Once Upon A Pedestal: polka dots

Actually the title should read more like, "Twice Baked Cakes and Cupcakes" to be accurate.

The reason is that the insides are baked first in a separate step

and then baked again with more raw batter.

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Remember this cake from my last post?

I just couldn't wait to experiment some more!

Good thing we had a long holiday weekend so that

I could play Barbies in the kitchen all day long.

My head is just filled with things to try inside cakes and cupcakes!

At 3:30 am this morning, cones were calling.

Must've been on my brain from my recent snow cone cupcake post.

Who knows? Anywho, cones were first at bat in the oven today.

It had been several years since I made the snow cones but the cans and cups were still waiting for me.

I'd forgotten about the very minor fumes from the empty V-8 juice cans I'd used way back then.

Word to the wise: find a can with no plastic coating, inside or out to support the cup while baking.

I plan to try the chrome plated egg cups next time or maybe Wilton's King Sized Muffin pan.

A metal rack for ice cream cones might also work.

I'm fairly certain my V-8 can method is no where near food safe.

Who knows what kind of drain bramage I caused myself already.

That would explain SO many things!

Please be safe and let me know if you come up with a better solution.

These are the empty wrappers from today.

Since snow cones were the goal last time and they weren't to be

removed from the liner until eaten, I didn't worry about the cake

releasing from the paper so much. It stuck more than I'd have preferred.

Next time I plan to try an inner liner of either parchment

or waxed paper inside the paper cone. Baking spray probably

won't work since the paper is somewhat more porous than cupcake liners.

You can see that I combined two colors in one cup in the red/green paper above.

Fun little surprise when I opened that cone.

The green on the bottom had baked up inside the center of the red.

Not sure if this happens every time but it might be worth looking into.

Here are the naked cones inside a prepared 9 inch round.

A thin layer of batter went in first then the rest was dumped on top to cover.

I added an additional 1/4 cup of water to the cake mix this time

so that it would be thin enough to flow around the shapes.

I'd also trimmed the top and bottom of each cone to level them up a bit.

The tips of the cones all stuck in the very points of the cups

but I wanted a blunt end anyway. So it was all good.

Photo used with permission of Kerry Vincent.

Forgive me Kerry Vincent, for I have sinned. On purpose.

I made no attempt whatsoever to do a good job at frosting or decorating

the following cakes and cupcakes you'll see in my next few posts.

I really wish they would have magically decorated themselves.

For your sake. But I was beyond caring about the outside.

My mommy always told me, "It's what's inside that counts."

Let's hope so.

I am the slowest decorator ever and I REALLY

wanted to get to the heart or the guts of the matter in this case.

(I had a punk boss many years ago whose favorite saying to me was,

"You may not be good but you sure are slow!" Still true. And he's still a punk.)

So please forgive what you are about to witness.

Plain. White. Frosting.

Not even smoothed down. Shameful.

Okay. I caved and smoothed a tiny bit.

The embossed circles were added with the large end of a giant piping tip.

Notice the red/green one? That's the one I was telling you about earlier. Cool.

I was hoping to end up with larger and smaller polka dots with this cone method.

Perhaps if I'd arranged them differently.

So when it came right down to it, I still had no idea what the middle would look like.

But I LOVE the bright colors!

More experiments to come . . .

UPDATE:

Find the tutorial on how to make an Ice Cream Cake with surprise inside polka dots as seen on KUTV Channel 2 here.

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Will putting polka dots inside a cake work? How does one do that? I conducted a little experiment to find out.

Perhaps you've seen these in the store lately and walked right by them. Like I did. Countless times.

I kept asking myself, "Why in the world would I possibly need that when I can roll a perfectly round cake ball with my own two hands?" And then one night I had this great idea for an experiment. (I always call them great ideas until they fail miserably.) How about using them to put polka dots inside a cake? Rather large polka dots. But polka dots all the same.

After researching cake ball pans a bit, I settled on this brand. Mostly because makes 18 balls at once and my coupons at Bed Bath and Beyond were begging to be used. With tax and coupon, final cost was just over $16.

