Pigs in Mud on a Cake

Ages ago, I found this picture.

From this place.

I immediately knew I wanted to make it for my friend Kaelin's birthday. So this weekend, I set to it. I made my melted ice cream cake (from the Cake Mix Doctor cookbook): a pint of Chocolate Explosion Ben and Jerry's, a chocolate fudge cake mix, and three eggs, baked at 350 for about 40 minutes.

Unfortunately, this was the weekend in which I learned exactly why you don't put a whole cake mix into an 8-inch round pan. The cake ended up with a muffin top.


No problem; once it cooled, I needed to cut part of the top off to frost it, anyway. So while it cooled, I made fondant piggies. I've never worked with fondant, before, but it was a lot like clay. Except if the fondant is perfect and your hands are slightly moist, you end up with glop in your hands. But the piggies turned out well.


(There is a little pig-butt in the upper left corner.)

Next, I sliced the top off of the cake, so I could work on a flat cake surface. This did not work very well. I highly advise not slicing crookedly.


Luckily, the ganache topping would cover it, I hoped. But first, the sides. I frosted them with chocolate icing and attached Kit Kats.

It was an incredibly warm day when I did this. The chocolate was so many kinds of melty. Rather than fingerprinting the whole cake, I stuck the candy in the fridge and waited till it had solidified again.


Then I continued. The awesome thing about this cake is that if the frosting oozes between the candy, it just looks like the pigs were splashing in the mud.


I'd mixed up the chocolate ganache earlier (1 cup of boiling heavy cream over 12 ounces of dark chocolate, whisked and allowed to cool). I poured it on the cake, covering the whole surface up to the edges, and then placed the piggy fondant pieces.


The white thing is a bar of soap. And I'm especially proud of the curly tail.


As was hoped, Kaelin loved her cake. I realized halfway through making it that this counts as one of my 25 things: baking something more complicated than usual and making other people eat it. It's not as picturesque as the original, but I think it was decent for a first try with fondant and ganache (and making it from memory, as I didn't have the picture in front of me).


My evil mission was a success.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sally Anns and a Can of Spam

Image
Sally Anns are one of my favorite cookies. By their taste alone, they evoke a sense of home and comfort, reminding me of the kitchen at my grandparents' place and the simple happiness of mid-afternoon sweets. They're the only food that evokes the thought, This would be better with a cup of coffee. Making them was a good Easter activity, especially as I was stuck away from the family due to unpacking (the books are now free!) and yard work shenanigans (such as finding a dead mouse in the yard, which was lovely). With help from my mom, I found the recipe in the family cookbook (my great-great-grandparents are on the cover, and other awesome old pictures are scattered throughout). I decided that the transgression of buying a can of Spam (just once) was worth it for the sake of the cookies. Poke holes in the bottom of the can to allow for air flow. I didn't have enough butter for a full batch, but half of one made 18 Cookies of Unusual Size. I made the mistake of
Read more

The Beatles' Help! Scarf

Image
Remember when I posted about making Beatles-themed crafts after seeing Cirque du Soleil's performance of Love? I've finished the first one. Here's a refresher of the original Help! scarf. Source And here's my version: a massive thing that I gave my sister for her birthday. In these shots, it's wrapped around her neck twice. I didn't measure the beast before I sent it to its new home, but it's probably about 8 feet long. Made with Caron yarn on size 8 needles, this tube scarf was 40 stitches in the round. Each block of color is 20 rows. The only tricky parts are getting a smooth transition between colors and what to do with the yarn ends inside the tube, but they are easy problems to solve. When you transitioning, knit a normal row with the new color, then pull tight the last stitch of the previous color. That last stitch shouldn't disappear entirely, but it will be close, and your problem will be solved. Then, because this scarf
Read more

Data in Social Science

The science aspect of social science work is central to improving social systems. Data inform whether we are moving in the right direction or need to adjust our course. However, data and science must not be the center of our work; we must keep focus on children, families, and individuals, whose experiences are nuanced and filtered through systems that hold innate bias, which rests within the data . By maintaining awareness of these biases and their potential, we can keep people at the center of our work and focus on the true causes of injustice and pain that many families deal with. Lack of awareness can be a slippery slope to believing that individuals or families are themselves at fault for their situations, be it lack of housing, interpersonal violence, or other abuse. With data that are conscious of systemic issues and biases, we can examine the true issues at hand, such as racism , financial instability, and ableist policies.  What good are any manner of properly applied scientifi
Read more