Crumbling Your Cake

There are two main ways to crumble your cake and prepare it to be combined with frosting. The first, and handiest, is to just use, well, your hands. This method works great with cake mixes. The texture of the cake causes it to crumble easily. Just cut a baked 9-by-13-inch cake into four equal sections. Remove a section from the pan, break it in half, and rub the two pieces together over a large bowl, making sure to crumble any large pieces that fall off. You can also use a fork to break any larger pieces of cake apart. Repeat with each section until the entire cake is crumbled into a fine texture. If you have large pieces mixed in, the cake balls may turn out lumpy and bumpy.

What if you’ve baked a cake from scratch? No problem. You can still crumble it using your hands. But because the texture of scratch cakes can vary so much, it may be easier to just toss small sections of the cake into a food processor. This will ensure that the texture is fine enough.

Then add the frosting and mix with a large spoon until the frosting absorbs into the cake and disappears. Using the back of your spoon is a quick way to make sure the two are thoroughly combined.

Tips

· Are 4 dozen cake pops too many? You can make as few as a dozen at a time. Each quarter section of cake yields about 12 cake pops. Remember to adjust the amount of frosting accordingly. Just freeze the extra cake quarter sections and save for later use.

· When using light-colored cakes, remove any brown edges before crumbling to avoid brown specks in your cake balls.

Creating Shapes

Crumbled cake mixed with frosting can easily be rolled by hand into round balls. It can also be molded into oval, rectangular, or triangular shapes. Subtle changes in shape can turn a Christmas tree into a bunny or a ghost into a skull. And even if you don’t change the shape at all, you’ll find that decorating with different add-ons and candies can transform a basic round shape into endless designs.

Here’s a guide to the most commonly used shapes from the ideas in this book.

Round: Bears, lions, tigers, chicks, pigs, cows, cats, monsters, babies, reindeer, ice cream cones, game balls, koalas, pumpkins, frogs, puppies, ladybugs, turkeys, pandas, clowns, Easter baskets, graduation caps

Oval: Sheep, mummies, witches, owls

Rectangular: Popcorn bags, robots

Bell/pear: Ghosts, snowmen, skulls

Rounded triangles/cones: Trees, Santa hats, Martians, straw- berries, bunnies, apples

Cookie cutter shapes: Cupcakes, butterflies, flowers, hearts

Tips

· Make round-shaped cake balls first, until you’re sure you will end up with the appropriate number. If you start shaping right away, you can end up with pieces that are too big.

· It’s helpful to place the cake balls in the freezer for a few minutes to firm them up before reshaping them.

· Don’t roll the cake balls too tightly. They may try to expand after coating, which can cause the coating to crack.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 567