Movie Theme Birthday Cake for a Film Buff
Recently I got to make a birthday cake for a young friend of ours who was turning 18. He is a film fanatic and especially likes gangster movies. I knew I'd have to make a cake in honor of this!
The flavor requested was a simple Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Buttercream. The mom told me there would be up to 30 people at the party, so I knew it would have to be a 9" cake. I have several vanilla cake recipes in various sizes I've made over the years, but I wanted to try a new recipe this time. I chose this recipe from Sugar & Sparrow, an online blog I've recently found. I tend to like her recipes a little bit better than my old go-to, Sally's Bake Blog.
The recipe makes two cake layers. So I made two layers several days beforehand. Knowing I'd have a spare cake layer, I "cored" one of the cakes to try a small bite beforehand and was satisfied that it baked up well and tasted good. I froze these two layers, then baked a second set of cake layers two days before the party.
The first time I made the recipe, I used 3 eggs instead of 2 eggs and 2 egg whites. The second time I made it, I unfroze two egg whites and followed the recipe as written. Both times the cakes baked up in about 28 minutes, and predictably the cakes with egg whites were lighter in color, but otherwise everything looked good.
I used this recipe from Sallys Bake Blog for the chocolate buttercream. Interestingly, Sugar & Sparrow's recipe is nearly identical, except for using less confectioners sugar. (360g vs 420g). I decided to stick with Sally's recipe thinking it would yield a bit more frosting. I ended up having to make 3 batches of frosting to fill, crumb coat, and decorate this cake. After the first batch, I thought the flavor was a bit too strong. I reduced the cocoa powder from 45g to 40g and this improved the taste. With 3 batches I definitely had a good amount of leftover frosting. It took longer than I liked to make all this frosting, what with having to clean up and remeasure for each batch. But, that's unavoidable!
I filled, crumb-coated and frosted the cake the day before the party. I used a 1/2 inch round tip to pipe the filling in the center and I even piped on the crumb coat, in an effort to not have the usual amount of gaps, especially towards the top and bottom edges of the cake. The only snag I hit with putting this cake together was the consistency of the frosting. I'm not sure if it was too stiff, or if I overbeat it, or if both the frosting and the cake were too cold. I'd gone for a bike ride, leaving the cake in the refrigerator, while the crumb coat set. So perhaps that is what happened. Whatever the reason, it was difficult to scrape off in order to smooth it. No matter how many passes with the scraper, it still looked "rough". I ended up having to dip a metal scraper into hot water and smoothing out the sides bit by bit, until I finally got it to look smooth. Having to do this, however, did change the look of the frosting. It now looked "fudgy" instead of "buttercreamy".
And to my dismay, the next morning when I went to put the final touches on the cake, unsightly "dots" had formed on the side of the cake where I'd melted that thin layer of buttercream with the warm cake comb. I'd left the cake out at room temperature overnight, wanting to avoid condensation from the refrigerator, so that wasn't the culprit. No doubt when the buttercream "dried" after being melted to be scraped off, it formed little clots with the butter. I've used this method before without a problem, but things are different when working with chocolate. Water and moisture are the enemy of chocolate.
I could have made another batch of buttercream, applied another coat, and scraped that off to fix this cosmetic problem. But at this point, I did not have the time.
I'd made the fondant toppers several days before, and put a good amount of tylose in the fondant. By Saturday morning they definitely held their shape but were still not thoroughly hardened. Wilton fondant has that downside.
The fondant pieces included red stars, a film reel showing the names of his favorite movies, and a clapper board.
The red stars were made using older fondant and cut with a small cutter. I put wire in some of them thinking they would give some height to the decorations and set them to dry. I also cut out the young man's name and the number 18 with fondant punchers. I didn't need to add tylose to this fondant and I could tell these pieces would dry immediately.
For the film reel, I cut two circles with a circle cookie cutter, and then cut five holes on each circle with the bottom of a piping tip. I tried to punch the holes in the same spot on the two circles, so the holes on the top and bottom of the reel would line up, and this worked pretty well. For the center of the spool I simply shaped a round piece of fondant into the width and height I wanted. For the film reel, I cut a length of fondant and pinched and twisted the end to be narrower at the spot where it went into the reel. Using a food coloring pen, I hand-drew lines at the top and bottom and every so often at the center, to simulate film frames. I then wrote the name of four films on the length of fondant. When it was sturdy enough to put on its side, but soft enough to bend, I bent it at several places so that it wouldn't be just a straight line, but undulate in and out like a reel of film would do. I also twisted it just so, so it would look like film unspooling from the reel. I set all these pieces to dry separately.
