Caketastic – The Heineken Challenge
Minding my own business walking around the sculptures by the sea the other week I received a call from my sister in law to request a cake for my nephew’s 18th birthday. “Nothing flash! just something we can put a candle in was the request….”.
As a little bit of background, my nephew was sprung at the ripe old age of 16 trying to sneak a Heineken Keg in a back pack…..his excuse as to why he had it, and where he found it is legendary…..lets put it this way there is a tree in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney that produces some very good beverages!!!…..Anyway my husband thought it would be a good idea to surprise them by attempting to make a cake in the shape of a keg!
Famous last words…….YEAH WHY NOT!!!!! And yes after a trip to the cake supplies store, googling images of a keg on my iPhone (what did we do before the invention of these things!), the plan was hatched… Top Secret Mission Heineken Cake. Just to put it in to perspective, I have never made a novelty cake in my life, let alone one where I have no recipe or guidelines….. so my “yeah why not” soon became a “WHAT ON EARTH WAS I THINKING!!!!!” Anyway…. I thought I would share my 10 hour creative extravaganza with you…..But I think that I will not be trying to complete with “The Cake Boss” or “Planet Cakes” any time soon…..
Stage 1 – The mud cake
…..thanks to a recipe from Donna Hay for a chocolate mud cake, which I duly doubled, I started to make what I thought would be the easiest part….but alas the mixture did not fit into my little Kitchen Aid, so three batches were made….. just about to poor into the menagerie of cake tins at hand I realised the mixture looked a little thick….Ooops I had forgotten the litre of milk……split the mixture in half, mix again, pour (everything crossed) hoping (praying) it would at least taste OK…….. 4.5 hours later, and a little sculpting and lashings of butter cream the cake started to take form…..
Stage 2 – Butter Icing
A relatively uneventful stage….and licking the bowl was not to bad either!!!
Stage 3 – Icing
Several YouTube tutorials later….. I thought, how hard can ruling out some fondant and laying it over a cake be….Ahhh how wrong was I…… I have missed out a couple of shots here where the tears nearly started and the toys nearly got thrown out of the pram….
With all the tools in place…. The top layer of the Keg came into effect with a coat of silver edible spray paint…..(now that was fun!)
Next came the green band, expertly rolled by my hubby (oh yes he was not getting out of this one!)…..
This was perhaps the point where we realised that this cake was staying on this board as I was in no way going to attempt to move it!
Stage 4 – The decoration
Now I was rather proud of my free hand writing….. I have to show it here as I had a bit of a disaster trying to transfer it to the cake!!!
Stage 5 – Voila
Yes it did not taste too bad….even though I do say so myself, but perhaps next time some white chocolate and raspberry muffins with a could of candles on top…. ( oh and just in case you are wondering the my cake is on the right, those bottles on the left are inferior imitations!!!) My nephew loved it so it was all worth while – although he was may be al title disappointed that real beer did not come out of the tap (maybe next time i will perfect that!
On with the colourful journey………..