Easter Basket Layer Cake

Easter is always a great occasion to bake.   Last Easter I made a beautiful Easter Basket Layer Cake.   This cake was a three layer checkerboard cake with strawberry cream filling, done in a basketweave pattern and adorned with sugar cookie eggs and two cute gum  paste bunnies.  Sadly only one cute gumpaste bunny made it to NJ.   

I will break down making the cake into 5 parts: gum paste work, sugar cookies, baking the cake, icing the cake and assembling.

Gum Paste: Several days before even baking the cake you can start the gum-paste.  Gum paste for those who have never done it is much like sculpting with play dough except it hardens quickly.

I didn't take a class on how to use gum paste but I do have some sculpting background.   But you can buy gum paste in a bag, so its fun to try to make things with it.

To color gum paste cover your hands with Crisco and put some gel food coloring on the gum paste, then kneed it until the color has spread throughout.  It does fade, especially reds, so you want to go a little darker then your final desired color.  I made my gum paste pink, yellow, blue, and magenta.

To make my bunnies, it is best to start by making all the little details.  I rolled out two thin pieces of blue fondant and folded them up to make bows.   I used some of the tools to form the creases in the bows as I folded them.   I rolled out the white fondant into thin pieces and cut out 4 bunny ears.  Then using the pink fondant I cut the inner ears.   For the girl bunny I decided to fold her ears down, so I curved them on a drying rack so they would be the shape I wanted.

To make the bodies I created two balls of white gum paste and like making a snowman I attached them together.   Then I drew the faces with a gum paste carving tool, added the pink noses and I draped her yellow dress over the bottom ball that was her body.   I made the arms and paws out of white gumpaste and used a carving tool to give them toes.   Then before attaching the small details I gave them eyes using black gel food coloring and a fine paint brush.  I also gave the girl bunny rosy cheeks with paint dust (found in any craft store in the cake decorating aisle.)

Then I assembled it together.  As I mentioned gum paste hardens quickly, but you can wet the gum paste to stick pieces together.  I had to do this several times.  My mistake when making the bunnies however was not using toothpicks to assemble the pieces.  I should have put toothpicks on both the top and bottom of the girl bunnies head, using them to push into the body and the bow, to hold it all together, and of course on the boy bunnies head as well.  I could have also done with with both their arms and feet.  If I had the girl bunny probably would have made it to NJ in one piece.  Instead her foot fell off and when I bent down to pick it up her head rolled off and hit the ground, shattering her ears and bow.   So she never made it on the cake.

The other piece I made ahead of time out of gum paste was the basket handle.  I took two pieces of white gum paste and rolled them into long tubes about the same width.  Then I twisted them together.   To form the shape I used a fondant/gum paste mat that shows dimensions of cakes.  I took the pan I was using and found the shape I wanted to curve the handle.  You want the handle to reach almost the very ends of the cake (the full diameter) but if it goest to far it won't stay in the cake, instead it will break the edge and fall off.  So you have to cheat the basket handle a little, making it just slightly shorter then you would expect.   (You'll also cheat it a little with the icing).  Then shape it so it forms a semi-circle and let it dry.

Making the Sugar Cookies:

The next part of making this cake was making the sugar cookies.   Most of them I put on sticks but I left some without sticks to go on the side of the cake.  I used my favorite sugar cookie or roll-out cookie recipe:

Basic Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

To Make the Dough:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large mixing bowl beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until its light and fluffy. 
3. Beat in the egg and the vanilla and almond extract. 
4. In another bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.   Add it to the butter/sugar mixture 1/2 cup at at a time, mixing well after each addition.  
5. Divide the dough into two balls.  If your not going to use the mixture right away refrigerate it, but take it out of the fridge about 1/2 hour before your going to use it.
6. Bake them 8-11 minutes or until lightly brown.

