They make it look so easy. RIGHT? a few layers of cake, icing, smooth out the sides and pour the drip on top. That's it? Easy Peasy. Since my family knows that I am on this cake making journey, I got a recent request to do one of these cakes. Why Not? Here was the challenge, as I like to put it.
Cake: vanilla or white
Frosting: white buttercream
Filling: vanilla buttercream with fresh strawberries
Garnish: chocolate ganache drip with fresh strawberries in whip cream.
Easy Enough. I went shopping for all of the ingredients. By the way...the birthday girl has a favorite boxed cake mix, as she is not a fan of cake from scratch. REALLY? I believe people don't know what they like sometimes. So cake flour, baking powder, and all the other good stuff, not needed. I figured that there had to be a way that I could make this cake to taste like homemade, maybe a little denser.
Over 14 million results on the internet. Not so unheard of Huh? How do I choose? I went to my trusty online pals on some of my cake making sites and asked? How do you make boxed cake taste like homemade? After explaining a few dozen times to some box cake mix naysayers, that it is the person's request for this cake, someone finally gave me a recipe that I found appealing.
Add a few ingredients. Doctor it up a bit. And you are good to go. More eggs, butter, milk, and a few more ingredients. I checked on Pinterest and that was pretty much the standard recipe for a more homemade taste from the box. So I was good to go.
I prepared the strawberries first. I washed them and dipped them in a little sugar and let them rest because they were awfully bitter. Sometimes, these supermarkets need to test their fruit. Talk about skimping on the quality control. These strawberries were not sweet, some of them were mushy in between. I just did what I thought was necessary. It probably was wrong but what the hell.
After baking my 4, count 'em 4, cake layers. I decided to make my icing. Butter, sugar, shortening, and vanilla. When people say once you make homemade icing you never go back to the can stuff, they weren't kidding. Holy Moly! Buttercream is God! I mean Good. Once my cake cooled, I did what they call the crumb coat. A light layer of frosting that will go underneath a bigger layer of frosting to minimize cake crumbs. I chilled the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes and proceeded to my second coat. When I tell you I ate a can's worth of frosting this day. I iced the final layer and attempted to do the whole scraping the cake till smooth thing, but every time I made a smoothing pass on the cake, the frosting would come off in one spot. It took me forever to get that frosting smooth and even on all sides, and it still wasn't as smooth as I wanted it to be. But I did the best that I could with a cake smoothing skill level of 1. I then put the cake back in the fridge for another 30 minutes.
I prepared my whip cream with heavy cream, confectioner's sugar, and vanilla. I put that in a piping bag and put it in the fridge until I was ready to add my strawberries and chocolate. I melted some Wilton candy melts in the microwave with a little heavy cream, and guess what? it worked. Melty chocolate galore!
I made GANACHE!
I poured the ganache in a drip bottle, trying to be fancy. Made a doggone mess while doing it. But I forgot a step. It needed to cool a bit. Why did I think if it cooled it would harden? Why would I believe all the other bakers who said cool it down a few minutes before pouring?
Because I'm Stephanie!
And Stephanie has to learn the hard way. So here I go pouring that hot stuff all over the top of that cake, mind you, I began pouring from the middle...thinking the drip would travel. Nope. It poured out slowly so I had to help it get down the sides with a spatula. However, it poured down more like lava, and less like a drip. It still looked okay, but it lacked that execution of a perfect drip that I admire.
Anyway, I dropped a few whip cream dollops on the top and sides of the cake and placed the strawberries in them. The strawberries tasted much better after dipping them in sugar. I was finally done.
THE RESULT:
FINAL OUTCOME!
THE BIRTHDAY GIRL WAS VERRRY HAPPY :)
GO ME!
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