A Cake Fit for the King, thankyouverrrymush

After a long absence, I'm back in the baking zone. I've been to Philadelphia, DC, Cleveland, and North Dakota all within 1 month. I drove to all locations except Philly, so it's been exhausting. Last night was the first time I felt like baking at all.

Our neighbors invited us over for dinner. I had already planned to make a banana cake to use up some overripe bananas (actually, banana cake is about the only reason I buy bananas anymore). Since our neighbor loves peanut butter, I decided to make an "Elvis" cake - peanut butter/cream cheese frosting and a chocolate drizzle for decoration. The cake is from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum, and it is my favorite cake from that book. I have made a modification, though. She calls for lemon zest to complement the banana flavor, but I have found that it adds an odd note to the cake, so I omit it and add a little more vanilla. I also do my "famous" substitution of a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil for a couple tablespoons of the butter. I really like the softness it adds to the texture.

I could tell it had been a while since the last cake - I couldn't get into a rhythm, and putting it together took longer than usual. I decided to try out one of the square cake pans I bought last month at Macy's, but I completely forgot to use the Magi-Cake strips to keep the edges from baking faster, rising higher than the center, and drying out. Professional bakers probably don't use Magi-Cake strips since their pans are heavier, but especially for lightweight aluminum cake pans they work wonders. The square pans I bought are very light, so next time I'll use the strips. You can see from my photo that I also need to get my wall ovens re-leveled. Apparently our floor settled a bit after our kitchen redo. Good thing I didn't get heavy stone countertops!

Once it came time to make the icing, I was starting to get in the groove - so much so that I didn't even measure ingredients. I put a couple of packages of cream cheese, a few dollops of peanut butter, a few shakes from the powdered sugar bag, and a dash of vanilla in the mixer and let 'er rip. It wasn't half bad, but needed a tad more sugar. Of course, now it will be difficult to recreate this recipe next time! The chocolate glaze worked the same way - I dumped some Ghiradelli chips into a bowl, microwaved a slightly larger amount of cream until it boiled, and stirred it up with a glug of corn syrup to keep it shiny. It turned out great - the perfect consistency for what I wanted to do.

Since time was of the essence (I started the cake at 4:00 and we were eating at 7:00), I couldn't fuss over the icing quality. I know there are cake decorators out there who get nice sharp edges on their square cakes. I have read the eGullet demo on how to do it, but haven't quite got the hang of it. Okay -  I'm not even close. My coworkers will be terribly put out when they have to eat my practice cakes, I'm sure.

Anyhoo, I slapped some icing (which was very soft due to the high temps here) on the cake and came up with what you see on the left. Like me, the cake isn't very photogenic - it looked a little better in person than on the photo, which makes it look terribly uneven due to shadow placement. Really it was pretty flat after I cut about 1/3 of a inch off the top. The scraps along with leftover icing and glaze went into the fridge for us to eat later since we left the cake with the neighbors.

Now I had to decide on decoration. I thought about random squiggles on the top but inspiration struck. I needed to practice my "spiderweb" technique anyway, but instead of trying to make a circle on the cake, decided it would be much easier to do parallel lines. (I really need a cake turntable - maybe I can buy someone's old record player at a yard sale and rig up a foot pedal to it - what do you think? I know, just spend the $75 and get a real one...but I'm cheap!)

As it turns out, I'm not so good at parallel lines, either. Maybe my blood sugar was messed up - I was pretty shaky. The two lines at the top aren't quite as close together as the photo suggests (stupid parallax). However, they could have been better. If I'd been smart I would have used a ruler and made little notches where the lines should go. I used a condiment bottle to apply the glaze since it was a bit runny for a piping bag. That part worked okay, but I do need to practice my starts - there was a little blob at the beginning of each line. It would be cool to rig up a bar that had several tips on it, so I could do multiple lines at once. Perhaps that's a project for my dear husband. 

Now all that was left to do was drag a skewer perpendicular to the lines, but not too deep (you don't want to gouge the frosting) to make the pattern you see at the top. It's simplicity itself but really looks flashy. I found that my left to right lines were a lot straighter than the right to left lines (WHY?!), so I got smart. I did the remainder of the left to right lines then turned the cake 180 degrees and did it again. I felt like Wile E. Coyote, sooper-genius (it should have been obvious from the beginning!). Again, a tool with multiple bars would have been slick. I need to buy a large tooth comb and remove some of the teeth - that should do the trick!

The cake was very well received and I think it is going into the "keeper" file.

Comments

[OCD in the Kitchen]

Ooh! I love the decoration. I like how simple it is, yet so lovely. Good tip on the wall-ovens being re-leveled. That is something I desperately need to do…yet it manages to keep falling lower and lower on the to-do list.

[todd Hart]

Darcie,
Good job on the cake. I baked two carrot cakes in the last week. One for my Mom's birthday and one for a friend's 50th birthday. I might have to try the Cake Strips. I have a couple of 6" Wilton cake pans and the cakes really dome in these pans.

[TheFuzzyChef]

Darcie,

All right! Elvis cake.

Amusingly, I just had a dessert called "Elvis has left the building" at a restaurant on Saturday: http://www.fuzzychef.org/archives/Spork!-08-2008.html