Our family has a birthday season. My second son, only daughter, wife and I all have our birthdays at about the same time so it's cake season. For this reason my poor wife never gets a nice cake. Not this year I said to her, you get a nice cake for a change.
My wife requested a mousse cake so I said "OK" and thought I would have a crack at making one.
I was also inspired by all the amazing 'mirror cakes' I had seen so was keen to attempt the mythical 'mirror cake'.
My deadline was Saturday so I found a basic mousse and mirror glaze recipe and worked backwards from there to see when I needed to prepare. The answer was Thursday at the latest so let's start a day earlier just in case.
Wednesday:
Purchased the ingredients, googled the recipes and was all exited & ready to go.
I started with a basic ripple biscuit base which I use for cheese cakes and used a rice scoop to smooth the base. Popped the base into the freezer for 10 minutes. All good so far.
The next step was the mousse and I used the following recipe: https://wholefoodsimply.com/qu
It was surprisingly easy and healthy. Completely accidental that I chose this recipe. What are Chia seeds anyway? They sound healthy.
Poured the mousse over the base and left the cake in the fridge over night to set.
At this point it is very important to mentioned that I wanted to have a smooth cake top and sides so that the mirror cake would look flawless. O what high hopes I had.
The ensure the sides were smooth I placed baking paper on the sides of the cake tin & sprayed cooking oil on the baking paper. Full proof smooth sides coming up and I'm really proud of myself.
Thursday:
Turns out that the chia seeds swell a fair amount so the mousse appeared to have chicken pox or acne. Take your pick.
No worries, we have a spare packet of jelly somewhere. I made a batch of jelly and placed it on the top of the cake so the top would be smooth.
Placed back in the fridge to set.
Later that evening I took the cake out the cake tin and it looked fantastic. Smooth top and smooth sides.
I created the mirror glaze following this recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
All is going well, the glaze looks amazing, the cake looks great and I'm super excited.
PS: After a good wash I converted a spare toolbox from the shed into a cake tool container. It works really well :)
I placed the cake on a cooling rack over a large dinner plate to collect and potentially reuse the drips.
Then came the big moment, the pour!
The whole family crowded around the cake as I poured and it looked glorious. There was a lovely swirl and pattern to the cake.
All going well until the sides of the cake started to thin. Hmm, so I dolloped some of the glaze on the sides of the cake
This wasn't a great idea as the glaze had cooled down so the glaze became all lumpy and looked like it instantly developed keloid scars (those nasty thick old scars). Another byproduct of using the drips is that the lovely green swirl in the blue glaze turned the whole mix into a gross army green. Great for a boys cake I guess.
A few more attempts at adding glaze only made it worse and after a while I had to call it quits.
The result: a lumpy, scarred, army cake with exposed sides. Not what I was after.
Friday:
Morning:
I was still disappointed with the outcome of the cake but I had a light-bulb moment. What if I created another layer of jelly and used the left over glaze over the new jelly layer?
It was a case of double or nothing. This cake will be awesome or a total disaster but I'm committed now.
I found a bigger cake tin and placed the original cake in the larger tin.
After mixing up the jelly I placed the new jelly in the larger cake tin so that it covered the old cake. Back into the fridge.
Evening:
I took the cake out the fridge after the jelly had set for a number of hours.
The cake came out of the cake tin and the finish looked nice and smooth. Fantastic.
Then a small crack appeared and as I stared in horror the small crack spread through the jelly until the whole cake resembled a glacial shelf breaking off. O no! There was jelly all over the counter top.
As mentioned before I was committed and the underlying cake looked even worse now than it did before I attempted the latest layer of jelly.
I'm not one to swear but this was really testing my self control :(
No, I'm committed and the cake needs to be ready by tomorrow at all costs.
Fortunately I had another light-bulb moment and realised that the glaze running off the cake initially was probably due my desire to have smooth sides. Spraying the cooking oil on the backing paper made the sides of the cake super oily which prevented the glaze from staying on the cake.
I took paper towels and wiped off any oil from the baking paper and hoped for the best.
I scooped the jelly up (from the clean counter) and placed it into a bowl. Microwaved the bowl, blended up the jelly so that it was smooth again then added a stack of gelatin. Then some more gelatin to be safe.
In my haste I placed the concoction into the freezer as I was impatient and time was running out. 10 minutes later I realised that this might not be a good idea as the jelly might be crunchy so I moved the jelly back into the fridge for a few hours then into the freezer overnight.
Saturday:
Morning
4 hours to go....
I took the cake out the freezer and tentatively took the cake out the tin. It was solid, phew, but looked really crunchy which is what I was half expecting.
I learnt from jelly round 1 that the meniscus (the lip) is rather detrimental to the running of the glaze so I cut the edge of the cake to make it smooth.
Next step was to warm up the left over glaze and just to be sure I blended the glaze and ran it through it a sieve to extract any lumpy or frozen bits.
The cake was still very frozen which made me wonder what the pouring temperature should be. The recipe I was following suggested a pouring temperature of 35C-37C so I erred on the higher side to compensate for the frozen cake and poured at 38.9C.
This time the glaze worked well!
The glaze was setting fast so I quickly dribbled some white glaze over the cake to make a few patterns.
I also experimented with some silver glitter (for food) which made a nice explosive effect when dropped for a height and just for fun I blew the the glitter which made some interesting streaks across the cake.
After leaving the glaze for 20 minutes to set I placed the cake back in the fridge for the umpteenth time.
Afternoon:
Finally, the time arrived. The guests were in stitches of laughter as my wife described her very special 'Frankenstein Cake'.
I cut into the cake and fortunately it had thawed enough that it wasn't too crunchy but firm enough to hold it's shape.
It tasted OK, not amazing, but OK. All in all I cautiously call this exercise a success as I learnt a heap and had fun in the process.
Looking forward to perfecting the mirror glaze finish as there are so many options :)
I hope you learnt something from my mistakes and have fun!
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