I narrowed the options down to four cakes, and enlisted the help of my friend who co-planned the birthday dinner with me. She chose either the cannoli cake (after all, it goes so well with the Italian dinner) or another one. However, I opted for the cannoli cake and another cake (simply because I had been wanting to make it for a while...there are chocolate stars coming out of the cake!). Probably overkill since each cake recipe states that it serves 12-14 people and we're going to be 12 people total....and its after/part of a 3-course meal. But details, details....
I started a few days ahead of time by making the chocolate stars that would adorn the White Chocolate Truffle and Chocolate Fudge Layer Cake. The day of the birthday dinner, I set out to bake 2 2-layer cakes (4 layers total, each with 2 different icings/fillings) - that cake, and a cannoli cake called the Marvelous Cannoli Cake. Another common theme throughout this blog: I don't make things easy for myself.
Here are the stars after I cut them out of the chocolate (but before I removed them):
Then, the cakes....Originally, I was going to revamp the cannoli cake recipe and bake the white cake from scratch (instead of using boxed mix), but I decided against it mainly because the white cake recipe I had said it made 2 8" layers (and I have 9" pans), and secondly, I couldn't tell if the cake would be the right consistency for the filling and icings. I kept the Chocolate Fudge Cake as the recipe said.
Then came the fillings and frostings...
For the cannoli cake, I made the ricotta filling first. It called for 2 oz of finely chopped chocolate, but I used the mini chips that I had for the rest of the recipe. It was a teeny bit softer than I'd expect, but I think it was due to the chocolate that I used - and it set up really well in and on the cake. Then I made the mascarpone icing. The consistency was COMPLETELY off. It was crumbly and not spreadable. I actually had to run out in the middle of the afternoon to buy more mascarpone and remake it (the second version came out much better) - although I only used about half of the milk that it called for (it was still a little runny with half the milk).
The cake slicer for the cannoli cake was better than the one for the chocolate cake, however, I only had this picture
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