This week's cake was for my niece, Amanda, who is turning 21. She is a big fan of Starbucks, so I made her a Caramel Frappuccino Cake.
For the cake itself I use a salt caramel recipe from Cupcake Jemma. I even made the golden syrup and salted caramel that went into the batter. And after all that work, I have to say I was a disappointed in the cake. I found it a little dense, and overall lacking in flavor. But the salted caramel frosting was awesome. The frosting made up for the bland cake.
Prior to assembly, I made a few things for this cake. I made tiny white chocolate bars using Merckens chocolate and some tiny silicone molds. And did I mention that the molds were tiny? I mean really, really small. I didn't realize how small till I started to fill them with melted chocolate. I also made some white chocolate hot cocoa bombs in a pretty diamond heart shaped mold. I decorated them with white and gold sugar pearls.
And like a lot of my recent cakes, I used my Creality Ender 3 v2 3D printer to make an embosser for the Starbucks logo. (If you want to read an intro into 3D printers for cookie cutters you can read my post HERE. ) I used Choco Pan Bright White Modeling Chocolate for the logo. The modeling chocolate is stiffer than regular fondant, so I was able to get the fine details in the logo to show up. And I should also mention that even though the modeling chocolate is labeled as Bright White, it is more of a pale ivory or off white color.
Assembly was pretty easy. I just frosted the cake and then added a caramel drip, and I have to say I hate working with caramel. It is so sticky and drippy. Once the caramel was on the cake, it wouldn't stop dripping! I put it in the refrigerator to stop the oozing, but as soon as I took the cake out and it warmed up - the drips started to slowly slide down the cake. It drove me crazy. I've read recently that if you add some white chocolate to the caramel it will stop the constant downward creep of the caramel drip.
After the caramel drip was on, I added some buttercream rosettes and placed the white chocolate hearts, bars, and some almond cookies. This was a pretty quick and easy cake to make.
Here is Amanda blowing out her candles. Look at those drippy drips sliding down the cake. Oh Well.... Happy Birthday, Amanda.
Carol
