American Baker in Germany

This was a commission from a friend of mine whose eight-year-old son was getting baptized. When she first approached me about making a baptism cake, I asked what sort of things her son likes. When she told me, my mind was expecting, "He really loves legos." But that's not what she said. She said, "He really loves leprechans." Wow. Leprechans. I didn't see that coming. Despite the surprise, we quickly came up with a few ideas. My friend had seen the Armor of God Baptism Cake I made last October (see previous blog post) and wanted a Book of Mormon on the top of the cake, so I had another chance to improve my cake book techniques. She loves the symbolism of being clean after baptism, so she wanted white cake with vanilla frosting. Covered in white fondant with white decorations on the outside. Then a dark green Book of Mormon on the top. I suggested putting her son's name on the spine. Where are the leprechans? Two things refer back to his love of lepre...

While planning for my next commission, the possibility of making the cake be a surprise inside came up. My friend I'm making the cake for was excited about the possibility. So, I thought I'd go over the surprise inside process. It's kind of fun, I think, especially since it's a change to the standards. And it can have a very dramatic effect. So just in case you didn't know what a surprise inside is, it's a shape that is a contrasting color to most of the cake that you can't see from the outside that surprises you when you cut into the cake. This is what we were going for.  I started off with two recipes of my vanilla cake.  I wanted both cakes to be the same bright, stunning green, so I dyed both recipes together with lots of green food coloring.  I baked both recipes in a ten inch round cake pan until they were done. True confessions: I actually overbaked the second and slightly deeper one. See below for how bad it was. But I knew I was mainly in...