Movie clappers are usually black, but because this cake had chocolate frosting, I decided to make the clapper out of white fondant so that it would stand out. I cut a 7.5 x 6 piece of fondant for the base of the clapper. Then I cut off the top left at an angle. I cut out a wedge from the right side, to make it look as though the top bar of the clapper was raised. I then put black fondant in an arrow shape along the top of the bar as well as along the top of the bottom of the clapper, where the bar and the clapper meet as the director shouts "Action!". I was immediately concerned that the decoration looked more like piano keys than a clapper. So I made a black fondant rectangle and to it I attached the birthday boy's name, the number 18 and two stars, all made out of red fondant. Now it looked great! I set all this to dry.
The day before the party, I realized that the fondant clapper was still a bit soft and the top bar, which was only attached to the bottom of the clapper by a narrow piece of fondant, was likely going to fall off. I decided to secure it by gluing the entire clapper to a thin piece of black fondant cut to shape. To this end I rolled out the black fondant, added lots of tylose, and set it to dry.
I also realized that it's not a good idea to stick florist's wire into the cake that people are going to eat. So I let go of the design idea of stars adding height and swapped out the wire in some of the fondant stars for toothpicks. The rest of the stars I decided to use as is.
The morning of the party the pieces were still a bit soft, so I decided to glue everything together with edible glue instead of water. I made the edible glue by combining water and tylose powder, and letting it sit for a while to come together. It needs to sit for at least 1 hour because all the CMC powder doesn't dissolve into the water right away and is lumpy when it's first mixed.
First, I put the film reel together. Turns out the "film" was a little too tall, so I had to carefully shave the top so it would fit snugly into the spool. I then glued the four pieces together: top, center, and bottom of the spool and the film reel. I set this to dry. Then, I glued the clapper to the fondant base I'd made to stabilize it. I was pleased and could tell this was going to work to hold it together and prevent the top bar from breaking off. They took about an hour to dry.
Now it was time to decorate the cake! I covered the top of the cake with a mixture of red sprinkles. Next I piped a chocolate buttercream border with a Wilton 1M tip. I've sometimes had trouble making a nice border but this one came out great and I was very pleased with it. I placed the film reel on the front of the cake, and I was happy to see I'd made it the perfect size. Next I placed a "Happy 18th Birthday" topper and red fondant stars on toothpicks around the topper and then also on the border. I had this birthday topper from when Bubby turned 18, and we had ended up not using it. I was so happy to get tu use it now! Sitting on a 12" gold cake board, the cake looked great and nobody was going to focus on the flaws in the buttercream on the sides of the cake!
The clapper was ready too, nice and solid, but it was very disappointing to see that it was too large in relation to the rest of the cake. It was still soft enough to cut off part of it at the bottom and sides, but in spite of that I wasn't able to attach it to the front of the cake as planned. Lesson learned: when planning fondant pieces, have measurements of the cake itself. It sounds obvious but I usually just wing it and up to now I've been lucky. But in this instance, the cake was 4.5" inches tall and maybe 5" with the border. So a 6" clapper was obviously too big. I was upset by this and it was a shame, but there was nothing for it. The clapper would just have to lean on the cake.
In case there wasn't enough cake for 25-30 people I made a dozen vanilla cupcakes to go along with the cake. I used this recipe from Sally's Bake Blog. Using the same chocolate buttercream as the cake I piped a 1M swirl and dusted them with a few sprinkles.
To transport the cake, I found a low flat cardboard box and made a cut on each side in order to be able to lower the side of the box as if it were a flap, and slide the cake out when it reached its destination. I taped them back together with painter's tape for the drive.
I enjoyed a slice of this cake during the party and I thought it tasted excellent. Far better recipe than other vanilla cakes I've made.
Making this cake was a multi-day process. Advance planning made it an easy, stress-free and fun experience. The party was on a Saturday and I made the first two layers on Tuesday and the second two layers on Wednesday. I all of Friday afternoon making the buttercream and frosting the cake. I worked on the fondant pieces several days ahead. I put the finishing touches on Saturday morning, had a chance to take a few pictures, and delivered it 2 hours before the party. It's a lot of work but it's something I enjoy and with advance planning everything came together without having to rush and I was able to enjoy the process very much. I was so happy I got a chance to make this special cake!
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