I started with a white cake mix and made some of the adjustments recommended in the instruction guide that came with the bake pop pan. After dividing the batter in half, I further divided half of the batter evenly between 6 bowls for tinting. The colors I used were AmeriColor soft gel pastes in 113 orange, 107 lemon yellow, 164 electric pink, 162 electric green, 103 sky blue, and a mix of 130 regal purple/165 electric purple. I used about 1/2 t. of each so that the colors would remain vivid after baking.

You can see the bright colors in the vents peeking through after the clamps were put on. The instruction guide suggests baking at 350F for 25-30 minutes but that sounded WAY too long. My goal was to slightly under bake them so that they wouldn't dry out too much during the second bake time. They were done at 13 minutes in my oven.

The instruction guide also suggests spraying some non-stick baking spray with flour on the outside of the vents. I failed to take their advice. I was sure that only filling them to the rim wouldn't cause eruptions. But I was WRONG. Mini volcanoes!

One of the happiest surprises of the day was that the volcanoes were more like little caps that popped off almost by themselves leaving the insides intact.

The mess on the outside was minimal after removing the tops with no damage to the balls.

The pans are non-stick but do require a baking spray with flour to help the balls bake evenly. Clean up was fairly easy.

After some quality control and taste testing of the volcanoes, the experiment resumed.

I also ended up trimming the tiniest bit off the tops to make them rounder.
We'll see if that mattered later on.

The scraps.

After adding just enough batter to cover the bottom of my prepared pans, the cake balls were placed inside. My original plan was to freeze the balls before this step but I skipped it so they were room temp when they went in the pans.

The remaining batter was scooped over each ball to cover. And into the oven they went. Looking rather more like dinner rolls than cake. I didn't tap the pans or even the batter out for fear of uncovering the balls.

I ended up using 2 white cake mixes for 3 six-inch rounds. Long story. After trying to capture the steps on the camera, the half batch of batter that I'd hoped to use to cover the balls was getting weird. It had just set out too long. I baked it up in a small oval pan as a decoy for my husband to keep him away from the real project. Never a task for the faint of heart.

For the cake balls, I used the cake mix and pudding along with the substitution of milk for the water per the instruction guide. I did not decrease the liquid as suggested or increase the eggs but went instead with the amounts on the cake mix box.

Since I'd used whole eggs for the cake balls, the remaining half batch of batter had a yellow tinge. And there wasn't enough of it to cover the balls. Yet another reason to use a second cake mix.

The second mix was mixed using the egg white method and ingredients listed on the box except for about a teaspoon of almond extract. Force of habit. So I had a nice white batter to contrast with the bright colors.

The filled six-inch rounds baked about 30 to 35 minutes or until they pulled from the sides of the pan and sprang back when touched lightly. I didn't use the toothpick method for fear of stabbing a colored ball or hopefully soon-to-be-polka-dot since the balls were already cooked and not a true gauge of doneness.

Waiting for them to cool and frost was like waiting for my water to break with my first born. Okay. Maybe not quite that dramatic. But the anticipation was palpable in my kitchen. I know, I know. Get a life.

You can see some of the color coming through in spots. Never wanted to take a knife to a cake more badly in my life. But I waited.

Off to the freezer to chill out and wait until the next day for a crumb coat and slathering of white frosting.

The question mark seemed like a perfect accent to this cake since I still had no clue if this would work.

And then the giant cut to remove all doubt . . .

It actually worked!!! Hooray!

The first slice left this design. Not all dots showing but they're in there somewhere.

After cutting the second large piece, all but one color magically appeared. Perhaps placing one more ball in the pan would've produced a more even pattern. Next time.

Here's another great surprise about these types of cakes: the colored balls stayed as moist as the rest of the cake even though they were completely baked before hand!!! You'll want to try it yourself just to see but as long as you don't overcook the balls in the first bake, your cake will be moist all the way through. Gotta love science!

You can find a shorter version of the tutorial with the recipes HERE.

Mine is not the first attempt to hide patterns inside cakes. Hidden checkerboard designs have been around for centuries. The very first Battenburg or checkerboard cake was said to have been made in 1884 to celebrate the marriage Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Victoria to Prince Louis of Battenburg.

I can't wait to try more shapes and patterns! The next experiments will be to try smaller balls of different sizes for more of a confetti look. And squares. And . . .

I'll keep ya posted!

Note: This cake design is copyright protected so if you plan to use it for your own tutorial, video or other purpose, you must link back to this blog and give proper credit. No commercial use is allowed.