Sunday, September 5, 2010

Penguin Engagement Cake

Yesterday Cindy and I teamed up to make a cake for an engagement party for friends Craig and Bec. Craig loves penguins and they both have fake penguin themed names on facebook and so I though it was fitting to put something penguin related on top.

It was a much more pleasant experience decorating a cake with someone else, there was none of the usual swearing, frustration, tears and stress. It also helps that Cindy has a very steady hand and was quite brave and quick in her icing abilities. It did however take about 4 trips to the supermarket because we were not particularly organised but I was really pleased with the finished picture:



Taste wise, it was a slight let down. I chose a vegan mud cake recipe that looked and smelt quite rich but was not very sweet and kind of bland. We used the same technique that I used to make the stumpy dog cake to decorate the cake. So basically using toothpicks/skewer to make dots around the outline. Although, in this case instead of tracing the picture, Cindy drew it onto baking paper free hand because she is super awesome. For the icing we used a black icing pen to do the outline first and then coloured in the white bits with a basic 'butter' cream and then added pomegranate molasses and vegan food colouring to make the other parts pink. The darker parts that look black in this photo were actually brown and made from melted chocolate. Cindy and I have gone halves in a 2.5kg bag of dark chocolate from here so we had plenty to use. We then used the icing pen to do the eyes and to go over the outline again. Unlike the stumpy cake we didn't pipe the icing just used teaspoons to smooth the icing into place after roughly piping it in some places. It resulted in a much finer texture and look which I preferred but would have been quite timing consuming if I was doing it myself.

Here is Bec with a piece:

9 comments:

  1. That looks amazing!!! They must have been super happy with it.

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  2. Wowzer! The icing on that cake is amazing, you should be proud :D

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  3. It was a great cake! So nice of you guys to make it, and I agree that if the icing was meant to be ganache then the cake was prolly designed to be less sweet to compensate. I liked it though!

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  4. Ahaha gorgeous cake, and I realised even before I saw the photo that I know the Rebecca you are talking about XD (I'm friends with her sister Chantelle)

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  5. Awww, that is such an awesome cake!

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  6. I would NEVER have tried something like this on my own. (I am inclined towards baking stress and swearing too... I am pretty sure there are several posts on our blog where I yell that I HATE PIPING.) But it was fun to do together - thanks for taking me on as a baking buddy!

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  7. Adorable cake - I am sure craig and bec loved it!

    I love baking with company - which in my case is more often with my nieces who love helping out - cake decorating is much nicer when a social event!

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  8. Thanks everyone!

    Miss T, I think your right about the ganache.

    Kate, such a small world.

    Cindy, anytime, I still can't believe the difference in stress levels!

    Johanna, it really is, although I imagine with kids it might add to the stress level :-)

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