Welcome to HowToCookThat, I'm Ann Reardon and this week we're taking some cake failures
that I've found on Instagram and YouTube and all around the place and showing you if you have this, how you can
rescue it and
actually nail it. Now, we're gonna start with this one, which I think is pretty good. (Laughter) 'Oh this failed.'
I wouldn't call that a fail. You should see the other fails that are coming later on in this video.
Your's is pretty good Jane. It's still round, and it's still standing.
'It's not really how I wanted it, I just don't think it looks particularly great'
Okay, so if you've got a cake that's still standing,
but it doesn't look as good as you thought that it would or you dreamt that it would look like, there is an easy
rescue for this! Let me start by trying to recreate the fail.
So hopefully we can learn about what not to do.
This one from Instagram says she used white chocolate ganache on his. Now
chocolate ganache is just made with
chocolate, in this case white chocolate, and cream, and you just heat that up in the microwave, and your ganache is
really yummy because that's it,
It's just chocolate and cream. But it does need to cool down to allow it to thicken up.
But so I can recreate the cake fail
I'm going to go ahead and use it straight away while it's still hot and it's still really runny.
Now you can see that this is still really thin so, it's just gonna keep
flowing off the cake because liquid will keep flowing to the lowest point it can get to, and off the cake stand there.
Now if I had
sprinkles or anything else to the top of this it will just add weight and it will keep flowing right off the cake,
but don't cry, not all is lost! This is an easy cake to rescue.
Step one is once it stopped dripping quite so much save that ganache from around the edge becausem as you know,
it's just chocolate and cream and it is really yummy,
so we don't want to waste it. Just scrape that back into the bowl. Now
put your cake in the fridge and put that ganache that we collected into a ziplock bag.
Seal it shut and flatten it out. Now just gives it a bigger surface area
so it's gonna cool down faster than it would in the bowl, and then just put that bag into the freezer.
Now take some compound white chocolate, and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds. And then
Stir it.
Now I know it looks like it hasn't melted and you don't need to stir but if you don't stir it will burn you'll get hot
spots. Another 30 seconds in the microwave and stir again, and you can see it's just starting to warm up now.
30 seconds, stir, and then yes,
you guessed it, another 30 seconds, and stir it and that's looking good. Tip that melted chocolate onto some foil and
spread it out a little taller than the height of your cake
and as I said
I'm using
compound chocolate and that's just to make it easy for you. Compound chocolate contains a vegetable fat,
not cocoa butter,
so you don't need to temper it. It it will set up nice and firm without needing to do that.
Once it's just starting to set, draw some lines down it so that it divides the chocolate into some tall strips.
Then on one edge run a knife along it to make it straight. Don't worry about the top
we just want the bottom edge to be straight.
Then wait about 10 minutes for that to set. Pull your cake out of the fridge, and add those strips of chocolate around
the edge of your cake. If you don't want to make your own chocolate shards
you could of course just buy chocolate bars and put those around the edge insteadm and then to save any more
disasters just to make sure
I'm going to take a ribbon and tie that around the cake just to secure those chocolate shards into place.
Now of course don't pull it really really tight or you're gonna snap your chocolate, just
loosely around there, tie it into a bow.
Now let me show you the ganache that's been sitting in the freezer while we did that, and see how thick that is now!
It's like really really thick frosting, so you could easily spread that on the top of the cake without it dripping everywhere.
Then you can add some fresh fruit or flowers or even candy to the top of the cake and it looks like
nothing went wrong! Look at that beautiful!
Cake fail number two. Lets turn the failure meter up a knotch.
What if the cake you're trying to make is starting to fall over and you're at the point of crying?
It is only a matter of time before that cake falls over and it will look like one of these Instagram pictures.
Now to recreate this is easy. All you need to do is bake your cake and before it's had a chance to cool down
properly, and I mean completely, add your buttercream between the layers,
put the other cake on top and add more buttercream on top of that and it all looks like it's going to be alright,
but it's only a matter of time before the warmth of the cake melts the frosting and it just
starts to slide off. Now this can also happen,
of course, if it's a really hot day or if you stack your cakes too high
without support. You can only have a couple, or three at the most, cakes
without needing some support in there. If your cakes are still intact like this
You could just let it cool and then put it back together and do what we did for cake failure number one,
but let's destroy it a bit more so that it matches the photos on Instagram.
