Warriors vs Broncos

Tonight I want to reserve some special love for Dal. On the agenda yesterday (and of course, rolling into the wee hours of today, where I am now sitting trying to wind down!) was finishing the birthday cake order for one very Rugby League mad little 5 year old. A Warriors fan to be precise. Our entire household avidly follow the NRL (the twins, like many children in 'religious' settings, start out following the team of their parents until they are of an age where they can choose for themselves), Dal has been a Broncos fan for over two decades, and last night, the Warriors played the Broncos.

Its bad enough that our move interstate meant constant exposure, yet again, to AFL (a game neither of us understand or follow), but to add insult to injury, the only televised NRL games are played very late at night. It is almost 4am, and in the background, the game is on, dying stages of the second half, and Dals beloved Broncos are getting their arses handed to them well and truly by the Warriors. 36-4, their finals dream for this year, over.

So, I'll have to think of something extra special for all of his help putting this beast together:-

The irony huh!

Its standing out like the proverbials, but, the 'shell' effect underneath the lettering looks wonky and NQR in this picture.  I'm going to attempt to fix it once its much sturdier, or, scrape and do again if necessary.  In the meantime, I'll try to fashion together a blog entry based on the stop start nature of this job and the lack of photos taken in parts.  Being that I spread it out over a couple of days, I didn't always have my photographer on hand, and anything more difficult than point and shoot (like loading a new card when the current one is full) is out of my league, sorry :( .

I was basically given the icing image for the cake, the wording they wanted and I was free to do whatever else in a slab to feed a large party of people.  Most people would say 'yay', I love the freedom to create.  Me, I get frightened.

So I decided to do a trial cake.  Glad I did, but, boy did I have a lot of stuff ups to get out of the system on that one.  First, let me tell you, black buttercream is just awful to try to make.  A horrible experience I am not keen to repeat.  So, we opted for the grey of the team colours, rather than the black, lol.

The slab is made from my 'Basic Slab Cake' recipe.  Very good for a nice big sturdy cake.

Ingredients 

2 Cups White Sugar

2 Cups Self-Raising Flour

2 Tablespoons Cornflour

2 Tablespoons Custard Powder

250g Butter, softened

1 Teaspoon Vanilla

1 Cup Milk

4 Eggs

Method

Preheat oven to 180C and combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Beat together for 10 minutes. 

Bake for approximately 45 minutes - 1 hour, depending on your oven.

 I bake this recipe in my 26cm square springform, or a larger baking tray approx 37cm x 20 something.  In the square tin, I turn it every 10 minutes to keep it even, seems to work for me.  You don't want to cook this cake at too low a temperature, or it will not rise and be too dense.  This was the mistake I made first up.  I was over cautious with the oven, disregarding all the snippets of information I have stored regarding baking powder and high heat, and cooked it too low.  It rose, but, it sure as hell sank right back once it was taken out. 

And yes, you really do need to beat this for 10 minutes.  It will start out looking gluggy and slowly turn to a beautiful runny and pale batter like this below.

This one above, the good one.

The one below, is the um, failure.

 It was great to have a bit of a practice write on though.  

Next I had to make some black buttercream.  Team colours being black and grey and all.  Not as easy as it sounds.  After a whole bottle of black food colour, some cocoa and chocolate flavouring, the abomination of colour is the best I could achieve before giving up.  Although to compensate for the extra liquid I did add extra Icing mixture, it got to a point where it was just not entirely workable, and, didn't look very nice.  Taste was great though.  If you could get past the look of the colour, it was so yum.

More research online about black buttercream told me my first instincts were right, and it was not a bright idea to attempt it.  Black fondant, sure.  Black buttercream, well, unless you want guests at your party to have black teeth and lips, just steer clear.  Gel paste tastes bitter and is hard to counteract the taste of, food colour will never give you true black unless you have a lot of time to let it sit and work and re-work it.  Yeah, not for me.

The trial cake was made in the horrid abomination of black icing, and some practice writing on top (I turned the 'good' cake into the trial cake) and this shocking effort that amounted to fat, sloppy ruffles around the bottom.  The stuff was a nightmare to pipe, it just wouldn't  hold shape and looked like it was literally oozing.  Ugh.  But I needed the practice finishing a slab and making it neat and god knows more writing practice, so I went through with it.

Then, I made two more slabs for the actual cake.  Still with not a freaking clue of what I was going to do, I started another google image search.  Typing loads of combinations of 'NRL cake' 'Warriors cake' and the like, I found this cake

And figured I'd adopt it somehow and change it enough to be original, well, sort of.

