Ohhh, I also wanted to mention another cake I made recently for Adam's office. His coworkers like to give me challenges. Recently one of them challenged me to make a Chai cake. Chai is one of my favourite flavours so I was all over that one!  I went searching for a recipe but most of the ones I found were experiments with which the creators were not quite happy. With this in mind I set out to create my own recipe.

Meanwhile, Adam's coworkers made a little fun of him by making an "Adam Potatohead". They stuck little post-its to it with Adam-like sayings. He told them that they were cut off from cake so they circumvented him and emailed me directly. I decided to make a Mr. Potatohead cake. I was going to sculpt the Mr. Potatohead but I ran out of time so I used a real one instead.  

In order to save some time I decided to doctor a cake mix instead of starting completely from scratch.  That's rather amusing to note when you find out that I hand ground the spices. I started out using an old coffee grinder but I managed to block that so completely that I had to switch to the mortar and pestle. Heh.

The cake came out spectacular and may be one of my top five best cakes ever. I'm going to try it again and try to make it a bit less sweet.  Here is a rundown of what I did:

For this recipe you'll need a total of 4 tsps. freshly grated ginger and 1 and 2/3rds cups of chai tea.

Spice Mix

2 tsps. fennel whole seeds
2 tsps. whole cloves
2 Tblsps. whole cardamom pods
1 star anise
2 peppercorn seeds
1 cinnamon stick

Grind up in your coffee grinder or failing that use a mortar and pestle. You may need to strain out any big chunks afterward.

Chai Tea:

2 Chai Tea bags
1 2/3 cups boiling water
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
2 peppercorns
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp. freshly grated ginger

Let steep until you're ready to use and then filter for use in everything but the syrup.

The Cake

1 Duncan Hines Orange Cake Mix
1 packet Dream Whip
4 eggs
1 small vanilla cook 'n serve pudding mix (not instant)
1/4 cup oil
1 cup strong chai tea, cooled
1 tsp. freshly grated ginger
2 tsps. spice mix

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Combine all ingredients in large bowl of electric mixer.
Beat on low speed just until moistened, scraping bowl sides often.
Beat on medium speed for 4 minutes, scraping bowl sides often.
Pour into greased and floured pans. I used one 8"x3" round pan.
Bake for about 40-50 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean.
Cool for 15 mins., then turn out onto cooling rack.


Icing

2lbs. confectioners sugar, sifted
3.5 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup warm chai tea
7 oz. Crisco
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tblsp. butter, softened
dash salt
2 tsps. spice mix
1 tsp. freshly grated ginger

Beat until smooth

Filling

1 Dream Whip packet
1 large instant vanilla pudding mix
8 oz cream cheese
2 tsps. spice mix
1 tsp. freshly grated ginger
1 cup cold milk
1 tsp. vanilla

Beat until smooth, refrigerate until you're ready to use.

Chai Simple Syrup:

Boil 1/4 cup chai tea. Pour over 1/2 cup sugar and 1 Tbsp. brown sugar. Stir until thick and melted. Set aside.
(Note: If you have leftovers, eat it on pancakes. Mmmmm...!)

Assembly:

Tort (split) the cake into 3 equal layers. Starting with the bottom layer:

Sprinkle lightly with chai syrup.
Using a piping bag, pipe a dam of icing about 1/2" inside perimeter of cake.
Fill inside the dam with filling
Add next cake layer.
Repeat

When layers are assembled, ice cake.

Of course, I'm an overachiever and had to hand mold some chocolates for decoration, too.

This cake had a definite chai flavour and everyone loved it! Several people said it was the best cake they'd ever eaten. One woman said she wanted to roll around in it. Heh.

Today I had the good fortune to take a cake decorating class with Food Network star and local favourite, Bronwen Weber.  Bronwen used to be a pastry instructor here in Austin at the Texas Culinary Academy. Today she taught us to make caricature cakes as well as an adorable stand-up poodle cake.

The class was somewhat frustrating. There were 16 students at 4 small tables in a very small room. You had to fight for space to roll out your fondant and you had to wait for people, like myself, who were inexperienced with an airbrush as there were only 5 airbrushes.

Those inconveniences aside, I learned some fun techniques and it was a class with Bronwen so how bad could it be?
;)

There were also a couple members of cake  decorating"royalty" present. Ruth Rickey and Janet Rosebeary were both present, having driven all the way from Oklahoma to attend the class. The class was held at All In One Bake Shop, which is owned by Jennifer Bartos who is Bronwen's sidekick for the Food Network challenges. Jennifer is a very nice lady and Bronwen is just as bubbly in person as she is on television.

Unfortunately, the cakes they provided were pretty soft. Couple that with a heavy head made from rice krispie treats and many of the poodles were falling forward by the end of the class.

Mine was perfect and didn't tip in class. The ride home, however, proved too much for the cakes infrastructure. About halfway home it started tipping forward and was resting it's ear on the side of the box.  I managed to get it in the house, snap a couple of pictures and then it split. That was hugely disappointing, to say the least.
 

My airbrushing was more than a little heavy handed so I decided to make my character cake a bit punk and gave him a mohawk and a soul patch. In the end I was pretty happy with the way he turned out. It was rather difficult to do some of the sculpting due to my long fingernails. I really need to cut them down before sculpting cakes in the future.