And so, since his birthday was coming and I had taken up cake decorating, my stepmom commissioned me to make a cheeseburger cake for his 58th. I've seen the cheeseburger cake in many forms over the years. In fact, the first time I ever saw one was at my best friend's birthday party in elementary school. So I'm very familiar with it. But, I knew it was going to be a bit of a challenge. Especially since it would be my first attempt at covering cake with fondant. And not just any fondant - homemade rolled fondant that I would make myself. And I made that choice for two reasons - because fondant doesn't appear to come in the color I was looking for, at least not a bunch of it. And, although Wilton makes a lovely rainbow of spray colors, they don't make brown or tan. (And an airbrush machine is $300, I believe, so that was absolutely out.)
Step one was lots and lots of research. Studying photos on Google, finding You Tube tutorials, various cake blog descriptions and advice, etc. I must say that You Tube tutorials have been a lifesaver so far. I don't even know why people need to go to school for stuff like this anymore. :P I'm also a very visual learner and since people mostly suck at writing instructions, it's always best for me to watch somebody do something.
Step two - was just to make it work.
Unfortunately, I was sick for the last two days of last week, which meant I spent most of my time in bed. But somehow, I managed to drum up enough strength on Friday evening to begin baking. The party was the following evening.
Because I was making a stacked cake covered in fondant (which means it's heavy), I knew I would have to dense up my cake recipe or find a good scratch one. I learned through online research that it's very simple to dense up a box mix by changing up the recipe a bit and adding instant pudding to the mixture. So - I densed up yellow cake mix and baked my "buns." Another ingenious thing I learned online is that a Pyrex bowl is the perfect baking container for the top bun. So - I utilized my glass Pyrex for the top bun and an 8 inch round for the bottom. The results were great!
The "burger," I made out of a densed chocolate cake recipe - an 8 inch round. I wrapped all of the cake layers in several layers of cling wrap and refrigerated them overnight.
Making fondant is a simple but messy process. Yet, I really feel that it's worth it, considering the same amount of fondant in a store will cost you four or five times the price. It's just marshmallows, water, powdered sugar and flavoring. That's it. But - you have to have a good stand mixer with a dough hook. And - even after the dough hook does its work, the work is not done. You have to knead it for at least 10 to 15 minutes. The greatest part about it, though, other than the cost, is that you can color it while it's still in the liquid process. And if you've ever seen those bakers on TV painfully kneading color into large lumps of white fondant, you know it's not something you want to mess with if you don't have to.
I also made the buttercream the day before -finally adding creme bouquet flavoring to the mix, which made the buttercream taste as close to bakery style icing as I've ever made. I was super pleased with it.
Day two consisted of assembly and decorating. I had another challenge as well. I had to split and fill two layers of the cake - the bottom bun and burger patty. I'd never split cake layers before. And my dad requested German chocolate frosting for the filling-the coconut, caramel pecan concoction. I went with the canned stuff because I know making that stuff is a huge headache. The issue there was that the frosting is very, very wet and would add a ton of moisture to the cake - not always a bad thing, but that bottom bun wasn't a very thick layer to begin with, so I needed to proceed with caution.
And then I had a misstep - I decided that I would do a nutella buttercream for the patty frosting. I figured it would be simple - scoop out of some of my fresh buttercream, blend in a container of nutella and voila.
Only there was no voila.
It was a disaster. It turned into some sort of weird dough like mixture. I added chocolate milk and brown food coloring. And mixed and mixed and mixed. It was weird. It was chewy. It was almost like a failed fudge. However, it would have to do. There was no way I was making more buttercream. At this point I had already put FIVE POUNDS of powdered sugar into the elements of this cake. Yes - FIVE!!
So, I continued on doing things I'd never done before. The cake splitting came out perfectly, but I had watched several videos on how to do it right, so I owe it all to those. I made fondant lettuce, tomatoes and cheese slices out of Wilton fondant that I bought - the pack that comes with the primary colors. My sis helped me mix up icing ketchup and mustard. The undyed frosting served as mayonnaise. And then, I commenced putting it together.
I was super intimidated when it came to the cake covering step. And my first attempt was a disaster. The key, crucial thing is - the rolling surface MUST be completely covered in powdered sugar or cornstarch. Not a little . . .a LOT. I learned this the hard way. Every bit of the fondant stuck to the table the first time around, and I had to scrape it off and start over. We actually used a sifter and sifted a good layer of sugar onto the table. I rolled it out into a giant circle and it lifted easily. I draped it on the bottom bun and it was easy to smooth. Then, as I've seen so many times in tutorials and on TV, I used a pizza cutter to cut off the excess. I have to admit, it looked perfect. Once I had smoothed off most of the powdered sugar, it was great. And, the cool thing was a bit of powdered sugar wasn't too bad - because sometimes you'll see flour left on your burger buns.
The nutella buttercream worked out better than I could have hoped. Because of the consistency, it almost had a fondant texture to it which made it hard to dent. You could touch it and it wasn't tacky and wouldn't come off, so that was awesome. Top bun process also went very well. I stacked the bottom bun and patty, then added my lettuce, cheese and tomatoes - just around the perimeter (since that's the only part you'll see). At this point, I decided to add straws for support -yes just regular old drinking straws. They worked out well. Then, I gently put on the top bun. It looked better than I would have imagined. The last step was to pipe condiments and the sesame seeds on the bun. I waited for my "seeds" to dry, then dipped a clean finger into powdered sugar and flattened down the seeds for a better look.
Earlier in the week, we'd acquired some Burger King sandwich wrappers and empty fry boxes. The night before I'd also made a pound cake that I cut up into "fries." We placed them in the boxes and used the papers to decorate our cake board.
And -voila, here is the result. I have to say, I'm kind of stunned. It was everything I could have hoped for.
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