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Black Chandelier Cake
The Recipes
Strawberry Cake
My original recipe for this cake was for a 10-inch round cake pan. Since I needed to use 8-inch, 10-inch and 12-inch cakes for the Black Chandelier, I adapted the recipe for each size. For the Black Chandelier cake, I needed two of each of these sizes of cake. The strawberry oil referred to in this recipe is the same kind found in cake and candy specialty stores. It is optional, but you will find that just a few drops really kicks the flavor into high gear. The red food coloring is optional too, but we wanted a very pink cake, and as with the flavor, the color of the strawberries alone just wasn't enough.
| 8-inch | 10-inch | 12-inch | |
| cake flour | 1 3/4 cups | 2 2/3 cups | 3 1/2 cups |
| baking powder | 2 teaspoons | 1 tablespoon |
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon |
| salt | 1/2 teaspoon | 3/4 teaspoon | 1 teaspoon |
| unsalted butter, melted | 1/2 cup | 3/4 cup | 1 cup |
| sugar | 1 cup | 1 1/2 cups | 2 cups |
| eggs | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| crushed strawberries |
1/2 pound (1 cup) |
3/4 pound (1 1/2 cups) |
1 pound (2 cups) |
| strawberry oil | as needed | ||
| red food color | as needed | ||
This cake is assembled using the muffin mixing method: mix the wet and the dry stuff separately, and then mix them together. But it does help to follow a specific order with the wet stuff.
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl, and whisk together.
- In another bowl, whisk together the sugar and eggs until fully integrated.
- While continuing to whisk, pour in the melted butter. The butter should be liquid, but not hot.
- Whisk in the strawberries. These should be completely crushed, but not pureed.
- Add a few drops of strawberry oil.
- Add a few drops of food color. Make it just slightly pinker than you want it, as the flour will lighten it a little.
- Pour the wet stuff onto the dry stuff, and fold together with a rubber spatula until it just comes together.
- Pour into a greased and floured cake pan. For easier removal later, cut a piece of parchment paper to fit into the bottom of the cake pan. And remember, the 12-inch cake will require the use of a heating core.
- Bake at 350F until a toothpick poked in the center comes out clean. Start checking at about 30 minutes. The 8-inch cake won't take much longer than that, and the 12-inch cake might take as long as 45 minutes.
- Cool in the pan for 5 to 10 minutes, and then invert onto a cooling rack. Carefully peel away the parchment, if used.
- Allow to cool fully before cutting and decorating.
- Because this cake uses fresh strawberries, you will probably be best off storing it in the refrigerator, but try to use it within a couple of days.
Okay, I admit it. I didn't use my regular buttercream recipe. As it turns out, my regular recipe is dang hard to make with a hand mixer. In fact, it's not so easy to put together with a KitchenAid stand mixer. I need a Hobart for it to work. After an astronomically failed batch, I decided to cheat and use the buttercream recipe from Cake Decorating for the First Time by Jaynie Maxfield. You may laugh at me for using a beginner's book, but Jaynie is way smarter than me. This is evidenced by the fact that she has a cookbook published and I don't. Those of you who also don't have cookbooks published can stop laughing right about now.
I struggled with whether or not to publish the recipe that I used. I didn't use her recipe exactly, I made some changes. I could just tell you that it was my own recipe and save you the trouble of buying the book. But as somebody who would like to be considered smart enough to have a cookbook published, I realized that it would be wrong to do that. Granted, by the time my book was published, some l337 h4x0r would already have published it on some bittorrent and/or newsgroup a month prior. But I don't care. So I'm going to make you buy the book. It's a good book anyway, and if you're just getting started in making nice cakes, then you should have a copy on your shelf.
With the book in hand, turn to page 27. Replace the cup of sugar in that recipe with 3/4 of a cup or so of honey. Have extra powdered sugar on hand, just in case you need to adjust the consistency to make it a little thicker. If you don't want to buy the book, you won't hurt my feelings. Just go out and find some random buttercream recipe online and figure out how to get honey into the recipe. You can leave the honey out, but we thought it went well with the strawberries. It will make the buttercream more of an off-white color than your regular white buttercream, but that's okay. It still looks nice.
Honey FondantIt is darned difficult to find rolled fondant that doesn't taste absolutely horrible. If you do, it's probably pretty expensive too. When we were shopping for supplies, we saw a 4-pound bucket of fondant for about $40. That's right, ten bucks a pound, and you need four to six pounds of it for this cake. As it turns out, it's pretty easy to make it yourself, and while you're at it, keep with the honey theme.
I've been reading fondant recipes for months, and I still haven't put together one of my own that I actually like. I think you know what I did. That's right, I use Jaynie's book again. Turn to page 44 and replace the corn syrup with honey. Again, it will turn the fondant a slight off-white color, which in my case turned out to be exactly the same shade as the buttercream.
I will give you a few hints that aren't covered in the book. Jaynie tells you to heat on medium until the gelatin is completely dissolved. This wasn't enough for me. I kept the heat on until I saw little whisps of steam. Speaking of steam, I also added a couple extra tablespoons of water. My first attempt at this recipe yielded a dry, hard chunk of uneven-tasting sugar dough. The extra water and extra heat helped form a nice, pliable dough that was easy to roll out and work with. If it gets a little tough to deal with, a few seconds in the microwave should put you back in business.
Royal IcingI hope you're not starting to doubt my abilities as a chef, but I've got news for you. I didn't use my own royal icing recipe either. That's okay, I don't think anybody has their own royal icing recipe. Fortunately, the recipe I used is available online from The Joy of Baking. To make the icing black, we used a powdered food color. Stay away from anything else, it will throw off your recipe. Add the color early and don't worry if it ends up a little gray; it will darken with time.
Gold and Black PaintYou're going to be stamping things onto the cake, and you need some kind of edible ink. Sure, you could use some water or oil-based food color, but it would take forever to dry. You need something that dries quickly. Something that evaporates almost immediately. What you need is Everclear. No, not the band! The booze! That's right, this stuff is 190 proof. For those of you unfamiliar with this rating, it means that it is 95% alcohol, by volume. The liquir store in my neighborhood keeps it behind the counter, out of the reach of your grubby little hands, unless you ask for it specifically. It evaporates so quickly, we kept having to add more to the paint to keep the consistency right.
Speaking of the paint, you will also need something called luster dust. My cake shop also keeps this behind the counter because it's really tiny and very easy to shoplift. It's basically an edible glitter that's been ground to dust. We went with "old gold" luster dust. You will also need a little more powdered black food color.
For the gold paint, we mixed a little gold luster dust with a little Everclear. We did all the gold stamps first and and added a little black to the mixture for all the black stamps. The idea was to get a little gold shimmer in with the black. You'll want to play with the moisture level a little. If it gets a little dry, add a little more Everclear. If it ends up a little wet, just give it a couple of minutes; it'll dry up a bit.
ChocolateBuy the good stuff. The darker it is, the stronger it will be when it sets up.
