Saturday, February 20, 2010

Extreme Sports

After drooling all over Bakerella’s website for days I decided on a variation of this  because I like a challenge and coincidentally am half insane. And that was before attempting this cake.

I had a chat to my bank manager about a second mortgage on our house (those alfoil pans are $4.00 bucks for three!) but he would only loan me enough to make a 9 layer cake, which in the end was just as well.

These are Willow Bake and Take containers. At that price they should  be called" Bake and Hand Down To Your Children as family heirlooms containers".  O.K I’ll stop whining now and move on.

I made a basic triple batch vanilla cake mix.  It took about 30 minutes to get all 9 cooked. So far so good. Nothing curdled, burned or fell on the floor in dog hair. I was contemplating stopping at this point because as far as I'm concerned that's success.

Yay ! First hurdle conquered. 9 perfect cakes.

Here is my assistant baker. Big on babbling advice in baby speak. Short on hands on work. He had to keep taking important calls on his pop up pets.

When I stacked 9 cakes one on top of the other I realised this was one BIG cake. My cakes were bigger than Bakerella’s.  I decided not to push my luck. 9 cakes this big in a stack is asking for trouble. Maybe my cakes rose a lot because we live above sea level Or I overfilled the pans. Whatever.



I went with 5 cakes with ganache between the layers and over the top. Yum!



And then I put chocolate cream cheese buttercream icing all over the outside.


This is what cake guts looks like


The verdict: We had cake for breakfast. Everyone made "mmmm" noises while eating.  It's lunchtime and nobody is dead yet. I'd say that's success.





P.S Baking is clearly an extreme sport- I broke a finger nail in the creation of this cake. Left index finger in case you're interested. Yeah I’m a whiny princess –deal with it.

8 comments:

Sarcastic Quilter said...

I couldn't help laughing at your tall stack. That's precisely the reason I've been too chicken to try this one!

It looks super yummy, though... chocolate ganache is a thing of the devil, I'm certain. -sigh- now I have to go eat a piece of my own double chocolate layer cake (cleverly bought from the Schwan's delivery truck!)

Hooray for you!

Flamingo said...

wow! those cakes look awesome. sadly i'm in now way talented with the cakes. i have a few posts about that:)

Shay said...

Thanks ladies,

Beck, if we had home delivery of cakes here I would avail myself of the opportunity in a heart beat.

Mama, this was a one off I assure you. I couldnt possibly pull off two baking successes in one year.

Brenda said...

Wow, I would love to have that for breakfast! I don't think I would ever attempt it though, as my son says, "Mom, you're more of a '9 x 13' kind of gal". It's true, I just bake the cake in a single layer and spread (store bought) frosting over it.

Shay said...

Brenda,
I simply refuse to buy store bought frosting most of the time. It's too darn expensive here. A 16 oz tub of pre-made Betty CrocKer icing is almost 6 bucks.

And I'm sure your home made 9 x 13 cakes taste lovely no matter what kind of icing you put on them!

And the cake was nice ...so maybe I'll have another crack at cake in 2010!

Emily {Frilly Details} said...

What do you mean you don't bake!!!! This cake looks fantastic :)

Thanks for stopping by my blog :)

TheLab said...

"Maybe my cakes rose a lot because we live above sea level Or I overfilled the pans. Whatever." HA HA HA HA!

Oh my gosh, I'm in AWE. If you say you can't bake one more time, your a downright liar! You're AMAZING! I want to eat the 9 plain vanilla cakes all by themselves, even THEY look awesome!

You made the vanilla cake from scratch? OK, I can make a lot from scratch, but I CANNOT make cake from scratch. I tried chocolate one time and it tasted like burning rubber. I tried to give it to my brother-in-law who was visiting, and even HE wouldn't take it.

WOW, you are AWESOMENESSSSS! And so is your little grandson, I just want to squeeze him!

Shay said...

Great now I'm being called a liar internationally. Liar is pretty much the worst thing you can call someone in Australia , aside from "skank" maybe. I'm just kidding about the liar thing.

"and it tasted like burning rubber"....Pretty sure I wet myself from laughing here.

Don't you like your brother in law?