Playboy Cake, white chocolate ganache coloured pink - it can be done, and easily too!

After reading through my first post (many times, ugh), I realised it didn't have any dollar saving tips or any real issues..that were solved. So today I want to talk about our latest cake, which gave us plenty of challenges.
We made this cake for a friends daughter, Nikki. She wanted a pink and black Playboy caramel mud cake. We were stressed because it was the first cake we would make that wasn't for family or children, and it would be presented to her in a pub full of people we didn't know, ack major fear. 

The sweetness of caramel mud cake had us worried. We are not proficient at making fondant and hate the sickly sweet taste, so we opted for a white chocolate ganache. White chocolate so we could colour it, or that's what we hoped. After many hours of research I realised it wasn't as easy as banging some colour into the melted chocolate. I read many articles about using gel colours, Candy Melts and oil based powder dyes specifically made for chocolate. I live in a small country town, with only limited supplies nearby, I was beginning to think I would have to try something else until I finally found this forum cake-decorating.livejournal with confirmation that liquid dye had been used successfully. I decided to go for it (I didn't have many other options). 

Next was getting the perfect texture for the ganache, we wanted a thick smooth covering, while hunting I found vanilla sugar blog  which is amazing and this recipe was perfect for what we wanted. I decided we would just bang liquid red dye in the cream, get it as red as possible, then mix in the chocolate, believing the chocolate would dilute the colour once added. 

We tested with small batches. We also made some test cupcakes using caramel mud cake mix and caramel cake mix, we tried one of each and one mixed, trying to dilute some of the sweetness. The caramel mud cake was the sweetest, a very artificial taste, the caramel cake was a more authentic caramel flavour but not as strong, so we decided to go with the mixed version. We used the cupcakes to test the pouring ability of the chocolate. 

The first test came out great, I heated the cream to near boiling point, then added the colour, heaps of red, then poured this over the chocolate which I had ready over simmering water., the chocolate melted beautifully and was a rich red colour, we let it cool and thicken slightly. Then poured slowly over a cupcake with a spoon, you do have a little time to spread it with the back of a spoon without leaving marks. The white in the chocolate didn't dilute the colour much, so we decided we would add pink for the next batch.

so shiny once dry

We were happy after the test and concentrated on getting the flavours of the cake right, Once the mixed mud and caramel cake was cooked, Sneaky decided he wanted it to be higher, so decided to cook another cake and layer it. I was still concerned about the sweetness, especially mixed with the white chocolate. so we opted for a butter cake for the bottom layer. Once that was cooked, we tried it together with some of the left over red chocolate, Sneaky thought the caramel flavour wasn't strong enough, so he made up the 2 icing mixes that came with the cake mixes. We then tried each of these with the cake and chocolate, it was good and caramely, but Sneaky thought it needed one more hit and added Nestle Top'n'Fill Caramel to the icing, this went between the two slabs of cake.

Now the cake was ready to be cut out. 

I found the template at CakeCentral for the Playboy bunny, enlarged it in Word. This involved measuring the baking tin, then keeping the measurements of my document in word within those measurements. I then had it printed out at the local printer (lucky to have one here) on A3 paper, which cost me nada, YAY. We then cut it out and placed it on the cake...

Aaaah poop, it was just that tiny bit over at the bow and the edges of the ears, after all my measuring. I'd like to blame Sneaky here as I believe he jammed the tops of the cakes together when I think he should have jammed the bottoms together. The tin he baked them in flared out just a dash from the bottom up. Anyway Sneaky solved the problem by cutting along the neckline, removing the whole bow section, then he cut the bow part from another part of the cake, I did not witness this first hand as this is when I had to leave the room and find a beverage, way too nerve wracking for me.

Once this was done we prepared to apply the ganache. Now of course the ganache did not pour over the bunny shape as easily as the cupcake, didn't seem to pour at all, this is when I started to panic and left the room again. Sneaky was confident he could get it smooth with the knife, he smoothed by dipping the knife in hot water first. He did a fantastic job and all that was left now was the fun stuff. 

Our cake board was a new floor tile with black contact paper over, we cut a template of the cake shape in grease proof paper and placed under the cake on the board to keep the cake from touching the contact as we were unsure of the safety of food on contact. I did research it and the opinions were conflicting so I thought it best to play it safe.

We already knew we wanted black and silver for the details, so it was just a matter of placing them...yeah right. Those little silver balls are a pain to place on smooth icing. I had wanted to cover the whole bow and collar with balls but we were running out of time, so just went with the one row. The chain in the eye was my idea, I had initially thought a ring would go well there, but couldn't find one. 

Now you may just see this cake online with the name spelt "Nikki" instead of "Nikky" as pictured here. That's because on the way to the venue I had a panic attack and guessed we might have spelt her name wrong, so I checked through my messages from her Mum, and there it was Nikki with an "I". Aaaaaargh, so I had to remodel the "Y" on the way. 

It's also pretty obvious we ran out of time, our cake board is really bare and the "Happy Birthday" was a last minute addition.
All up we were pretty happy with this cake, actually very happy.
We learnt a lot, and realised we have to give ourselves much more time.

Minecraft cake coming soon.