This year is the 100th birthday of the Boy Scouts of America! To celebrate, Devin's cub scout troop decided to have a Father-Sons cake decorating contest! No, I'm not the Pack leader. And yes, I was gidy inside. :) A while back while preparing for her contest, my co-worker Chris from Cakeoricandothat told me about a new cake recipe that is extremely popular - The White Almond Sour Cream - or WASC. Of course when she tried it, she removed the almond, and added vanilla pudding, so I'm not sure her concoction could be called WASC, but at least she turned me onto the recipe. You can find the recipe here: WASC. Proceed with caution, this cake immediately vaulted to the best darn cake I have EVER tasted. WOW! A little touch of almond flavoring, extra sugar for sweetness, extra sour cream to make it nice and moist. This cake flat out rocks. For as long as I can remember yellow cake with chocolate frosting has been my favorite cake, and a staple for my birthdays for 35+ years. Not anymore. From here on out it's WASC cake and if I don't get figure out how to make a good milk chocolate frosting, I'm going to have top that wonderful cake with tub frosting. Ugh! Yes, I have become a cake and frosting snob!
Stats:
- 14x10 cake.
- White Almond Sour Cream Cake /drool.
- White Chocolate IMBC.
- Frozen Buttercream toppings.
- Line Border - Devin :)
As I was trying to figure out what to do for the top, I started looking into doing some fondant again. The last couple of times I have done fondant haven't turned out well, so I was dreading that route. Chris pointed me to a technique called "Frozen Buttercream Transfer" - FBCT. Essentially, you print out your design flipped, place it under a piece of parchment paper and trace the design. After you freeze it for a couple hours, you can remove it from the freezer, place it on the cake and peel off the parchment paper. Since you are actually icing the back side of the design, you're supposed to place it over a piece of glass so that you can periodically check it out through the glass. Unfortunately I do not have a piece of glass, so I didn't have a good way to check how it was progressing. What ended up happening was I had lines in the final pieces.
The designs turned out great other than that. This was a real interesting technique, and definitely something I want to try again at some point. Devin did all the writing and the border.
He was experimenting with bleeding the colors together like I had done in class. I really like the look it gives to standard borders.
So this was in fact a contest and so the cakes were judged. Unfortunately, my cake didn't fare so well. The reason was simple. The cub scouts were the voters and somebody else brought a cake that looked like a Kitty Litter box. Just mention the word "Poo" to a pack of 8-11 year olds and my cake didn't stand a chance. However, pretty much all the adults who tried the cake had to come over and tell me that it was fabulous. One of the ladies came over to me and said "Thank Alyssa for the cake and tell her I want the recipe." After I insisted I made the cake, she just kinda smiled at me. That Sunday in Church, she told Alyssa how much she enjoyed "her" cake and Alyssa had to tell her that it was in fact all me. She was impressed. This of course brings me to my Pet Peeve! There is entirely TOO much Sexism in cake decorating! Haven't these people heard of Duff! Or the Cake Boss! Or Cake Love! Or Grandpa Fink! I mean come on, we guys can and DO decorate cakes and actually enjoy it! I laugh at all the posts on the CakeCentral forums: "Does your DH(Dear Husband) help you with your cakes?" "How many of you have DH that support your cake addiction." Hey people! Some of US have DW that do all the helping in the kitchen and NOT DH! Maybe I should make some Pins and start a campaign to "Stop Cake Decorating Sexism!" :)
About a month after I made the cake, the moms all went to Alyssa after a den meeting and asked when I was going to make a cake again. I wanted to do one for the pack meeting last month, but Alyssa didn't want me to intrude on someone else's meeting. It's our turn to do the pack meeting next month, so I forsee another cub cake in the future. :) Getting these kinds of compliments definitely keep me going. I took the rest of the cake into work the next day and got lots of compliments on the taste. I definitely have the cake baking part down, now I just need to get the decorating part down. I marvel at my Co-Worker Chris' cakes. That woman is awesome.
FTW:
- White Almond Sour Cream cake FTW! /drool
- The White Chocolate IMBC is really working for me. Still needs a touch more chocolate. This recipe had 8oz per batch of frosting. I'm going to try 12oz next time.
- IMBC works well for FBCT, but I need to figure out how to smooth out the lines.
- Devin's writing and borders are coming along quite nicely. :)
FTL:
- I lost to a freaking kitty litter cake! KITTY LITTER!
- FBCT technique needs practice.
FBCT Badge Earned!
WASC Badge Earned!
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