Those who know me know that I have always been obsessed with healthy eating. Those who truly know me know that when I say "healthy eating" I mean "sausage egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches at 2am." So - behold: a cake that contradicts itself to further demonstrate the fact that I am a walking contradiction. It's a METAPHOR.
Really what happened was, I had a whole different idea for this week's cake theme, and upon hearing that I had baked an apple cake that had bits of REAL apple in it, and that I had just declined an offer from Brother to go apple picking in New Haven so that I could be sure to have enough time to decorate the cake I had baked with bits of REAL apple into, Jack said, why don't you just make the cake look like an apple, fool?
That paragraph was one sentence.
I decided that the apple idea was a solid one, and i immediately knew how it would be executed. This past summer I attended the wedding of a former college roommate, and made apple cupcakes for the wedding rehearsal. They were well received, and actually very easy to make. You know those Entenmann's donuts? The little ones? Under a layer of sprinkles and frosting lies the top half (or bottom, depending on how you look at it) of said donut. While I can't take credit for the idea (found it in a book), I will go ahead and take credit for its flawless execution. Thank you for noticing. The lack of flaw in execution.
I'm not ashamed to admit that when I was thinking about how I would adapt the apple cupcake to fit a full-sized cake, I wasted about four minutes wondering where in the hell I was going to find a donut that was 6" in diameter. After realizing that, really, I could use any sort of baked good with a hole in the middle, I started thinking bunt. Finally I settled on angel food cake because my local grocery store did not have any ready-made bunts, and it was the only things I could find witha hole. It was until much later I realized that I could actually make a hole in any type of cake. But for whatever reason, I was determined to purchase something that already had a hole in it.
I was worried at first, because angel food cake has sort of a strange consistency, and I didn't know how it would react to me slathering it with buttercream and fondant. Turned out angel food cake very much enjoys buttercream and fondant, because it behaved very well under the pressure of these substances. As for the cake itself (the part the I baked), I took to it with a knife and shaped it by eye into what I thought would play as an apple. Very technical.
I think a common question people ask about using fondant is how to deal with the inevitable folds you will encounter while wrapping. Think about a tablecloth on a circular table – there are always folds in the hanging fabric. The same thing happens with fondant on a circular cake. You can’t get rid of them by shmushing them down and hoping no one will notice. Believe me. I’ve tried. What I’ve learned is that you have to recognize that fondant is malleable, and you have to sort of push it to its limit to get rid of the folds. Using one hand to smooth the side of the cake, pull the edge of the fondant skirt away from the cake with the other. I don’t know if this is textbook technique, but it works for me. I don’t usually focus too much on this part of the process on this clog, so here are some more wrapping pictures for your viewing pleasure.
The frosting I used to cover the fondant was store-bought. It’s very difficult to get a true red color when dying frosting, and I knew that I would be dealing with a deep pink, which is why the whole thing was ultimately covered in red sprinkles. It’s a shame that I had to do that though – while the end result was very satisfactory, I really loved the texture of the frosting alone. Ah well.
Here I am, frosting the apple. What you don’t know about this first picture is that my dad is out of frame. That’s who I’m looking at. I should mention that upon hearing that I was going to be making an apple cake, my dad immediately had strong opinions as to how I should go about shaping the thing. You’ve really got to make it taper down, Kristin. You know? It’s got to be really smallon the bottom. I told him repeatedly that I wasn’t going for realism, and besides, there are plenty of apples that are very circular and do not “taper down” like, at all. I told him that he was thinking of Red Delicious apples, and that I had more of a Macintosh in mind. This did not stop him from having strong opinions, and it certainly did not stop him from expressing them. So these two pictures do well to illustrate my interest in heeding this particular strand of fatherly advice.
Next came the crystal sprinkles, which were surprisingly difficult to adhere. Turns out the solution to getting the sprinkles to stick to the frosting was not throwing a handful of them at the cake harder. This part was easier with the cupcakes – with those I was able to dip them into a bowl of sprinkles and achieved perfect coverage.
This cake was dismembered among friends at the weekly biggest loser ritual. Not everyone can appreciate two hours of fat people gradually becoming less fat, though, so Colin and Donnelly showed up after Jack, Heidi, Mark and I had finished watching.
Later in the week, the cake being miraculously uneaten, I brought the remains to a friend’s house to compliment an evening of kraft macaroni and cheese (with hot dogs), youtube abuse, and because of recent media attention and general hype both good and bad: Four Loko. Because, apparently, I’m still in high school. However, aside from the taste (which reaches new levels of disgusting), Four Loko is good, and will make an evening tons of fun, as long as you follow three rules:
1.) Be in the right company
2.) Only do it like, once a year, twice tops
3.) Drink one. Never more than one. Less than one is ok. Never more.
1.) Be in the right company
2.) Only do it like, once a year, twice tops
3.) Drink one. Never more than one. Less than one is ok. Never more.
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