I must start by saying that buying Surprise-Inside Cakes is one of the best purchases I have ever made. Not only is Amanda Rettke a baking genius who is willing to share her greatest secrets, she also reveals solutions to the issues I haven't figured out for myself.
One of the biggest lessons learned so far is that having the right equipment is an absolute must. I would say that before last week, I had about half of what I needed to properly decorate a cake, but I was still fighting crumbs mixing in with icing and finding it impossible to have a smooth cake.
There were three tools the book recommended having that I was still missing: a rotating cake stand, a cake leveler, and bake-even strips. Luckily, I already had the baker's blade (great for lifting up cake layers and moving cakes from one surface to another), and the offset icing spatula. The Wilton brand continues to be the most affordable option for amateurs like myself and Amazon never fails to have everything I need under Prime two-day shipping.
After a solid week of studying my new baking bible, I geared up for my first surprise cake project and decided to go with a chocolate/vanilla cake combo. To prevent myself from choosing the hardest cake in the book because "it looks so pretty," I decided to cut out simple circles from each level and alternate the color of cake. If that didn't make sense, it will later on.
After baking both of my cakes using the bake-even strips soaked in water and wrapped around the pans (this prevents "doming" on the top), I used my new leveler to slice the cakes in half horizontally. Once I had my layers cut, I used a large round cookie cutter to cut out a circle from the center of each layer. To create the "surprise inside," I placed the opposite color cake circle into the larger rings.
I used a buttercream icing in between the layers and continue to stack them, alternating the colors. Lining up the layers was pretty important to meet my end goal of a smooth looking cake, but whatever imperfections I couldn't fix would be blended with the icing.
Now to the point of this project: the icing. The Amazing Amanda taught me the importance of the crumb coat. When making cakes before, I would do basically the same steps as above, slap some icing on the thing, and attempt to smooth it all out. Without fail, crumbs would mix in with the icing and the whole thing looked like my three-year old nephew made it. The rotating cake stand is without a doubt the secret to preventing "crumbing." After placing a large amount of icing on top, I held the spatula just above the surface and held it in place while slowly spinning the cake stand. The leftover icing spilled over the side while doing this which leads me to the next step. Once the top layer of icing was level, I repeated the same steps and placed the spatula along the side of the cake and again slowly spun the cake stand. After going back and forth from the top to the side, I finally had the finished product I was looking for: a mostly evenly-iced cake with little to no crumbs mixed in with the icing. Since this is only the crumb coat, the cake goes into the freezer overnight until I am ready to decorate tomorrow evening. Freezing the iced cake gives it a much easier surface to decorate tomorrow.
So until then, buy Surprise-Inside Cakes and start to get inspired by your own creativity! I am excited to see how this cake turns out!
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