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Saturday, April 10, 2010

Happy Birthday, Hang!

Happy Birthday, Hang!
Dark Chocolate Oreo Cake
(+5 skill points => 310 / 400)


Earlier this evening, my husband, baby, and I went to a BBQ dinner at the Salt Lick in Driftwood, TX to celebrate our friend/co-worker's birthday.  His wife was planning this to be a surprise birthday, then we'd all go out for dinner.  Last Wednesday I asked Sandi if she'd like me to whip up a cake or cuppies to bring ... since her baking something might raise suspicion.  She said yes, but something small since everyone would be full from the all-you-can-eat BBQ.  Here is my version of a small Oreo cake.

Stats:
  • Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix
  • dark and white chocolate IMBC
  • Oreo mousse filling
  • two-tone icing on side
  • bead border on bottom
  • stenciled icing on top
  • piped lines over edge
This is the first cake I've decorated with the help of my new Cricut Expression!  There are many fabulous Oreo cakes out there.  After some research, I found that some lovely soul posted an SVG of the Oreo cookie face:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oreo_Face.svg

I modified it by removing the outer ring of lines and the "OREO" middle.


In my "craft closet" are a couple rolls of 20 gauge clear vinyl.  I cut out a 12" square and fed that to my Cricut.  It cut beautifully!  I *think* it was set to medium pressure with blade depth 6.  Afterward several of those little pieces that were still barely attached had to be popped out.  Here it is after being washed (hopefully the water beads help it show on camera).


SCAL and the font "Action Man" helped make the middle to be the birthday boy's name instead of "OREO".


Now let's talk about icing.  The Cake Love recipe has really been working for me.  This is where I've whipped up Wilton's Meringue Powder and added the sugar syrup.


Adding 4 sticks of butter deflates it somewhat.  I use Walmart's Great Value unsalted butter.


This is ganache made with 4 oz. of Hershey's "Special Dark" morsels melted with 2 oz. of heavy whipping cream.


The ganache didn't quite make the icing batch very "dark", color and taste-wise.  After ~3 Tb. of Hershey's Dark Cocoa powder and a bunch of Americolor Super Black coloring gel ... I achieved gray.


It's frustrating to not get a deep, rich color, but I had no time to spare.  This cake was made from start to finish (minus the Cricut part) in the ~5 hours before we had to leave for the dinner.  After torting and filling, the cake got a nice spackle layer.


What seems like ages ago, I did a gift box cake for my parents' birthdays using a technique from http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/gift-box-cake-tutorial.html.  The side of the cake was iced with a thin layer of white chocolate IMBC.  


My cake was 6 cm high, so the design was to have two 2 cm "cookie" layers with a 2 cm "filling" layer in between.  My paper trimmer helped me cut several 2 cm strips of parchment paper.  After the cake firmed up in the freeze for a few minutes, the strips were pressed/stuck to the side of the cake.  FYI, scotch tape does NOT stick to parchment paper!

Once the strips covered the center, I iced the rest of the cake in the dark chocolate IMBC.  After another pass of firming up in the freezer, the center strips were carefully removed ... peeling away and leaving nice, straight edges.  Thankfully I achieved the look I wanted without having to make different sized cakes!


This time around, the cake stayed in the freezer a bit longer.  I wanted the top nice and firm before I started messing with the stencil on top of it.  The cut vinyl was centered on the top and a thin layer of icing was smoothed over it.  Carefully, I peeled the stencil away, leaving the "raised" shapes that you see on an Oreo cookie.  What I SHOULD have done was put it in the freezer again before removing the vinyl (like I did with the side parchment strips).  Many shapes were too soft and were nudged while the vinyl was removed, so it didn't yield clean edges.  The "G" got a little messed up :(  Oh well, next time.

Remember the edge lines that I removed from the original SVG?  Instead I piped those lines in with Wilton round tip #4.  It was hard to pipe all the way to the middle "filling" without getting some gray on the white.  In the end I tried to lift the tip upward at the end of my line.


I'm pretty pleased with how the cake turned out.  It looked and tasted fine.  Hang and Sandi were very pleased. 



I was concerned about getting the cake to the dinner safely.  It got to mid-80s today and the waiting area for dinner seating at the Salt Lick is outside.  Playing it safe, I aimed to keep my Oreo as cool as it could be.  At Walmart I picked up a large styrofoam cooler (~$7) that my 12" cake drum fit securely in.  My cake got packed up inside along with candles, a lighter, a knife, and 2 mini ice-packs.  It traveled well and was still cool as we dug in.  I'm going to label this my "Dessert Bin" ... with Cricut cut-out cardstock!!!

FAILs:
  • couldn't get a dark color in my IMBC to match an Oreo cookie
  • should have waited before removing stencil
  • everyone's mouths were temporarily stained dark blue :(
FTWs:
  • stenciling badge earned
  • Cricut + cake badge earned
  • I think it really did look like an Oreo!

4 comments:

  1. WOW! It turned out GREAT!! And you got it done super fast! Nicely done!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice stencil, and it's good to see a cricut used for stencilling on cakes. I think that makes more sense than cutting out the tiny pieces one by one!

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is fabulous!!!! Thank you for sharing on your blog. I look forward to getting more great ideas from your work.

    ReplyDelete

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