I think I would benefit from a more room temperature cake, and or an actual cake decorating spatula (I just a regular old rubber one.) If I had made this cake in the summertime I would probably have used some nasturtiums since they are edible, but in March in MN you take what you can get. I went to the flower shop by my house and they had some beautiful ranunculi that I just couldn't pass up. Since the ganache frosting hardens, unlike buttercream, I used some leftover ganache to glue the cookies and flowers to the cake. Taste reports were super delicious with slight room for improvement in texture and moisture. The cake was a heavier cake (more pound cake than spongy) and a bit dry (I think the fairly dry coconut actually pulled moisture from the cake.) So, another win and another lesson!
No comments:
Post a Comment