If your adding sticks to them make sure you do this before you bake them.  I stamped out the cookies, laid a piece of dough on the cookie sheets, put the stick over the piece of dough and then the g shaped cookie over the stick.  this  ensues that the stick bakes into the dough, though I still had some that lost the sticks.  Jason didnt mind taking them off my hands, but make sure you make extras.

Then use your favorite color flow or royal icing recipe.  I prefer royal because they get a shiny, glossy look to them.  

Royal Icing

Yield: Approximately 3-4 cups

• Sift together 1/4 C. Meringue Powder & 1 lb. Confectioner's Sugar into a mixing bowl.

• Add 1/2 C. warm water LESS TWO TBSP

• Beat at medium speed until a spatula drawn through the mixture will leave a clean path and the icing stands up in stiff peaks.

You can and will want to adjust the water depending on what your doing and the humidity in the air.  While your better off to be cautious with the water and add water slowly until the consistency is correct, if you accidentally make it to watery, you can add a little confectioners sugar to stiffen it.

When making the icing for cookies you will want to add more water to get to a consistency you can use to flood the cookies.  Be careful, if you add to much water the cookie will have a dull appearance and the icing will never fully harden.  I suggest making the recipe above exactly as called for.   Then separate the icing into the bowls for different colors.   Be sure to put damp towels over each bowl or the icing will dry out.  Once you have the desired colors, split the icing again, using most for flooding the cookie, but keeping some at a harder consistency so that you can add details later.  (If its a moist day you might want to start with even less water then the recipe above calls for.)   Once you've separated your colored icing take the flood icing and add water, but add it a tsp at a time.  The moment the icing is soft enough to spread, stop adding water. 

Ice your cookies however you would decorate your Easter eggs, then once they've dried cover them and put them aside.

Making The Cake:

Once you've decorated your eggs it's time to bake the cake.  You can make any cake you want but since I chose to use a checkerboard pattern I decided on a white cake which I colored in pastels.  I used a special checkerboard pan for this, built with three rings in it.

Checkerboard Cake Set - Wilton

It was my first attempt working with this pan, so it didn't come out perfect, but i think the trick is to have someone hold the rings down while you pour in the pattern.

Making the Filling:

For filling I made strawberry cream filling with fresh strawberries.  

Strawberry Cream Filling: 

Ingredients: 

• 16 ounces of fresh strawberry, processed
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup strawberry jam
• 2 tbsp cornstarch

Combine the ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat, whisking constantly until thickened, about 8-10 minutes.   Remove from heat and chill before using.

Icing & Assembling the Cake:

For icing I used a buttercream recipe, but as this cake was traveling I didn't use my favorite buttercream, instead I used one that is a combination between my traditional buttercream and decorator icing.  (Decorator icing holds its shape better.)  This is Wilton's Buttercream Icing and it's the use of vegetable shortening and confectionary sugar, over butter and basic white sugar, is what makes the biggest difference in the consistency, but it also makes it sweeter.   This is also a better recipe when trying to go for a pure white, as butter has a natural yellow color.  

Click Here for the Wilton Buttercream Icing Recipe: Buttercream Icing

 

Make sure to use clear vanilla extract.  While it doesn't taste as good, it will keep the icing white.  

Crumb coat the cake with the icing all the way around. 

To make the basket I used the Basket Weave pattern.  This is something I can't teach you in a blog.   But its a simple technique made easier by using two tips at a time.  Then I used the large star tip (21) to make the basket edge around the top and bottom border.   

Now is a good time to add your basket handle so that you can still fix it with the icing.  Particularly when your using the green grass icing, which is your next step.

Then dye the remaining icing green and using the grass tip (233) fill in the tip of the basket with grass.  

Now press your outside cookies to the basket sides of the cake.  This is a great way to cover up an imperfections you might have.  Like on this cake the basket handle pushed the cake down on one side, so I put a cookie by each side of the basket handle.  

Because I took this cake to NJ I waited and finished assembling it there.  First I placed my lone bunny on the cake and then I added the cookies on sticks around it.  I broke some of the sticks so that they were all different heights in the basket.