The Cake

So this 40th birthday cake... lots of firsts for me. Working with ganache and modelling fondant people notably! Also new recipes for Baileys flavored buttercream and Baileys flavored ganache.

Baileys Flavored Buttercream
250gm unsalted butter, cooled, in small pieces.
250gm icing sugar, sifted
pinch of salt
4-5 tbsp Baileys
Place all ingredients in mixing bowl of a stand mixer. Start mixer on low, then bring it to medium high and mix till the buttercream is light and fluffy. I'm horrible with quantities! - according to the book I got the base recipe from, this is supposed to make just enough to layer an 8" cake. I've also used this amount for covering an 8" cake thinly (very thinly!), in preparation for a fondant cover. To layer and cover a 2 layer 8" cake, you might need to double. Or maybe do 400 to 400 of butter and sugar. I don't like thick layers of icing.... : P

Baileys Flavored Ganache
500g dark couverture chocolate, finely chopped. 45-55% cocoa content
200g heavy cream, 35-45% fat content
50g baileys cream
Heat heavy cream in a pan. Remove from heat when it boils. Pour it over chocolate and leave it to sit for one or two minutes. Stir slowly to incorporate. Possible to use a whisk or an immersion blender to finish off, but beware over whipping can lead to grainy texture. This gave me enough to fill one layer of a 9", 6" and a 4" cake, so I think this would be sufficient to layer and cover a 2 layer 8" cake.

On ganache, I found the Ganacherator so helpful in estimating quantities... many many thanks to the very generous lady who made and posted it. By playing around with it and subtracting amounts, I was able to figure how much I needed just to fill 1 layer without covering the cake. The amounts I got using the Ganacherator were accurate and sufficient for my needs : )

Modeling with Fondant
I had super fun modeling people for the very first time! I found these videos by delicouscakedesign on youtube extremely helpful. As a starter, I watched this video, and later this video. Fantastic stuff!

A happy family!

The videos were an amazing help, and I used spaghetti for supports, as advised. The very first little girl I made (the one with braids and 2 ribbons on the front of her dress) was the most problematic - she kept falling over.. should have given her bigger feet, for support. : )

There's a styrofoam box under the gift box which the baby is coming out from. Next time I'll leave mummy's long dress for when she is seated on the cake itself... by the time I placed her on my cake, her dress had dried and of course it didn't sit flat against the cake's surface. That would mean leaving her arms for last too.

Ganache Experiments

I'm layering this 40th birthday cake with Baileys flavored chocolate ganache, and covering cakes with white chocolate ganache. First time!!! So had to do lots of research into ganache, especially related to Singapore's hot, humid weather.

First off, just making the stuff. I tried it before based off a recipe from a book, which i won't cite, as it turned out badly anyway... just not enough detail or information about the process of doing it. 

GANACHE - THE UN-RECIPE. IE, HOW TO FAIL

1. Get equal parts single cream and chocolate. 

2. Heat cream to boil. Pour cream over chocolate and whisk to mix. 

Ta-duh. 

Unfortunately, you have to spell things out for me. To me, whisking is vigorous. To me, "Pour and whisk" means, exactly that, pour and whisk, right away. So I got a horrible, separated, sad-looking mess. 

So after much trawling, here's what I've found, in a rather disorganized fashion:

Dark chocolate

• Generally, websites seem to recommend 45-55% cocoa, unless you like it bitter. I'm using 55% cocoa content Valhrona feves, and I'm finding it just right bitterness wise. 
• Good quality chocolate is a must - ok. They tell you in major capitals DO NOT USE CADBURYS .. Its an important cake, for a friend, so I was going to use the good stuff anyway... but some time, when I'm making a cake for one of my kids and I haven't time or inclination to get the good stuff, I just might experiment with Old Gold and see how it works... I've used Old Gold with good results for Chocolate butter icing (chocolate, butter, and corn syrup), so it might work here. Dunno.  
• Chop your feves up fine.... I tried it unchopped and it was a pain to melt, so worth the little extra time to chop up I think. 

White chocolate

• Because of the higher fat content, this stuff is more unstable. So I went with white chocolate feves with the lowest fat/highest cocoa content I could find. I'm confused. My white choc valhrona label says 55% .. but its white. Unless its talking about fat? oops. Anyway.
• Chop up feves! I chopped up 50g each time, taking 100g out of the fridge at a time. Took me 13 iterations to chop all the white and dark chocolate I needed!

A-chopping we will go, a-chopping we will go.... 

Cream

• There's a whole variety of opinions here.. I've seen recommendations for single cream, whipping cream, pouring cream, thickened cream; no thickened cream... one site said fat content must be 35-45%, so I went with that. I bought Bulla's thickened cream (35% fat content). 
• Some sites give measurements by volume (in mls, or cups), others by weight (g). My thickened cream is denser than water, so 100ml of it weighs something like 115-120g. I went with measuring by weight, i.e. using less cream, as I read that in hot humid weather, its better to go with less cream, more chocolate. 

Recipe

• For dark chocolate - websites gave  1 portion of cream, by weight or volume, to 1 or 2 portions of chocolate, by weight. I did a test portion of 1 part cream (by weight) to 2 parts chocolate, and it set up really firm. I think I could have used it for covering a cake, but not for layering. 
• for covering a cake - I would go with 1 part cream by weight to 2 parts chocolate, possibly with a bit more cream on the side to standby, if it sets too stiff. 
• for layering a cake - 1 part cream, 1 part chocolate. However I flavored with Baileys, which is much runnier than regular cream. So I ended up using 400g chocolate to 300g heavy cream +  50g Baileys. - extra 50g chocolate to counter the runny 50g Baileys : ) . That set up pretty well. 

