ELSA’S SNOW CASTLE – A Frozen theme cake For my daughter’s 7th bday!! This cake has 2 tier – bottom Tier is 10” chocolate Madeira cake and top tier is 8” eggless Orange cake! Wanted to make the whole cake with white and blue whipped cream icing only (though fondant would have been just apt for it but no one likes fondant at home so opted for whipped cream icing) but a lil misjudgement of the quantity of cream forced me to make buttercream icing for the rest of the cake. Couldn’t go to the shop at wee hrs!!! I already had 1.5 ltrs of cream but it wasn’t sufficient for this huge cake. And the buttercream icing just changed the whole look of the cake. With white(though off white) and blue, my cake had shades of yellow n green too. And on top of that the whole icing was melting away as I was working on this cake because central heating was on! Somehow salvaged this cake and finished my work 😥. Was so disappointed after completing this but my daughter’s word cheered me up and I felt relieved. For her, every cake is the best cake ever and her mumma makes the best cake in the world 😇😇. Every year I push myself to create something different for her, just to hear those words. Her appreciation means everything to me 👸 For Eggless Orange cake follow this link : https://facebook/media/set/?set=oa.278230835669575&type=1#!/photo.php?fbid=10152772319695186&set=oa.278230835669575&type=3&theater For Chocolate Madeira cake : This recipe is from Emma T from cakes bake and cookies. I have used her reipe earlier too and can vouch for it. Madeira cakes are best if you want to make tiered cakes. It’s a soft and moist cake and a lil dense which is apt for tiered cake. And best part is it’s not at all crumbly so when u cut the cake to give it some shape, you get a nice firm piece. And taste is just superb!! I have got so many praise for this cake and hence, this year too, I chose this as the bottom tier! She also has a wonderful chart to make this cake in any tin size. Last year I made a 12” cake. This time it was 10. I have also tried making 8”. Will share the chart in comment. Ingredients: (for 10” cake) Butter 250 gms Margerine 250 gms (if you wish to use oil then weigh it, that’s what I did last year as I didn’t have margarine) Castor sugar 660 gms Vanilla essence 31/2 tsp Eggs 10 Plain flour 580 gms Cocoa flour 170 gms Baking pd 5 tsp Milk 9 tbsp And most imp thing – you need a 10” cake tin that’s 3” tall. If you are not sure about the height then measure it by filling it with water. A 10”x 3” high tin should contain 4Ltr water. This is a superb tip by Emma to know the capacity of the tin. To Make cake - Line your cake tin with baking parchment and pre-heat your oven to 180ºC (160ºC fan). Blend the butter, margarine and sugar together until light and fluffy, then add the eggs slowly until they’re really well mixed in. Add the vanilla essence. In a separate bowl weigh and sieve the flour, cocoa and baking powder. Mix them so that you have a light brown dry mixture. This will prevent you having any cocoa lumps in the mix. I sieved thrice. Add the flour and milk to the butter in 3-4 alternating goes. Pour the cake mix into the tin and smooth with the back of a metal spoon. Bake in the centre of the oven. The cake is ready when you can smell that delicious chocolate cake aroma filling your kitchen. The cake will come away from the sides of the tin and a skewer will come out clean when inserted into the middle of the cake. It took me around 2 hrs 15 mins though the recipe says it should take 90-110 mins. If you find you cake is getting overbaked from top then just cover the tin with foil! Leave to cool on a wire rack. To Frost, as I hv mentioned, I have used whipped cream icing and buttercream icing both. So I am sharing what I did. For whipped cream you need : 1.5 ltr double cream ( 2 ltrs would have been sufficient, I guess, for the whole cake) 10 tbsp icing sugar (my measurement is 2 tbsp/300 ml cream) 5 tsp vanilla extract (I add 1 tsp vanilla to every 300 ml cream) Whip the cream in a big bowl until soft peaks form. I did it in 3 batches. Add icing sugar n extract and fold gently. Cut the cake horizontally when it has reached the room temp. brush some orange juice/sugar syrup to all the sides to make it super moist. Spread the icing on one side and sandwich the layers together. Keep the chocolate and orange cakes separately. Now crumb coat the cake and keep them inside the fridge. Meanwhile make your buttercream icing and the snow covered towers of this castle. For buttercream icing Take 250 gms butter at room temp 400 gms icing sugar 1 tsp vanilla extract 1-2 tbsp single cream People add double amount of icing sugar to the butter but I find it very sweet. Hence I use this measurement and those who are not very fond of buttercream have loved my buttercream 😋 Take soft butter in a clean n dry bowl. Add little amount of icing sugar and start whisking using hand mixer(that’s what I use). Keep adding sugar as you whisk. Whisk till nice n fluffy. Don’t forget to add the cream and essence while whisking! Keep it covered with cling film. To make the towers you need 7 ice cream cones 5 ice cream cups 1 pack of fondant icing (here again I thought I would make fondant at home but due to lack of time I bought readymade fondant from nearby cake n craft shop! It’s a bliss to have a cake shop just at 2 mins walk from you home! Sprinkle some icing sugar on a clean work top and roll out your fondant. Roll it thin and cut the strips. Roll these stripes around the cones and cups. Apply some butter cream on cone and keep it inverted on the cup. Now cover the join with a strip of fondant. So you will have 5 big towers and 2 cones covered in fondant. And yes apply lil water on your finger tips to join the fondant ends. I made some snowflakes too with fondant with snowflake cutter that I borrowed from my neighbour 😄 Now take out you chocolate cake from fridge. Put it on the turntable. Cover it with icing and transfer to cake board. Now put this cake board carefully on turntable and take out the orange cake from fridge. Put this cake on top. Insert few wooden skewer to keep the cakes intact. I used 4 skewers. Now cover this cake with icing. Mix some Ice blue color to some part of whipped cream and fill it in the piping bag. Make the swirl around the edges. Fill another piping bag with buttercream icing and decorate your cake the way you like. I had tough time doing this 😥. And please do NOT mix blue color to the buttercream as it will turn green!!!! Simple elementary science, isn’t it? But I think I was out of my mind and hence logic and did this blunder. But as soon as I realised, I stopped mixing further and used that ugly icing as it is 😩 After finishing my icing, I kept the whole cake until the celebration time (that was next day). Just before cutting, I added some buttercream on the cake board and placed the towers. 4 towers at the sides and one tower in the middle of top tier. Kept 2 cones on the top tier too to give it a complete castle look. I bought 2 Frozen movie characters from the cake craft shop – Princess Elsa and Olaf ‘the funny snowman’. Kept them on cake. I made staircases too (by making fan shape from the kitchen roll and covering it in fondant) to keep it near the Elsa’s feet but I forgot to keep it on my cake. All my time, energy and thought got wasted here 😓😓 Anyways, my daughter was very happy to see this cake and so I was. Her bday always is the biggest event of the year and this year too we celebrated it with full zeal and zest 🎉🎈🎊🎉 Let me know if I am not clear or if I have missed out anything in recipe. Thanks!!
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 11:55:55 +0000