Cross Cake

I was asked to bake a cake for an event at church. A cake in the shape of a cross. I was given a cake pan that makes cross shaped cakes so it isn’t like I was taking a regular cake and carving it into a cross shape. So it should be relatively easy, right?

Well, not so likely. The first time I did this I was encouraged to use a cake mix rather than my own recipe for a white cake. The person who suggested this (actually insisted on this) felt it would be less time consuming for me.

After baking the cake mix cake, I let it cool a while in the pan and then turned it out on a cooling rack and it promptly broke into three pieces. AARGH!!

I thought that I could just use frosting to put it all back together but cake mix cakes are very tender and soft. Every place I tried to put frosting just pulled up chunks of cake. I worked on it and worked on it for the longest time before I finally gave up and went to the store and bought a cake  for that event. And I vowed never to use a cake mix again!

That was a few weeks ago. Today I was working on another cross cake but this time I used my own recipe for a white cake. This cake is denser and so it holds it’s shape really well. Actually I baked the cake yesterday so it would be completely cool when I wanted to frost it.

After the cake came out of the oven and cooled for a while in the pan,  I trimmed the top (it rose too high in the pan) and then gently turned it upside down on a board to finish cooling.  It came out in one piece and looked beautiful. I tasted the part that I had trimmed off and it was moist and delicious! Success….so far.

I let the cake cool overnight and this morning set about frosting and decorating it. I used my buttercream frosting, which is an off-white color, to frost it all over. Then I used the white frosting that I had colored in three different shades to put pansies and leaves all over the cake.

I didn’t want to use the white frosting to cover the whole cake because it is made with all shortening and the shortening doesn’t do enough to cut the sweetness of the confectioners sugar. This is why the cakes that are bought at the stores are so very, very sweet. Frosting made with butter will tend to be a little more mellow rather than overwhelmingly sweet.

This is how the cake turned out:

The “Welcome!” is because the cake is in honor of the new members we are welcoming into church tomorrow.

What do you think?

I am very pleased with the results. I also realize why a large number of professional bakers use fondant to cover cakes. Fondant is a smooth dough-like sugary substance that, when covering a cake, makes it incredibly smooth. Trying to get buttercream smooth is very, very difficult. Thus, cover the cake with flowers!

I hope everyone likes it. I know it tastes good because I tasted the cake and frosting already. But I hope everyone else also finds it delicious and beautiful!