My Culinary Challenge

When Kelsi and I discovered that we had the same awesome birthday of November 11th, she invited me to take part of her 80s themed 11-11-11 party for a joint birthday celebration.  After showing up to the Halloween party with Oreo eyeballs and chorizo monster toes, Kelsi and Kristin immediately said I was in charge of making 80s food, a request I happily accepted.  As the date approached, I spent more time than I'd like to admit looking for some good 80s themed food, which is slightly more difficult than Halloween food.  Luckily, I found a totally rad recipe for a Rubik's cube cake, what can be more 80s than that?!  So I decided that that would be my challenge, to somehow make this cake, successfully.

The thing with reading other people recipes is that they make it seem so simple: "Here's how to make a Rubik's cube cake in 6 simple steps!"  False.  More like "here's how to spend 8 hours making a cake that should not be attempted by novices."  I just wish there would have been a warning on the recipe caution:  the stress incurred while attempting this cake will take years off your life in addition to the hours spent on a CAKE.  I mean, I probably would have tried to make it anyway, I just like a little honesty from people. 

As you probably have already read, cooking in Colombia is not the same as it is in the US, baking even less so.  Some things are hard to come by; for example, I knew I couldn't even attempt this beast unless I had the ever so elusive Colombian food coloring.  Luckily, I found it in Exito during my very normal weekend along with powdered sugar, to which the check out guy respond "azucar? en serio?" clearly he had never seen or used powdered sugar and was perplexed by its texture.  With my marshmallows, powdered sugar and food coloring in hand, I set out to practice making fondant that would be used for the colored squares.  I didn't want to make a whole batch so I cut it down, but did some serious estimating, with some serious estimation errors and spent two hours adding more and more sugar to the gooey mess I had all over my hands and counter.  Finally I had gotten the right consistency, and knew if I actually followed the directions when it came time for the real deal, I'd succeed with much less stress.  I also made a practice batch of Dona Torta vanilla cake which calls for 1.5 sticks of margarine and 4 eggs, a little different than Ms. Betty Crocker.  Turns out the cake is delicious, but may or may not also take years off your life. 

Thursday evening came around and I knew it was time to get serious.  The recipe called for two boxes of cake, so I figured I'd make one chocolate and one vanilla so people could have a choice.  I made the chocolate and then got started on my fondant, which did go a little more smoothly, but still took longer than I would have liked with the coloring and having to add sugar little by little to get rid of the stickiness.  Chocolate cakes done and fondant made in about 3 hours on Thursday night, I figured I could easily come home Friday at 3, make my chocolate ganache, roll and cut fondant and make another batch of cakes with time to spare...false.  For someone who claims to be a "math person", I clearly didn't think this one out: the recipe calls for two boxes of cake divided into three pans, but Thursday night I make two 8 x 8 inch chocolate cakes and was planning to make two more vanilla Friday, which would leave me with veeeerrrry short cakes.  Whoops.  So instead I came home Friday and had to make two more boxes of cake (thank GOD I bought an extra!) and split it into two pans to get some height on it.  As I was putting one of the pans into the oven, a little bug managed to fly into the batter and get stuck so I quickly pulled the pan out to get the little guys out, but not before burning my arm on the oven.  Now, this has happened to me before, the burn, not the bug, only I was making cupcakes at my mom's and the burn made me drop the whole pan of cake batter onto our non-self cleaning oven.  Oops.  I still hear that story, sorry mom!  Luckily that DIDN'T happen this time, I probably would have cried. 

Ouch

 While the cakes were cooking, I got out my semi-sweet melting chocolate, heavy cream and butter to make the chocolate ganache, by far the easiest part of the whole thing.  Then I set out to roll and cut my fondant into squares.  Even though I took the fondant out of the fridge as soon as I got home, it was still pretty rock solid, so I got a great arm workout trying to roll out my fondant with an empty wine bottle (thanks for the idea Kelsi!)  It didn't help that I could never get the 7-8 squares I needed in the first roll, so I would have to re-ball and roll two or three times.  Took forever.  I also at some point had to shape and put a crumb coat on the chocolate cakes.  After all that was done I had to do the same with the vanilla cakes.  At this point I am semi-delirious from now working on the cakes for 3+ hours while realizing I am about to run out of the one can of vanilla frosting I bought.  Shit.  In a panic, I frantically search online for homemade white icing recipe, throw together some of the extra powdered sugar and butter and then in a brief moment of sanity I said to myself: "this is NOT worth it."  I realized people would not be critiquing this cake the way I might, the chocolate ganache would coat the cake just fine, plus I had fondant to put on too.  So I left the weird concoction in the bowl and went back to my cake.  I took a break in there somewhere to shower and Madonna-ize myself before coating and cooling the cake. 

I thought about taking the cake and finishing it at Kelsi and Kristin's, but I couldn't think of how to get all the pieces safely and neatly over there, so I finished it at home, all except the fondant squares.  The cube survived a taxi ride to San Fernando where it was ready to get its fondant.  Turns out I am also bad at measuring, and the squares were too big, so I had to cut them down again.  By this point, I said forget it to trying to make it look all nice and fancy and just put squares anywhere and everywhere.  Finally, by 9:30 Kelsi and I had our Rubik's cube birthday cake.  Everyone seemed to be pretty impressed and it turns out it tasted pretty darn good too, thank goodness.  I wish I would have gone with the "in progress" look, but I was too chicken and my cake shaping skills are not the best, so my cakes were a little instable.  Maybe next time.  HAH yeah right, there will NOT be a next time for this cake.  OK maybe there will be.

Verdict: SUCCESS!

Totally yours,