Saturday 21 July 2012

Happy Birthday! Cakes Part II: Batter Bowl Cakes A

My “play job” outside of school is being a Pampered Chef consultant.  If you are not familiar with Pampered Chef Batter Bowls, they are glass with a handle, spout, raised graduated measuring lines, and you can use them in the freezer, microwave, and even for baking.

Many little girls have been delighted with Barbie cakes featuring a cake skirt baked in the Classic Batter Bowl (the large one), iced, with a dolly sticking out of it.  Some cooks have used the Small Batter Bowl (SBB) to bake breasts for breast cancer fundraisers or stags!  A quick Google image seach for “pampered chef batter bowl cakes” showed bee hives, hot chocolate and tea cups, volcanos, jack-o’lanterns, graduation caps, ladybugs, pineapples, and pregnant bellies.

For Miriam’s 9th birthday, I made a fish bowl.  I prepared a regular cake mix batter and baked two cakes in the Classic Batter Bowl (CBB).  Once cooled, I adhered the two wide sides together with icing to form a whole bowl shape; the flat top and bottom were perfect.  Next came a layer of white around the top for the “clear” part of the fishbowl, then water-blue for the rest.  As you can see, I’m not very skilled at smooth icing-work…L  I tried to conceal the not-so-perfect edge with piping to show the “rim” of the bowl.  Something to work on...  Do you see the waxed or parchment paper strips underneath the cake to keep the plate clean? 


To decorate the bowl, I wanted some aquarium plants so took some packages of Fruit-By-The-Foot and put them in the fridge; my thought was that the roll-ups might firm up a bit before cutting.  I grabbed some kitchen shears to cut them into weed shapes but, NO, the stuff was still VERY sticky!  I kept rinsing the shears with cold water, sprayed them with Pam, and whatever else I could think of to make the job easier.  No improvement.  Can’t win ‘em all, I guess. 

Next, it was time to add the fishies!  No-brainer for this, just added Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers. I did give them a little icing-dot eye.  Now you can buy different colors of fish so your cake could depict more diversity in the waters.  I couldn’t have suffocating fish, so added white chocolate chip bubbles.  I had to poke them really firmly into the icing and cake since they’re relatively flat objects. 

Here is a look at what the completed cake looked like: 

(I love the laughter of my nephews and daughter in the background;
in 2009, I sure didn't anticipate that I'd be creating this blog!)

Finally, for the aquarium rocks, I came up with an edible mix of Rice Krispies and Willy Wonka Nerds candy.  I took little handfuls and pressed them up against the bottom of the cake.  You can see in the video that I used a Lazy Susan to help spin the cake as I iced and decorated.  Miriam had a friend party on one night and then a family party the next day.  When I served the cake at Soiree #1, we cut and served the top half of the cake only.  I hadn’t planned it, but as the bottom half remained, I just had to bake another top, ice it, and add some more decorations for use at the next party!

Glad you came to my island today! Thanks to my friend, Jenna, for letting me know that the comment section was being tricky.  I hope you can all add comments to the blog now if you wish to!

Jennifer  


P.S.  I made miniature versions of the fish bowl cake on cupcakes; I will do a posting on this later on but if you’d like it sooner than later, let me know.

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