Now if we just pretend that this is for a little boy's birthday party,
you don't want to serve it up like this,
then what we're going to do is just break it up a little bit more. and add some pieces of that top layer around.
I know it looks like I'm being more destructive. But what you want to do is make it look like this is deliberate.
We didn't want it to be a round cake. That was never our intention,
we know what we're doing. Pile some bits up in the middle, take a spoon or a knife and chunk some out of that side, and
now we need to make some more frosting. If you've got electric beaters by all means use that to make your frosting,
but if you don't you can do it by hand.
Beat up your butter or your margarine until it's smooth and soft, and then sift in the icing sugar and the cocoa powder to get
rid of any lumps, and then mix that through.
Now, I know this looks like it needs some water or some milk or some liquid
but do not add any liquid, none at all. Just keep mixing. It will come together.
It looks like it won't but it will. If you add liquid you'll get a lumpy mess like this mum found out.
No liquid, okay?
If you do want in a little bit of milk in your frosting, you've gotta wait until it's completely smooth
the sugar is completely mixed in with the butter,
then you can add a little bit, but if you want a stiff frosting you don't need any liquid at all.
Once that's smooth, I want to add some of that frosting all over
the pile of cake.
Now this doesn't have to look perfect because of the style of cake
I'm making. but you do need to make sure you cover all of the cake because what that does is it seals it in,
so that it doesn't dry out.
Now put some Oreos in a bag and smash them using a rolling pin.
This is your chance to take out some of that frustration about the cake not turning out quite how you wanted it.
Make sure you break it all up and give it a really good roll.
We want this really fine, and then sprinkle those crumbs over the whole surface of your cake. Now
I didn't take the middle of the Oreos out of this, they're all just mashed in together with the crumbs.
Sprinkle that all over.
Now grab some green candy,
I'm using Twizzlers, mint leaves are good for this too, just cut a small thin triangle,
and then split that into two, and fold down one piece
so it looks like a bit of grass, and then just poke that into your cake, and then from there
All you need to do is add a toy motorbike for a motorbike cake.
Or if your kid's not into motorbikes then how about some monster trucks or even some bugs?
No one would even know that this was a cake fail because they don't know what you set out to make in the first place.
But what if your cake is a total mess?
And you're not into the dirt idea. If you have a cake that is freshly baked, like this one,
it will be very
crumbly, and the more you move it and the more you muck around with it, the worse it's gonna get and the more it's gonna
crumble, but assuming that it tastes good we can still rescue even a cake
that looks like this. I think to get the same starting point
I'm going to have to just rip the cake into pieces
and kind of crumble it up on a tray and then take some pink store-bought frosting and just whack that on top.
There we go. That's close enough see making cake fails is easy!
Now, let's see what we're gonna do to fix it. I'm gonna start by mixing up some buttercream,
that's always a good place to start, while I'll decide what to do with it.
I mean, it's pretty much just a mess of cake crumbs.
I don't want to turn it into cake pops though because I think they're slightly harder even than making a normal cake.
Remember here, we don't want to add any milk or any liquid. I want a nice stiff frosting.
So just mix that together if you're mixing it by hand using a spatula can be easier than using a whisk.
Okay, first things first.
I want to give this cake some semblance of shape,
so I've lined a bowl with plastic wrap and I'm just spreading some of the buttercream frosting up the edges and
all the way around the edge. Now
I'm gonna grab about 1/3 of the cake and
dump that down the bottom and gently press it down. and then add a thin layer of the buttercream frosting.
Just imagine I'm making layers of cake with frosting in between.
Then add more of my cake,
more frosting,
The rest of the cake, and the final layer of frosting over the top, making sure it's level and flat.
Now put a plate on top of that, and flip the whole thing over
onto the plate.
Now you want to put that in the fridge ideally overnight,
but if you don't have that long then at least a couple of hours for that buttercream just to chill.
Remove the bowl and peel off the plastic wrap,
and if you've got any holes in your buttercream, like I do there just cover them over with a little bit more buttercream, then
take some M&Ms, or candy of your choice, and put them all over the outside of the cake.
And that looks good just like that or you can add a toy to the top if that's what you're after, and
that's how you take your cake from failed it, to nailed it
Now I admit, it won't have the perfect layers on the inside,
but as long as it tastes good,
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Captions by TheGamingSeargent