The Gold Cake

Some months ago I was sent a photo of an amazing three tiered gold cake. I was so enthralled by it fantastic whimsey that I immediately began looking for an opportunity to have a go at making such a cake.

After a great deal of thought, I determined the gold colour had to be sprayed on. So I bought myself a few cans of PME gold lustre spray - which was significantly more yellowey than the original picture, but excellent none the less.

I baked three vanilla butter cakes - 11 inch, 8 inc and 5 inch. I coated each in white chocolate ganache, and then applied crispy white icing with a few different textures.

My husband and I had a very frustrating time cutting the dowels for the bottom and middle layers - I cut them too short and he did half of them too long. But we thought we got it right in the end.

This morning when I assembled the cake, I found th dowels could have been a little lower. And because of the icing on this cake, I could not cover my mistake with ribbons or piping. fortunately this mistake bugged me more than anyone else - my customers loved the result and happily set about eating 10kgs of cake, which fed around 75 people.

I still have lots to learn in the dowel cutting department. Tiered cakes really only get ordered for weddings. Lets hope I get a wedding job again some time soon.

Comments

Jess the Reader said…
Wow, this looks great! I've always been wary of spray cans - who knows what they put in those things. But this result is enough for me to get over that!

I would love to try this, and think I might have to start keeping an eye out for gold lustre spray.

And as for the dowels, I actually love them cut ever so slightly too high. It gives the middle layer in this cake the look of floating above the bottom layer. Although it's encouraging to see you say you still have something to practise!
12:18 pm
Petrina said…
Jess, I was thinking about you as I split the cakes. I promised you a "how to" on cake splitting, but I always seem to do these jobs at night when I can't get goods shots (I don't like flash). I will keep looking for any opportunity to capture the process.
7:47 pm
Jess the Reader said…
I can wait Petrina! I am taking the cheat's way at the moment, and using shallow pans to simply bake two or three not-very-high cakes and then sandwiching them together.

But I would love to see how the professionals do it!
9:11 pm
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