Originally planned for IDAHOBIT 2023 but then a bunch of life nonsense happened that pushed it back to today.
Rainbow-dyed baked vanilla cheesecake, covered in black-tinted dark chocolate ganache and decorated with rainbow-dyed cream cheese frosting and silver luster-dust.
Process shots under the cut:
Step 1: Prepare a standard baked vanilla cheesecake recipe. Line two greased and papered cake tins with a crushed Oreo + butter crumb base.
Step 2: Split the cheesecake batter to make 9 colours (6 rainbow bands + the trans flag) using gel food dyes. Pour into the center of the cake one after the other to create rings.
Step 3: Bake. Allow to cool completely in the oven (to prevent cracking or splitting between the rings), then transfer to the fridge until chilled.
Step 3.5: Regret using Oreos since they behaved weirdly in the oven. Resolve to use regular chocolate cookies + blue food gel for a dark base next time.
Step 4: Trim crust and top until roughly level.
Step 4.5: Continue to regret using Oreos as the weird crumb crust made a mess. Do some repair work on the crusts.
Step 5: Create a black tinted dark chocolate ganache by mixing 450g dark chocolate + 125mL cream + 5-8 drops of blue gel food dye. Place some ganache on the serving plates to hold the cakes in place. Ice the cakes, using alternating treatment with a cake spatula + knife + hot spoon + the fridge to level out and shape neat sides + edges.
Step 6: Spray chilled cakes with silver luster dust. Use a pastry brush to spread out any clumps.
Step 7: Make vanilla cream-cheese frosting. Split and dye into 6 rainbow bands using gel colours, then spread out on clingwrap and roll up into a sausage. Chill.
Step 8: Cut the clingwrap off one end of the frosting-sausage and insert cut-end-down into a piping bag with a big star nozzle. Do some design tests on the less-attractive backup cake before piping around the edge of the main cake.
Step 9: More luster-dust as needed.
Step 10: Serve your theatrical cake using a clean, very sharp knife. Wipe the knife between each slice to help prevent colour-smearing.
Frosted Funfetti Blondies I had to make another batch of these just for myself (and my boyfriend!) they were waaay too good to be given away. Original post here.