Cake

I received some wonderful things for Christmas that had to do with baking cakes.  I was given nice spring form pans and some great cake decorating books along with some cake decorating classes, which I haven't taken yet.  I've been reading through my books, watching Ace of Cakes on the Food Network and Cake Boss on TLC and just had the itch to make a cake.  My problem, aside from being tired all of the time, is that once I made the cake we would have to eat it.  I'm not much of a sweets person, so having cake in the house just goes to waste.  I was excited when I realized that I would be meeting with a group of about 20 people this past week and thought it would be a perfect time to try out a new cake and some new decorating styles.

These are some of the books I got for Christmas.  I highly recommend "Cakes to Dream on",  it is a great book with wonderful instructions on how to make some pretty awesome cakes.

I didn't follow any kind of pattern when doing this cake.  I just took bits and pieces from things that I read about or saw on TV.  I knew I wanted to try to make a 2-tiered cake and fill it with something good.

Here is one of the layers of cake, just out of the oven.  I was letting it cool on the table when John came into the dining room and said, "Mom, I'm so sorry I ate some of your cake."  If you look on the left side of the cake near the bottom you will see a little discoloration.  This was John's work, as he took his little fingers and helped himself.  It could have been much worse.

This is the good stuff here.  This is some premium dark chocolate.  I used this chocolate to make some wonderful ganache.

Filling the cake with ganache just wasn't enough, so I decided to add some strawberries.

Doesn't that look good?  Each cake tier had three layers of cake and two layers of ganache with strawberries.

I also decided that I would try my hand at fondant.  I've always wanted to try using fondant, but it can be pretty expensive in the store.  When I saw my friend Jan's blog with a post about marshmallow fondant I just had to try it out.

So, here it is.  A two-tiered white cake with chocolate ganache and strawberry filling, iced with homemade buttercream icing and wrapped in marshmallow fondant.  It was fun to make and I learned a lot about what to do in the future to make it look better.  I didn't actually try any of the cake myself, but there were only a few slices left after people got their hands on it.  I'd say it was a success.