silverblue94 replied to your photo “Some quick and easy cocoa cakes!”
How are they quick an easy??
Okay, so! I understand how these might look a little intimidating at first glance, BUT! I’m gonna break them down for you, because--with the possible exception of the handle, which I’ll get to--this is actually a GREAT beginner cake! Let’s take another look at it:
So, step one! The first thing you’re going to do is base ice your cake. I did mine in a thick fudge icing, but you can do whatever you’d prefer--buttercream, cream cheese, whipped cream, etc, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you get it on the cake and somewhat smooth. I use an offset spatula and a scraper to ice my cakes. The spatula is just to get the icing on the cake and I use the scraper to smooth it out. If you have neither of these things, that’s fine. I’ve iced a cake with a butter knife before and while it’s not great? It does work.
Step one, oh so easy!
Step two! Pick whatever colors bring you bliss, dye your buttercream--and you do want buttercream for this, it’s the easiest to color--and get ready to pipe dots! Don’t have a piping bag? Don’t have piping tips? NO PROBLEM! Grab a ziplock bag, dump your frosting into it, cut off one of the corners of the bag, instant homemade piping bag, you’re ready to go! This isn’t fancy piping work. You are literally just piping dots around the top and bottom of your cake. They can be as big or as small as you’d like. They can vary in size if you think that would look cool. They don’t have to be smooth, they don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be dots.
Step three! Still got your ziplock baggie? Does it have white frosting in it? Good. Cut your hole a little bigger this time and, starting from the outer edge of your cake, just inside the barrier created by your lovely dots, pipe a nice, thick, lumpy line spiraling in toward the center of your cake until the top is covered. Plop some marshmallows on top.
Which brings us to step four: the handle. This is the only step that might give you any trouble, because piping liquids can be a pain and I made them from melted chocolate. In a perfect world, I would have done them from tempered chocolate since I’m a Fancy Bitch like that, but tempering isn’t something we do at work, because of Reasons like it being time consuming, really easy to mess up, and requiring much more expensive chocolate than we keep in stock. We use dipping chocolate instead. You could also use candy melts, which come in a wide range of colors, if you’re feeling particularly sassy. So, to do the handle I’d suggest grabbing some parchment paper, though wax paper or aluminum foil could work in a pinch. If you don’t want to freehand the handles like I did, take a dark sharpie and draw what you want them to look like directly on the paper. Flip the paper over; you’ll still be able to see what you drew and you won’t get any marker on the chocolate. Melt your chocolate or candies as directed on the packaging, pour it into another ziplock piping bag, cut a SMALL hole--at least to start until you feel comfortable with a bigger one--and fill in your handle templates. They should dry within a few minutes and peel right off your parchment paper.
If that sounds like too much trouble to you, an alternative would be buying some candy canes and sticking one on the side of the cake to serve as a handle instead. Super cute and then you have candy canes!
And there you have it! You’ve made an adorable mug cake of your very own, which you can promptly faceplant into and enjoy! :D
