Welcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann Reardon. Now lots of people in the
comments have been saying things to the effect of: she's the Bob Ross of baking! Now, I
didn't even know who Bob Ross was so I had to go watch some of his videos and
then Ethan and James asked could I follow a Bob Ross oil painting tutorial but use
the ganache paints like I did for the Starry Night video many years ago? In
Starry Night I actually piped it on I didn't use brushes but I can try...
so first let's mix the Bob Ross colors, he has titanium white and I've made a
big bowl of white chocolate ganache which is just cream and white chocolate
but as you know white chocolate is actually not white and even if I add lots
of white food coloring and I mean lots of it ... we still end up with a creamy
white but it's the best I can do so our painting will just have to have a
slightly warmer glow to it. Next is Prussian Blue which according to what I
could see online is a super dark blue, crimson, sap green. Now if you want to
make this cake I'll list all the food colors that I use to mix these colors
out of ganache on my HowToCookThat.net website and the ganache recipe will be
there for you too. The tools Bob uses to paint are a 1 inch and a 2 inch brush a
fan-shaped brush and a couple of palette knives and of course a huge paint
palette. Now I couldn't find one this big so I actually made my own out of wood
using a router so now I have a paint palette. Speaking of making things
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can make your own website or online store, more about that later. As well as
the palette we are of course going to need a canvas ... this is not an ordinary
canvas this is a board which Ihave screwed supports into because I'm going
to make this canvas out of cake! So we need some supports going across the cake
so it doesn't just squash down to the bottom under the weight of
itself. So cover that in foil and stack up four trays of cake with buttercream
in between the layers and then cover that in a thin layer of buttercream and
then add a layer of white chocolate ganache. Now I'm making this cake in the
same size that Bob Ross does his paintings. "Standard 18 by 24 inch canvas
up here". Once it is all covered in ganache lay it flat on the bench and
then cover it with a layer of white fondant. Smooth that out. We want this
nice and flat so there are no bumps that catch the ganache when we try and paint
so we don't ruin the picture. To make sharp corners on any cake you just use
two smoothers and you push one into the other at the corner and you keep doing
that and it kind of just pushes that fondant or squeezes it together to get a
sharper edge. See how much sharper that corner is compared to this rounded bit
and the more you do it the sharper it gets. Put the cake back on the stand and
we are ready to do a fantastic little edible chocolate ganache painting on a
cake! The bob ross tutorial that I'm going to follow today is called Mighty
Mountain Lake from season 16 episode 12. In all his tutorials he starts by
covering the whole canvas in a thin layer of white paint,
now I'm not sure how that's going to work with fondant and ganache it may
just make the fondant sticky but I'm gonna try and follow the tutorial as
best as I can so I've made the gnache more liquid by warming it slightly and
adding a little bit more cream to it and now I'm just adding a layer across the
whole cake trying to get it as even as possible. "Let's just drop in a happy
little sky let's just do it let's just do a fun painting today start at the
very top of the canvas working all the way across making little X's little
crisscross strokes." Okay let's put some Prussian blue on the two-inch brush,
little crisscross strokes. His blends really nicely with the white paint he
has underneath and kind of fades into it I'm not sure if ganache
will do that but we'll give it a go. It's actually blending a whole lot better
than I thought that it would. We have that nice gradient to the sky what's
next? "So maybe the water lives in our world, oh I'm not sure where it's gonna
be." I love how he just seems to paint with no idea of where it's gonna end up.
I always like to have an idea of what the finished cake is gonna look like
before I start not just make it up as I go along. Oh look I've got a bit of a
dent in my fondant there just like I was saying I didn't want. A canvas would be
much easier to paint on than a cake is! "Let's make some big old fluffy clouds
that live up here in the sky". Some big old fluffy clouds in the sky. I must
admit I'm having trouble getting the white ganache to stick onto the blue sky
wet-on-wet isn't really working very well for ganache at all. I might need to
do it a little bit thicker than he did and then try and blend it in a bit
without wiping it all off. "Don't overwork them now, lift them give him a little
fluff." Giving ganache a little fluff doesn't seem to be doing anything it's
kind of set in place and it's not moving for anyone. You've obviously got to be a
lot quicker working with ganache than you do with oil paints. His clouds look
much better than mine do but that's okay what's next? "Where is your mountain gonna
live? Maybe in our world there it is comes right down here wherever you
want." The ganache is not sticking to them moist fondant it's just taking the
blue off. "Really push that paint in there." I can't push the paint right in there
where it's gonna make a dent or a hole in the fondant on my cake it's not gonna
work I've got to be gentle. I think I'm gonna have to go thicker like I did
with the clouds. That's better. Thicker layer of ganache keep that in
mind it spreads a lot better than a thin one. Did you know that Bob Ross was once an
Air Force Master Sergeant. He said he was the guy who had to scream at people and
be a mean and tough person. It's a bit hard to imagine now you see his
paintings. He did promise himself if he ever got away from it he wasn't going to
be that person anymore. So I think we can learn something from his life not just
how to paint but if you're stuck in a job that you don't like do your best
while you're there ... he was promoted to Master Sergeant and he was there for
twenty years, so he must have done a good job while he was there but at the same
time don't give up on your dreams. He painted in his spare time. Nowadays with
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website purchase so you can get started doing the other thing that you really
want to do. I've dipped my brush into a bowl of hot cream and that seems to be
helping to make the ganache a bit more brushable. It seems to be blending a lot
better than it was before. "Now then let's go up here get our little roll of paint
on the small knife and let's begin picking out some of these little
highlights. Touch no pressure, no pressure at all but absolutely no pressure with a
knife ... if you put pressure it's gonna look like you iced to cake." 🎂🤣 I wish Bob
Ross was alive to see that we actually are icing a cake that's what we're doing.
