Last of the Easter

The Easter is gone but here is one more thing I tried my hand at. A basket-weave decorated cake. I had never before tried this type of a cake and the results were, well, interesting. The pictures were taken of the cake before it was transported to the Grandparents and a good thing it was since it did most certainly not take too well to being moved. The cake itself is a basic sponge cake like this so there were no problems with the cake base. It was the filling that turned out to be a problem when the cake was being moved. I moistened the cake with lemonade, cut it in three layers and started adding the filling. Ooops. Didn't take into account that the lemon filling I made was still quite liquidy even after having spent the night in the fridge. Well, spread it on anyway and just wiped the extra off the sides of the cake. Then to the cream mixture. First, whipped the cream and added vanilla custard powder. Then some quark, and mixed it all. Spread on top of the lemon filling. Another layer on top and so on. In the end I had a quivering, shivering huge cake on my table that already showed signs of sliding all over the place. I was determined, however, to get this cake done so spread some buttercream on top and placed a rolled sugar fondant disc over it. Then more whipped cream with the vanilla custard powder and off with the basket-weave which in itself was not that difficult, just time consuming. You can find good instructions how to for example here. Finally I put the pre-made little birdies, flowers and other stuff on top. It looked nice. The cream even tasted nice as I was wiping it off the sides of the cake dish.

So, cake goes into its box and I hope for the best. Let me just say that what emerged from that box did not resemble much of what went in there. The layers had slid all over the box taking the cream basket weave with them. What to do? I pushed the layers back in place best as I could, tried to smoothen the cream and showed everyone a picture of the cake as it used to be. :) It tasted good though, all lemony and creamy, but this is clearly not a cake made for the road.