I cooked the sponge (red velvet) cake the evening before. Somehow, due to its semi-spherical shape, the pan has fallen on a side in the oven during the baking, without me noticing it and I ended up with a weird shaped cake. My daughter was away for some activities for the evening and she had only seen the baked cake on her return. She was completely disappointed to see a small dome cake with an unusual shape, not looking at all like a princess skirt. I, also went to sleep that night disappointed that I did not bake something at my daughter expectations for such an important occasion for her.
The next day I faced 2 options: bake another cake for the following day, or trust my experience that I could turn the ugly cake into a beautiful doll dress cake. I asked then my daughter about her preference. She went for the option to have the cake ready, as soon as possible. Due to lack of time, to my relief, this was also what I was hoping for her to chose. I had then the important task to make miracles with this cake.
First step was to cut the uneven side of the cake that my 2 kids devoured in almost one bite. In this way, I returned the dome cake back to its intended shape.
Next problem was to raise the cake with the filling, as the dome remained quite small. I cut the cake in 5 slices and filled the space between the slices with generous layers of whipped cream. Yes, just whipping cream, as there was no time for another type of cream. Whipping cream also on the outside but in a very fine layer as I was planning to cover the hole cake in sugar paste. From experience I know that sugar paste and whipping cream do not go along very well in keeping the shape for more than few hours.
Talking about the sugar paste, this was another challenge. I had 250g of white sugar paste in the pantry in a sealed package but when I grabbed it I discovered that it was almost dried and not enough to cover my cake. I even managed to break my rolling pin trying to stretch it. The only solution for this situation was to go to the shop and buy a good one.
The new fresh sugar paste, I stretched it very well and managed to cover the full cake. With the remaining part, I did a top for the doll dress and a lace for the bottom of the dress.
I didn't have the chance to photograph the doll cake before putting the knife in it but the remaining slices ended up in front of my camera.
It was quite an adventure with this cake that finally was successful. It was for sure one of the quickest festive cake I've made and the experience gained with it was definitely worth.
Needless to say that the final cake was exceeding my daughter expectation and the joy that I've seen in her eyes when I brought the cake on the table, filled me with a big satisfaction.
Ingredients:
Red velvet sponge cake:
- 213g all purpose-flour
- 1 teaspoon sodium bicarbonate
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 100g sugar
- 3 eggs
- 177ml milk
- 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons vanilla essence
- red food coloring
- 190g butter (room temperature)
Filling & decoration:
- 800g whipping cream
- 300g sugar paste
Directions:
- Mix the flour with sodium bicarbonate, baking powder and salt.
- Add the butter and mix until is well combined with the dried ingredients.
- Mix the milk with lemon juice and let it aside for 10 minutes. Instead of this mixture you can use buttermilk.
- Separately, mix the sugar with eggs, milk, vanilla essence and red food colorant.
- Add the colored mixture into the flour-butter mixture very slowly with a cup, waiting after each to be very well beaten.
- Put the mixture in a pan and bake it for 30-40 minutes at 180ºC.
- When taking it out of the oven, let it cool completely before removing it from the pan.
The velvet sponge cake recipe was inspired from here.
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