This is so much fun ... all mountains should be topped with
chocolate, if you climb to the top you get chocolate and that would balance out
the exercise with the treat! Great balanced diet there! The ganache
definitely doesn't spread as easily as the oil paints do but it is totally
doable you should give this a go it's lots of fun
or if you really are too scared to do it you don't want to ruin the cake and you
know an art lover that you want to make this cake for just make them a blank
canvas cake and then give them homemade tubes of ganache paint ... put on a bob ross
tutorial for them and let them go for it. They can
effectively decorate their own cake, that's perfect. I do show you how to make
paint tubes in my Starry Night video from six years ago and I'll link you to
that one at the end and one thing I must tell you though a little hint that you
need to know if you're going to make your own canvas cake ... cakes are much much
heavier than painting canvases so I've added a couple of extra screws to
support the base of the easel here just the bit that sits under the painting so
that it doesn't fall down. Imagine if it slid down and the cake went splat onto
the floor. The only one who would think that was a 'happy little accident' would
be a dog. "If you want to have a glacier maybe I'll tell you one maybe he lives
right along there. Make a decision drop him and just letting just let him lay in
there and sleep there." I actually haven't painted a landscape since I was in high
school. The ganache worked fairly well with the palette knife it of course
doesn't look as amazing as his does but at least it looks like mountains but now
that we're back to brushes and blending again this picture might go downhill
quickly from here just you've been forewarned. "I'm just taking a clean dry 2
inch brush, I'm just tapping, just tapping I want to create a little mist down here
at the base of this little mountain big mountain." It's supposed to look like a
fine mist not quite what we have. Now for some
happy little trees using the fan brush. Again I've hated this ganache up whoops
a little bit too runny, it's dripping down there. This is supposed to be a row of
trees. Now if I paint with the top of the brush no ganache is transferring to the
cake but if I do it sideways some is going on but the trees are a bit bent so
we've like got a forest with a strong wind blowing. You can't expect it to be
perfect out of chocolate you can just do your best and then just keep going
especially for anything with the brushes you have to gently build it up otherwise
it doesn't stick and it takes it back to just the blue fondant. So just very
gently, gently dab on with plenty of ganache on the brush. Now wash the brush
in hot cream dry out off a little bit on paper towel
and gently pull down to blur the reflection on the water. Then very gently
brush across to blur it a little I'm not happy with that big splotch that I
dropped down on the water there so I'm gonna try and get that bit off which it
seems to be coming off for me. Pull down their reflections a little more and then
add some fall colors along the base of the trees for the leaves that have
dropped down off the trees there. Now the brush is not working for me very well so
I'm gonna swap back to the palette knife and just kind of squash on some ganache
and pull it up and now it kind of looks like they're flames ... let's add a little
bit of green and blend that in and so it doesn't look like a forest is on fire!
And now I'm going to swap to a piping bag for this I just can't do it with a
brush we're supposed to add a line of chocolate dirt colored line under there
under that's where the land is where the land meets the water and I just can't
paint it with the paintbrush that fine it's not working but I know I can do it
with a piping bag and now a little bit of white. I'll try that with the pallet
knife again because you're doing actually want a perfect line there just
a little bit of reflection on the water. Then a little bit of land right in the
foreground of the picture in front of the water there. I've heated this ganache
again with a little bit of extra cream to thin it down. The problem I'm having
is it's just not giving good coverage like you get with paint so you can see
can still see blue through it where is it either dark color with paint and you
can't see anything through it. I'll add some Indian yellow over the top and
painting with a palette knife and piping bag definitely suits ganache but the
brushwork not so much. Well it's definitely nowhere near as good as a Bob
Ross landscape painting but considering that I haven't painted a landscape since
high school and it's not a canvas and it's not paint, I think it turned out
okay! What do you think? I always get asked in the comments what do we do with
the cakes once we've made them? I'm actually going to cut this one up into
six portions and drop it over to some neighbors and
friends. Most people are more than happy to help me with the problem of having
too much cake in the house. At the moment we can't invite people over to eat it
because of c-19 but that's all good. With thanks to my patrons for their
amazing support of this channel. Check out the Van Gogh video here so that you
can make your own paint tubes and make it a great week by being kind to others
and I'll see you on Friday 💕