The Gluten-Free Birthday Cake

Obtained from Cup4Cup Website

A gluten free diet may appear to be a bit of a fad right now but for persons who are gluten intolerant or who suffer from celiac disease, it is a health decision.  I recently baked a cake for a friend who is gluten intolerant and I must say that the experience has enriched my journey. In order to do this right, I had to research as much as I could about gluten and the food that contains gluten. I also had to reach out to suppliers such as Wilton to find out whether specific products were gluten free; it was a long list of Wilton items. In addition, I had to spend several hours in various stores reading labels to make sure that the ingredients that I used were also gluten free. At the end, I was able to bake up a devil's food cake with ganache filling and frosting. My kitchen is not a gluten free kitchen but I tried my best to deliver a tasty gluten free cake with a disclaimer that this 'home baked cake was made in a kitchen where non gluten foods are also present, but that it was made with care and specially for you!'. It helped that the 'birthday lady' was not a sufferer of celiac disease as her diet would have been a lot more restricted. I love the fact that in addition to learning to bake and decorate cakes, I am also learning a lot about friends and health in general.

Let's get to Baking!

The birthday cake is fashion inspired. I had planned to carve out a handbag from sheet cakes but I saw this beautiful handbag calendar at Michaels. So many ideas came to mind when I saw all those handbag designs, that I just had to have it. So now I have many designs for inspiration! Using parchment paper, a ruler and my scissors, I got to work on my template.

• Two 8" cakes were leveled and filled with ganache. For this design, the cake needs to be upright to create the 3D effect. 
• Cut enough cake from the bottom of the stacked cakes so that the cake can 'stand'. I had to carve several times to get the cake to remain stable. Maybe I didn't really need to, but cutting more helped soothe my nerves, as it seemed less likely that the cake would topple over.
• Cut a cake board into the shape of the bottom of the cake. Then spread some ganache on the board so that it will act as glue when you place the cake on it.
• At this point it is time to decorate the cake. I used my template to cut out the fondant to create the design. In addition, I used sugar pearls to add some 'sparkle' to the cake. The fabric mold comes in handy for fashion inspired cakes. The buttons were made ahead of time and painted using pearl dust mixed with clear vanilla extract. The buckles were made using flower petal cutters and they were also painted with gold dust.
• A long strip of fondant was used to make the handle.
• Use the quilting tool to add stitching detail to your cake.

Lessons learned:

• I didn't make enough ganache therefore I had to really stretch the ganache that I had. As a result, I was not able to obtain the smooth finish that ganache allows. It is very important for the crumb coat to be smooth as the fondant accentuates any faults that may appear in the crumb coat. Since, ganache has to set overnight, it is best to make more than you think that you would need.
• I used ganache under white fondant and I didn't cover the entire cake with a coating of fondant before placing the specially shaped pieces of fondant on the cake. As a result, there were spots where the ganache could be seen. Next time, I will cover the whole cake and then continue to design the cake.

Don't forget to share pics of your edible 'kreations'! Till next time, "Happy Baking!"