In The Kitchen With Kat

Birthday Cake Edition

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This morning as my eyes popped open my first thought was, "Oh look, the sky has dandruff."

Yep. It was snowing.

Not that I was going to let any extra early white stuff falling from the sky sour my mood, for today is a DAY. Not only are we celebrating the birth of one of my dearest friends ever, but it's also our library's annual steampunk party tonight. You know what that means, hello corset and crumpets! WOO! More on that subject later.

This post is about birthday cake. It's also about crafting birthday cakes that pay homage to one's friend or family member's likes and personality. My friend is a little bit on the macabre side, she enjoys skulls, especially sugar skulls, horror movies, and crocheting. She also has a heart bigger than a mastodon's blood pumping muscle. You can tell this fact is true when she gives you a hug and stuff.

Anyway, I knew that I wanted to factor her love for skulls and whatnot into her birthday cake. It's pretty convenient that her birthday falls around Halloween, because there's skulls a plenty, and I found a sugar skull that I thought would be perfect as a cake topper. For some reason I thought it would be excellent if I surrounded the skull with colorful flowers. Decorating scheme achieved.

Next, I needed a cake flavor. Nothing screams macabre more than blood red, so blood red velvet cake was the obvious choice. I concocted a cake that had no less than like 11 ingredients or so, everything from sour cream to red food coloring. I must say, the cake itself looks excellent, and I wanted to just break off a small to elephant-sized hunk for a sample.

Now, the traditional frosting choice for a red velvet cake is cream cheese frosting. The thing is, I know my friend is not super into cream cheese. So, I taxed my overwhelmed brain for a bit, pondering what a good flavor combination would be. Red velvet cake has cocoa in it, that's part of the reason for it's deep red color. Well, that and about two tablespoons of red food coloring. I am sure that cake is just excellent for our innards. Argh! It's a special occasion thing, no worries. Anyway, my brain slapped my consciousness with the phrase white chocolate butter cream, and the choice was made.

The white chocolate butter cream is probably my almost favorite part about this cake. I melted some white chocolate chips, let them cool, whipped some butter, powdered sugar, almond extract, and whipping cream together, and then beat in the melted, cooled white chocolate. Oh so YUM. The little tiny bits of white chocolate that are suspended in that buttercream are to die for. Note: NOT LITERALLY!

Last night as I was languishing in the recliner it occurred to me that I had overlooked what I was going to fill the darn cake with. Drat. How could I oversee such an important detail? Oh, I know how, in two days I had moved 6 tons of hay, by hand, and did about six thousand other almost winter chores. Exhaustion robs the memory bank, dontcha know?

My sense of self satiated and spared a philosophical beating, I was instantly inspired due to my little foray into self-care instead of self-despair; white chocolate ganache would make a fantastic filling! Ganache is such a wonderful thing, if you want to use it as filling, you just whip it up and chill if for a few hours. Then you beat the snot out of it. Well, not snot, you actually beat it for a few minutes until it turns into a fluffy, I want to lick the bowl, cloud. Then you refrain from licking said cloud and spread your ganache filling onto your cake. I know this to be true because I went through these actual steps a couple of hours ago.

Cake, frosting, and filling executed mostly correctly, I moved onto the decorations. Now, I will admit that I can concoct a tasty comestible at times, but I absolutely suck at decorative adornments. I think part of the problems stems from my mom. She is the most amazing cake artist I have ever seen, I mean, she can write in calligraphy on cakes! Calligraphy! As a youngling I believed there was no way I was ever going to attain that level awesomeness and I never even tried. Bad Kat, I know. So, here lately I have been making a decorative effort.

One of my friends gave me a whole set of frosting tips for decorating, and this morning I decided to give them a go. 400 webpages, 32 Youtube videos, and some consternation grunting later, I found myself actually pleased with what I had crafted. It was like I leveled up in the frosting mod of Minecraft or something.

That said, I am pretty pleased with the final product, and I do so hope that my friend likes her birthday cake!

And as we are on Steemit and I think all my posts should offer something of value or usefulness, here is my recipe for white chocolate ganache filling. It's okay if you just want to eat it out of the bowl.

White Chocolate Ganache Filling

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 Tablespoon butter

Put white chocolate chips in a bowl. Bring 1/2 cup of cream just to a boil and pour over the white chocolate chips. Let the cream just sit awhile on the chocolate, at least a couple of minutes and then give the mix a whisking until it is smooth. Then throw the butter into the bowl and let it sit for a couple of minutes. Whisk the life out of the ganache until it is nice and smooth.

Put the ganache into the refrigerator and chill for at least 4-5 hours. I usually make my ganache filling the night before and chill it overnight.

Using a stand or hand mixer, beat the ganache until light and fluffy. Use it to fill whatever you desire. Or eat it right out of the bowl knowing that Kat understands and isn't judging you at all.

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's somewhat sweet iPhone and always sassy iPad.

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