Cake flavor, design and theme was left for me to decide,only requirement being a quarter sheet cake.
Obviously theme would be Graduation, and I have seen these lovely book shaped cakes on several online websites, and I thought that it should be a cool idea.
I took most of the tips for making the book shape from here.
I requested my friend to provide me the names of two of his favorite subjects so that I could name the cake books with those. Which was Software Management and Database Designing .
Again I went for my favorite cake flavor , Red velvet cake with Cream cheese frosting (I used the same recipe as my cupcakes) and decorated the cake in Homemade marshmallow fondant (recipe here)
I baked a Quarter Sheet Cake (9x13) and cut it in half, each half forming the two books, torted them and filled cream cheese frosting and covered each cake half in different colored fondant to represent two books. I used a red velvet cupcake (store bought) and covered it with melted chocolate and topped it with 4 pieces of Lindt chocolate bar and made the graduation hat . The Scroll on top of the book is made using fondant.This time decorating the cake was quite diffcult , as the climate was pretty Humid and the Cream Cheese frosting kept melting and the Red Velvet cake was super moist (yummmm!), though I had kept the cake in the refrigerator for about an hour each before and after frosting and then covering with fondant.
This caused the books to sort of have a droopy look, but then everyone at the party thought that that was my idea of showing that these two being his favorite subjects , were the books most used, and hence the used-book like appearance...How cool huh!!
Anyways, the Red Velvet cake was a big hit. Even I loved the taste (I usually never compliment my food)
;-) Can't I comment on my own cakes!!!
Again sharing a few snaps before and after the cake was cut :-)
Well all in all this years Graduation has helped me graduate to a new level of Cake Baking and Decoration, and I want to thank all my friends who trusted me with their special occasions by asking me to bake for them and I hope I did justice to your events!! ;-)
Note: I want to add a sweet Thank You to my cousin bro Nandu Mohan, who unknowingly helped me complete this cake. Well, as I mentioned above the cake wasn't forming as I had hoped it would due to humidity, I was almost on the verge of giving up making the cake. That's when my cousin bro (who stays in India) came online on facebook chat, and while he typed, I would go and roll out my fondant and then I typed my reply, and again while he typed , I made the scroll etc...He had no idea I was in the middle of decorating this cake.
So in a way his distraction sort of helped me clear my mind , get more ideas and go ahead with making this cake! Family is always your best backbone and you never know how they can help!!!
So thank you dear Nandu.
So Adios Amigos...stay tuned until next time...!!!
-Manju
