This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 1:40 am and is filed under Fanciness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Molten Magic
We took most of last week off to prepare for this volcano making contest. Heyhey, Eyebrow and Mastermind were all very excited when they heard about this contest and had the creative, ingenious, and disturbing idea to make these wonders of the natural world out of CAKE! In fact, they ALL loved the idea of a FONDANT covered cake with various edible a accoutrements adorning the finished mound. Now, as I have previously mentioned, these kids have a favorite show, called Food Network Challenge which pits professional chefs against each other in contests making novelty cakes, cereal skyscrapers, pastry art, fruit sculpture, etc, so they know all about fondant, gum paste, and buttercream crumb coats. Nevermind only one of them is old enough to responsibly use an oven! I confess, I was excited about the possibilities too, and didn’t really mind lending a hand (little did I know it would almost cost me both my hands!)
The contest, put on by Discovery Place, a local kids science museum, was open to children grades 2 through 8, so unfortunately M. was not allowed to enter. (You do know we still had to make him a volcano cake anyway.) I did plenty of research on cakes and which kind make the best novelty or shape cakes. In case you need to know, the more dense cakes hold up better to stacking and sculpting. I wisely decided to doctor up some cake mixes instead of making my own cakes from scratch. Ten boxes of cake mix and 36 eggs later, we had 10 layers of pound cakes of different shapes and sizes. Although we had a month to prepare our entry for the contest, we really had to wait until the last minute to make these things, seeing as cakes go stale after too long. The kids were excited to help in every step of the process.
The day before was set to be construction day. I would have liked to get an early start, but alas, the Mormon ladies were coming back by to check on me. I cleaned the house all morning, and after they left about 4 o’clock that afternoon, we finally got started.
Step one: stack cakes up in some type of mountain formation.
Step two: Make a truckload of fondant. This step is the real booger. I have never made this before, and God is my witness, unless you put a gun to my head, never will again! This is icing that is made to the consistency of modeling clay so it can be rolled out and draped over the cake like a sheet for a smooth or uniquely textured surface. It must be kneaded by hand, but what the recipe doesn’t tell you is that you have to knead it until your hands fall off! This was the blood, sweat and tears portion of the project. The part that you have to have the hands of a Neanderthal Swedish masseuse to pull off. The part the kids couldn’t do.
Step three: Add coloring to fondant. This is part two of the wishing-you-were-dead-right-about-now-kneading procedure to fully incorporate the food coloring into the fondant. The kids were a tremendous help getting this started (just long enough to get themselves and my entire kitchen completely covered in food coloring.) I finished this part as well.
Step four: Find rolling pin. This took a while. I hadn’t used it recently.
Step five: Call husband and tell him that he will have to pick up some dinner and bring it home, because you just found the rolling pin and the fondant that has to be used immediately has been waiting for 30 minutes while you were looking for it, and the kitchen is a mess, there is powdered sugar everywhere, and there is no WAY any dinner is getting made in there.
Step five: Roll out fondant.
Step six: Take a break and eat KFC.
Step seven: Spread on buttercream crumb-coat.
Step eight: Piece the fondant onto the cakes. (I will tell you at this point, SuperGeek was starting to pitch in and help out. I can’t tell you how invaluable his assistance was at this stage. I did cringe slightly, though, when all the kids spontaneously broke out in thankfulness to Daddy for helping out. What am I, chopped liver?)
Step nine: Adorn cakes with details. Lava, snow-capped peaks, oreo-rocks, etc.
Step ten: Send kids to bed and go out for last minute run to the store to get dry-ice for smoke effect.
Step eleven: Call sister to get help toting these monsters to the museum downtown in the morning since SG was going to be coaching a football game in the morning.
All in all, it was a great experience. Neither of the kids’ entries placed in the contest, but the value of presenting and participating was really worth all the effort. M. even got to serve his cake to his teammates at the after-season party that day! The other two were donated to the hospital where SG’s mom was recovering from hip surgery and the hospice unit there. I will get some pictures up as soon as I quit being so lazy!