Saturday, December 06, 2008

Cake as Performance Art

The frosting was giving me fits, today.

Apparently I can make very nice frosting if it requires meticulous temperature taking, whisking and coddling, but if it's supposed to be a "quick" icing? I somehow manage to fail miserably at it, have the chocolate seize or the caramel go grainy and have a miserable time.

All this when my creativity is on the line and will soon be seen and judged by friends and family. It's like performance art that you get to eat! I felt like it was a particularly grueling show today.

Why?

Because I made two cakes today for Eric's birthday party this evening. One chocolate-pumpkin-pecan cake with chocolate frosting and a secondary "backup" cake, when I determined that some number of invitees were likely going to be allergic to- or not very fond of- the chocolate-pumpkin-pecan combination. So I made a simple yellow cake with simple chocolate icing for them.

The big fancy cake? The icing dropped below the temperature that made it happy and fluffy and it became fudgy. Not inedible, but fudgy instead of creamy. Desperate, I used a different recipe for the other cake's icing which turned out a lot better.

Next birthday cake I'll probably go back to buttercream frosting. More difficult? Yes. But it turns out properly each time.

So much for doing things the "easy" way!

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