Cake Seven. Maybe avoid China.

Let’s pick up where we left off. The apple cake from last week was demolished on the same friday evening in which this week’s cake was born. Incidentally, that was also the night we all reasoned that it was about time to see what all this Four Loko hype was about. Long story short, the China cake made it into the oven and also out of the oven, and this is a miracle.

I can’t say with full certainty that all of China is lame. I’ve never been there. But Friend Katie left about four months ago to teach English for at least a year in a city called Hefei, and, sparing you the details, Hefei was a douchebag and now she’s back in the USA. So, no, this cake is not a random or mildly insensitive opinion of mine. It’s my way of letting Katie know that it’s not her, it’s China.

So back to Four Loko Friday. I was planning on decorating the cake on Saturday (the day that Katie got back), which meant I had to bake and freeze it the night before. James was a great help. I taught him a thing or two about wrapping cake in saran wrap and he listened. With genuine interest.

Actually, the genuine interest thing is a lie. It turns out that wrapping a cake in saran wrap is a reasonably straightforward process. The next day, as I got to decorating, I knew exactly what I’d be doing design-wise. Before Katie left, we made her a photo album that looked a lot like this cake (Chinese flag theme, “China is lame” written on it), and I thought it would be a good idea to recreate the design to really reiterate the fact that we were sort of right. Compared to my other cakes, this one was fairly easy to execute. The hardest part was actually dying the fondant red. I ran into the same annoying obstacle last week with the apple cake. It’s really hard to dye things a true, deep red. So the majority of the labor here was kneading, adding more red dye, kneading, adding more red dye, kneading, etc.

In the end, I think I achieved a pretty good red. Jack supported my efforts by watching Cake Boss, which I appreciated.

Everything after that base red was a piece of cake (GET IT). I have these star-shaped cookie cutters, and the bottom stripe was cut using just a ruler and a pizza cutter. It’s always good to use a wheel blade to cut fondant, because even the sharpest knife will stretch it and create puckers. And no one likes to look at puckers.

I’ve been thinking about making my own frosting for piping lettering. So far I’ve been using store bought stuff, which is mostly fine, but it’s a little too light an generic for intricate piping. Also, you get these annoying peaks when you lift the piping tip from the lettering. Drives me NUTS.

Luckily those peaks are easy to fix – just dip your finger in water and tap them down.

It’s funny because, taken out of context, it appears as though Jack licked his finger then touched the cake. I’m sort of a master of visual trickery.

Katie did not tell everyone about her early return to the States, so when she showed up to the halloween party wearing a sheet with one hole cut out of it for her to see through, people totally bought that she was some randoh friend. The ruse lasted about 23 seconds, though. In the picture below you can glimpse my elaborate costume. I was Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. On the show he is known to huff paint, so that is why my nose area is silver. I’m also wearing low crotch thermal underwear, but you will not be seeing that business.

The cake was made from a box, which makes it the first blog cake I haven’t made from scratch. But there’s a reason – Katie has a gluten allergy, so this thing is gluten-free. I looked into making a gluten free cake from scratch, but as soon as I saw an ingredient called “gluten-free baking powder” I was like I’M OUT. I’m not usually a fan of gluten-free substitutes, but this cake was good. Oh and I forgot to put buttercream between the layers. Whoops.