VW Beetle Cake in Buttercream

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Link to all my videos:
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I made almond sour cream cake, just using my regular yellow cake recipe (http://seriouscakes.com/wordpress/?pa...) by subbing in almond for vanilla and swapped out half of the milk and replaced it with sour cream. I know there's some pretty big bubbles running through the cake, I overmixed just a tad (argh, didn't whisk that last round!). I actually doubled the recipe and baked them in two 9x13 pans. When you're baking in larger pans you need a heating core so the cake will bake evenly instead of the sides being overdone while the middle is still mushy. I like to use 2 flower nails, turned upside-down and sprayed with baking spray. I'll put both in the pan and pour the cake batter around those. When the cake is done and I remove the cake from the pan, I can get those nails out without any problems.
The yellow handled thingy is called a Cake Lifter from Wilton. I like to use it sometimes to practice new techniques on, and sometimes to lift cakes :)
This was a cake for my sister-in-law whose father has a classic VW beetle. She sent me several pictures so I could have a good idea of what it looked like. I was unsure if I wanted to kind of boost the cake up like I did the firetruck cake but then I came across this:
http://www.sifbeth.dk/gallery.html
Among her amazing cakes she also has some car cakes and that's what was the clincher for me. Take the time to check out her work, and she also has some great tutorials on there.
I've been hearing about 'Cake Balls' for the past couple years on both the Wilton and Cakecentral forums but never had the nerve to try them until recently. I used my food processor to get the crumbs all evenly cut up but you could also use a couple of forks. Few dollops of leftover buttercream, mix thoroughly, roll into balls, freeze, then roll in melted chocolte. For some amazing Cake Balls check out:
http://www.bakerella.com/
Bakerella, if you read this, know that I'm addicted to your site!! You have cute-ness down to an art :D She's the reason I took the plunge to try them. I'm still perfecting them so no, I won't do a video on it for awhile. I'm also thinking about giving them a new name if I start taking them to gatherings, just feel funny saying, 'Here, have some cake balls!' My daughters were unfortunately not very helpful, one suggestion was to call them 'Mrs. Browns'. Yeah...ok....
I know one of the questions you guys will want to know is how I got the frosting so red. A. I combined some orange, some burgandy, and a LOT of Wilton's red no taste, B. Color deepens over time and actually if have hot hands and pipe it on, the heat from your hands will darken the color. So, the red is pretty deep in the video, but over the next 2 days it got darker and darker. And for black use chocolate buttercream. You won't need as much food dye for it to be a good dark black. I always save my leftover buttercream so I have plenty if I need it for another project.
We had a party to go to the next day (not the one I made the cake for) so I really one had one good day to work on the cake. I started around 9am, got my buttercream made, the boards covered (used 3 since the cake was going to be heavy) and got all my supplies out. Hubby had the day off and took care of the kiddies, lol, and they really gave him a run for his money. Around 2pm he was waving a white flag so I took a break and didn't get back to work on the cake until about 7pm (we went out for awhile for some family time). I had wanted to film as much as possible but my memory card ran out of space. I tried to empty it into the computer but it took over an hour and I had to keep working. SO, that is why I didn't film all the finer details. The angle of the picture isn't the best either, sorry about that but the other angles just looked weird.
Music: Dvorak, Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95