Meren's Space Cake Part One

Well well well, it is a cliché but so flipping true. I can't believe we're busy celebrating Meren's 15th birthday. Time really does fly the older you get, and I think you use a lot more metaphors.. Like Yoda 🤣

Speaking of Yoda, we just gained access to the Disney Channel and we will be binge-watching Star Wars while having a good old braai. Well, the kids will be binge-watching movies, I intended to play my guitar with a good glass of wine (or two) and trying to get some practice in for next week's show! - I only made it through 1 glass of wine before promptly passing out, so that didn't happen 🤣🤦‍♀️

Of course, like the nerds we are, we watched the Star Wars movies in order of release so that the boys could get the feel of the story that the original audience would have seen and felt in the 70s 80s and 90s.

We started with episodes 4, 5 and 6 and then 1, 2 and 3.

So, with this theme, and because we've been watching Star Trek (also in release order) since the beginning of the year, it just made sense to make a proper space cake!

From white chocolate stars to cascading ombre blues, we're actually all adding a tough of magic. @zakludick has plenty of other work to do for the party so his involvement with the cake (which is an important job) is munching all the left over icing and any cake that is cut off to neaten up edges, etc.

I had been baking since Wednesday morning and did my last three layers on Thursday morning, making this a 6 layer cake, all together. My new oven is spectacular and the only thing that stopped me baking all 6 layers at once was the fact that I only have 3 26cm tins. But, I could, you know, if I wanted to, cause my new oven is so cool. 4 days of baking apparently knocked me out completely and I was out for almost 24 hours!

I learned so freaking much over the last two enormous baking marathons, for Easter and Mother's day, Like how to not burn chocolate or be overly ambitious with layers of cake.

I'm also not making a wide range of products and I am just sticking to the cake for Meren's birthday. Believe me, there have been plenty of steps to follow to get this right and as I was building the cake last night, and @merenludick was suitably absent as he was being entertained for his birthday my his aunt and family.

Anyway, as I said, first it was the cake layers, which in hindsight, I could have actually made more batter. This cake actually needed 3 batches where I only made two to bake 6 layers. I also substituted baking powder with baking soda (because I didn't want to go to the shop again), which works in a pinch, but they didn't rise as well as I'd hoped. That being said, the cake DEFINITELY passed the taste test and I think it looked completely out of this world!

Also, I don't normally use self-raising four as I don't see why I should stock two different types of flour, but I think it will be worth it in helping my cakes to rise better and be more fluffy.

I was however, extremely happy with the colour gel and I love how richly it coloured both the cake batter and the icing! The cake was a little difficult to judge, colourwise when they came out of the oven, but once cooled, I could remove the baking paper and scrape away the golden brown bits -that we normally perceive as yummy- but in this instance was making the layers look a bit green. I was right though and underneath those layers was most satisfying grades of light to dark shades of blue, from pure white batter to indigo.

The same went for the icing itself, which I chilled for at least 30 minutes before icing my first crumb coat. I matched the icing with the layer of cake concerned, arranging them from lightest to darkest. I still can figure out why it's happening, but there is always one tin that rises skew. I suspect it has something to do with a rise at the back both the baking grid in the new oven, as opposed to being flat, like the old ones. Anyway, I had to cut some of the cake away, which made me grumpy as I had to do this to the sides too, which made it difficult to ice initially.

Being a bit of a perfectionist, I was expecting end results out of a first layer/ crumb coat, which is not fair on me ( or the cake) so, after sufficiently covering the cake with icing last night, I called it at about 10h30 before I did any damage, trying to perfect a cake that needed to rest. When I looked at it again with fresh eyes in the morning, I am so glad I did! I filled my piping guns with icing and filled all the wholes, nooks and crannies. I was actually surprised at what beautiful cloudlike rosettes my big plastic piping nozzle gave me at the bottom of the cake in white, so I'll ty to not disturb that at all later. When I was done with the icing blend and smoothing, which I will did with a warmed butter knife for a smoothed out effect, I ended up adding some beautiful clouds as well, using the piping gun and then sort of smudging them out to make them look more "natural."

As for stars, I decided to, and I've been considering it all week as we've searched for my star silicone ice trays, made them out of white chocolate and although I originally thought of using skewer sticks, I decided that using spaghetti would be way cooler in giving them ''''''the effect of "floating" around the cake. I also accentuated these with silver baubles and silver glitter for that final touch!

Then of course, the most fun I have had so far, has been making the figurines or cake toppers! Oh my gosh, I think I have fallen in love with fondant!! As it turns out, it lasts pretty long as long as you store it correctly: in a very tightly squeezed airtight plastic bag. Aime and I had such a ball that I actually had to stop us because we were going to run out of space on the cake! Since we were makin aliens, we could use any colour we wanted so I got to use up almost all of my left over fondant from the mother's day biscuits, which I am so glad about since some of it was drying out and growing brittle, and there's no cure for that. Other worldly beings didn't seem to mind what colour they were!! We made some of them viscous and some of them cute, but my favourite are the astronauts who were designed to look like they were waiting the side of the road for a pickup, but also, thoroughly enjoying the view: either not noticing (or not worrying) about their alien counterparts.

For whatever reason, The astonaught's rocket crash landed onto the planet below leaving the stranded - and probably leaving the astronauts dazed and confused as they wait for rescue as aliens of all sorts creep around to investigate them!