This is ganache unset... it firmed up nicely in the fridge.

• For white chocolate 
• Covering a cake - 1 part to 3 worked well. I think. Everything went to pot making the white, so I threw in additional cream, additional chocolate... but I think I stuck to the 1part to 3 ratio more or less... : P 

Method

• Boiling the cream - apparently its important to take it off the minute it starts to boil.
• Watching the temperature. Overall, your chocolate-cream mix mustn't exceed 32 degrees C (90F), or splitsville and grainy ganache.
• Pour cream over chocolate and let it rest for a minute or two. So you don't cool the cream down too quickly. 
• Stir first, then end with an immersion blender

Rescuing grainy ganache

      

      There were several methods I saw:

• Heating the ganache very gently over a saucepan of very gently simmering water, if it has set hard, then stirring in some warm cream or milk, from the center out, til the right texture is achieved. Then adding more chocolate if the additional cream has made your ganache runnier than you would like. 
• Another method called for splitting the ganache in 2, heating half to 54 C (130F) whilst cooling the other half to 15C (60F), then putting the 2 back together again. The heated half is supposed to  split, but when recombining, the cooler half keeps the overall temp below 32C, and allows the 2 to come together nicely. In practice though, unless you have 2 insta read thermometers and 4, preferably 6 arms (or a very willing helper in the kitchen!), its going to be hard going managing this by yourself I think! I tried this and it went disastrously wrong, and I got a WORSE result than what I had to begin with. 
• Using an immersion blender. Here I had a terribly split ganache - not just a grainy one! A whole layer of oozy oil floating on the top kind of terrible. 900g of valhrona in it, so there was no way I would give up on it without a fight. I remembered reading that ganache is an emulsion - chocolate suspended in water, just that the bits were so finely distributed that it looked smooth. So I took out my immersion blender and applied it to the mess. Guess what, it actually worked! Better yet, it still tasted good. So this will be my go to for rescuing ganache in future. 

Storing ganache

• Most sites say leave it at room temp overnight, never put it in the fridge or it will be too hard, and that it should be ok at room temp for 2-3 days, as the cream has been boiled. However, I had to make my stuff 4 days in advance of the delivery date, and would be leaving the cake out in an air-conditioned room for 2 days as I decorated it. Plus, I'm in hot, humid Singapore. So I refrigerated my ganache after letting it come down to room temp. It did come out hard, but it was easy enough to bring back to a workable temperature, by heating it over a very gently simmering saucepan of water. Again, I made sure the water didn't touch the base of my ganache bowl, and never left the ganache over the saucepan for long. Exposed it quickly, 30 seconds maybe, took it off, stirred, back on for 30 sec, off again.. so on until I got the texture I needed. 

Layering the cake... that's Baileys Buttercream, not white chocolate ganache though! The dark chocolate ganache is the middle layer.

All in all, a very eventful experience! The ganache was tasty, and I had no issues with melting under the fondant as I'd read could happen elsewhere. Keeping everything at air-conditioned temp of 22-24C helped. Don't know that I would replace ganache with buttercream for covering cakes though. Supposedly I would get a lovely straight edged result, but it didn't look much tidier than my buttercream covered cakes... possibly I'm just BAD at covering cakes : ) .


Most helpful websites

Bigbaketheory

Portion Sizes

And after two years... : ) 

Have a cake due on Thursday, for a 40th birthday. Approximately 50 guests, so I'm doing  9", 6" and a 4" round tiers. According to these graphics I googled, I should be safe for 50 dessert sized portions:

From www.bloomcakeco.com

I found these graphics at Letthemeatcakesuk especially useful! Exactly what does a dessert portion look like? Previously I had been referring to the Wilton website and to the back sections of my Peggy Porschen books, which have been very helpful but also confusing, as the portion sizes seemed to differ so much when compared side to side. So this helped clarify matters: 

From www.letthemeatcakesuk.com

From www.letthemeatcakesuk.com

Anyway, I'm nervous, as apparently the cake will be the only dessert ... I've been stacking up my tins at home to give me an idea of what the cake will look like, and it looks pretty small! Crossing fingers. 

We Asians don't like cake. I keep telling myself that : ). Pretty much every party I've been to, there's always excess cake. Kids don't particularly like cake either. They like to look at them. And cut them up. And they'll make all sorts of requests - "I want a flower!" "No flowers!" "Green stuff!" "No green stuff!" "The head!" "Eyeballs please!" - and then they'll poke at it politely before getting distracted by the next party game. So. I hope it'll be ok.  

I could have tried a 10-8-6, but I'm a little scared of 10' cakes. My oven doesn't like them. I've had such awfulness coming out when I've done 10" (admittedly, they were squares...) - cracks, domes, soggy middles. 

Each tier will be 4 layers, alternating victoria sponge cake (recipe from Peggy Porschen books - work great for me, highest cakes ever!) and chocolate cake (also using Peggy's recipe, which I don't use that often... but I wanted something a little sturdier than my usual sour cream chocolate cake). Soaking the sponge in a coffee flavoured simple syrup, and layering with baileys buttercream and baileys flavored dark chocolate ganache.. covering cakes with white chocolate ganache and fondant. 

Chocolate 9" cake sank in the middle on me.... it was actually raising up beautifully but burning a little on the top... so I lightly covered the top with aluminum foil, and when I took off the foil to test the cake, I had a sunken hole. : ( Wonder if it was the aluminum foil that did it.