MY FIRST ZEBRA STRIPED CAKE!!!! WOO HOO!!!! My Sister-in-law Jenai graduated HS and for her party, she wanted a pink Zebra cake. One tiiiny little thing...I'd NEVER done Zebra stripes, sooo there was just the tinsiest bit of learning to do - LOL. Soooo a few days before I started the cake - I YouTubed Zebra Striped Cake and up popped a WONDERFUL and short video tutorial! EXTREMELY helpful!!! THANK GOD for the Internet.
The two tiers are different flavors - bottom - Red Velvet..top - Black Forest (Chocolate with a cherry ceneter) The icing for the Black Forest was among THE best I've EVER done!!!! It was an Italian Buttercream made with Chocolate Curacao liquer, milk chocolate and a bit of espresso - DEE-FRIGGIN-LI-CIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG - I don't usually get geeked over my desserts because I am admitted perfectionist, but DAAAYUM!!! The combination was just incredible!!!!
Of course, no new venture is free of problems - LOL. The ones I experienced with this cake were ensuring the bottom of the tiers were done right, avoiding collapse and a stubborn cake that wouldn't come out of the pan!!!!
Challenge No. 1 - The Red Velvet cake said 'NO - I'm NOT coming out of this pan! I DON'T WANNA get ate up'? Sooooo after careful use of a rubber spatula - out it came.....in TWO pieces....EACH PAN!!! I'm noooooot quite sure what happened! Maybe I didn't spray the pan enough - not quite done...blah blah blah. The BEAUTY however is that, I don bin down this road before, so my panic was averted :-). As an aside - you NEVER know what goes on behind the bakery curtain. There are 10 million calamities - ALWAYS. But Bakers are Doctors essentially and by the time we're done fixin stuff - ya'd never know there was ever a problem :-). Thank God for the lessons, So...I fixed it and NO one is the wiser - well - till NOW of course - LOL.
Challenge No. 2 - I had TWO shades of pink fondant and NOT one. Crisis averted how? Thanks to God I have a crayola palette of food coloring :-). I simply put the two shades together...added some fuchsia and VOILA....HOT PINK!
Challenge 3 - Making stripes! I think they turned out o....kaaaay. but I should've cut them thinner. The process for adding the stripes on the cake is quite simple actually....you roll out the base color, place the stripes on top and roll once again to make the stripes look like it's one piece. Rolling them thinner would've allowed the stripes to be a bit more distinctive. I'm still proud of it as a first time run, but now I know what to do next time.
Challenge No. 4 - My Arch Nemesis to this point!: Fondant!!!! Fondant is NOT the easiest of mediums and can be downright disastrous. I again, didn't measure correctly and there were some areas of concern on the bottom of the cakes. They weren't able to be fixed by stretching the fondant because it was already pretty thin. So - Thank God for decorative trim :-)
Challenge No. 5 - Weight, Construction and Delivery Time - OY! The bottom was Red Velvet and top Black Forest; Different weights. The filling for Red Velvet is just cream cheese icing and Black Forest has Cherries and Icing. Stacking them isn't the issue per se, but weight CAN be if the bottom tier is not properly doweled. Doweling a cake means that you insert wooden sticks (called dowels) in the cake, usually clock wise at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 positions. Depending on what's going on top, will determine: how many you actually need, how far apart they should be placed and the thickness of the dowels. The last step in doweling a cake is that once you've got all the tiers stacked, you take one long dowel (the exact length of the cake), sharpen the end and stake the sucker straight down the center like you're staking Dracula...hard and fast - LOL! This helps ensure the tiers don't fall off :-)
Here's where I could've made a better choice. I should've cut the dowels about 1/8 in. taller and maybe a bit thicker dowel would've helped. The OTHER thing I could've done, using the same dowels, is wait till the next day to stack them, after they'd been refrigerated overnight. What happened was that even though we drove with the AC on pretty high and immediately put it in the fridge when we arrived at our destination (an 1 1/2 hour drive....with the sun beaming on the car), it still sank just a bit. Nobody but me really noticed, but I noticed and that means...it's a problem.
So what went REALLY well were the flavors!!!! I have a new secret weapon for my cakes to make them even richer than before :-). The Red Velvet was probably the best I've made and the Black Forest - WOOOOOWSERS is all I can say!!!!!! Deep....Rich...Chocolate with a hint of cinnamon. Maraschino Cherries cooked down with Barados Sugar in the Raw and Kirsch Liqueur, and the icing.....hold on to your hat! Milk Chocolate Italian Butter Cream made with Chocolate Curasao Liqueur and Espresso! I could've slapped my OWN Mamma!!!!
I think I learn something new everytime I do a cake and I LOVE it!! Each time (prayerfully), there's something better and that's always a great thing!
I wish my chocolates were better, but alas, it's a learning process as well. :-)
What's MOST important is that the graduate, Miss Jenai loved it!! In the end, that's alll that matters to me :-)