First, I covered the two slabs in a grey buttercream (standard recipe), making the grey by adding some cocoa to a double batch (about 1/4 cup), then some Imitation chocolate flavouring (found in the baking section of Woolies/Coles), then finally about a teaspoon of black food colouring.  You don't have to compensate for the extra dry goods, don't cut back on the icing mixture at all as for some reason, the black food colouring is the oiliest of all the colours so the cocoa is well needed!

 This was the colour it created. 

  The cake board is made from a large very sturdy box I had, double thickness, taped together and then alfoil over the top.  Hardly the stuff of professionals, but, it more than does the job.

Next was the preparation of the goal posts.  Using the same balsa dowel rods as for the cookie pops, cut one in half, then hot glue gun in place and leave to set.  You want these to have as much time to dry right out as possible just in case you stuff them up and have to re-do them.  

Marking out the football field.  First, I had Dallas come in and using a veining tool (or any sharp ended object, skewer, toothpick even if you are desperate) and a ruler, gently score out the field for me.  I'm very shaky handed, so, this sort of stuff is always my downfall.  We are a true team he and I, as much as people think I'm talented and creative or incredible, the reality is, I could do none of this without his constant support and help.

But enough of the soppy stuff.  We have a football field to mark.

I used a small Wilton Featherweight piping bag (the lighter ones are better for writing, give you more control), and a round No 7 nozzle (what, no Starwipe?  Patience lovelies, patience).

 

As you can see in the photo above, the lines are much straighter and neater up the back.  This is why I recommend if you are a novice or an amateur in the world of piping (as I am) that you have a piece of baking paper and a couple of squirts of practice before hitting your cake.  I didn't this time, and, it shows.  I wanted to use a technique I found online for making straighter lines etc when piping, but the buttercream consistency was at first not co-operating with what I wanted to do.  Instead of stopping and practicing until the consistency improved, I just went at it like a bull at a gate, and did this up close, shaky crap for the first half of the field.  Then, I stopped and re-attempted the 'technique' and success.  It looks awkward as hell from this photo, but, thats my gumby hands so disregard, I always make things look far more difficult than they are.

So, the 'technique' its loosely adapted on this icing collar video from YouTube.  Elaine McGregor rocks, she's old school baker lady, and knows her stuff.  Go to about 1 minute 45 seconds in on this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgkwX-uOK4c

And you'll see the 'technique' that I'm ill able to explain in a blog post and failing to do justice.

I'm going to devote a little of my spare time every other day to watching her videos.  I'm a few in so far, and, she is just a really good video teacher IMHO.  I'm learning from  her, and, its not costing me a cent!

Enough Elaine lust, there's a long way to go on this cake.

More buttercream icing, this time in green.  Its time to lay some turf!  Another Wilton Featherweight bag, but this time I used tip #48.  I originally wanted to go for the grass look, but, realised I didn't have that tip in my collection until push came to shove.  Never mind, improvise and push on.

Practice a strip, then fill in on your cake.

A couple of dobs of strategically placed plain buttercream, then the edible icing image was applied.

Some white fondant, fashioned around the goal posts, leaving about 3cm at the very bottom free to press into the cake and anchor them down.

Black and white fondant letters (cut out with my Wilton Alphabet set), two strips of plain black fondant for the messages on each end.  I painted a little water on the black strips, then, secured the lettering 'Warriors' onto the strip, one letter at a time and pressed gently to glue them.

The little footballs were made by shaping a black football and a white football.  Then, cut them into quarters and join, alternating colours.

I piped a shell border along the bottom of the cake, all the way around (couldn't do photos of this point, I had poor Dal on fondant duty and we were in 'holy crap, I hope the sun doesn't come up before we finish' mode) using Starwipe and Homer.  The shell border along the top edge, Wilton Featherweight bag and their long lost younger brother of Homer, Wilton Tip #22.

Here is the best clip I found for showing exactly the technique I was able to replicate.  The video is pretty ordinary overall, but, watch from about 27 seconds in, and, out of all the videos I watched, her technique was the one that really was 'shown' best by a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuwP5_pso7Y&feature=fvsr

Each cake is such a learning experience.  Although it may seem like I am hard on myself at times, I learn a lot this way, by attempting to make it look better, I might stuff it up half the time, but the other half I try new things I wouldn't have otherwise tried, and, build upon my limited skill set a little more so that one day I might be able to take a compliment and feel it is actually justified.

I'm so happy with how this came out, the kids are just beside themselves after seeing it, so I know it will be very well received by the birthday boy.