Sunday, November 16, 2008

It's My Party, I'll Make A Cake If I Want To



Okay... so yes, it was my birthday yesterday!! And what better way to spend my day than to BAKE, BAKE BAKE! Hee hee! My fave thing is to listen to the wonderful This American Life podcast and do my baking thang.

So, for probably one year now I've been loving the hamburger cake, so much so that it inspired an entire birthday party theme: the Trompe L'oeil birthday party potluck, complete with prizes for the top four entries. So I decided... I will attempt to make the elusive and visually alluring hamburger cake! Well, not so elusive. A quick google will bring up many wonderful examples of this little guy.

For your viewing pleasure, I present the "making of" the hamburger cake... !



diagrams are often helpful to draw! so i started out with making a full recipe for vanilla coconut cake for the "buns" and a half recipe for dark chocolate cake for the "patty." i used 9 inch circular pans, letting everything cool of course before assembly!


so i made a "dam" of butercream, and i am going to fill it with ganache!

my cooled ganache-- i used coconut milk and dark chocolate chips.

my piping bags filled with three different colors of buttercream-- with different tips, one leaf tip for the lettuce, one small circle tip for the mustard and one big circle tip for the tomatoes/ketchup!

filling my first layer with ganache...

i plopped my patty on top of the first ganache layer, then did the same "dam" idea with the red ketchup/tomato icing.

next up: "accoutrements" -- mustard squigglies, "lettuce" piped on and more ketchup!! at this point i was giddy with excitement!

plop the top vanilla coconut layer on top, add some white non-pareil candy bits for sesame seeds... add a little party flag... and you have... HAMBURGER CAKE!!!


The burger cake was a real hit, and I was so happy it worked out with the ganache filling! Yummy happy burger birthday to me!

9 comments:

Palidor said...

Holy crap, that is spectacular! Happy belated birthday!! You are like me. One year for my birthday, I cooked a 6-course meal for my friends. They thought I was weird!

Coco Cake Land said...

wow!! 6 course meal... so awesome! i also made mini cupcakes and "shepherd's pie" cupcakes, i was also going to make sushi cupcakes (sushi that looked like cupcakes) but ran out of time... !

gyoza*girl said...

your version of the hamburger cake is awesome, mb! :) nice post with the step-by-step.

Snooky doodle said...

ha that s a gigantic burger :) this is great :0

Billy Jack said...

Fantastic!

Sorry we missed your party.

Personally speaking, I couldn't get creative enough with dough, ketchup or mustard to make an appearance.

Rich Trawick said...

Holy cow! That cake was delicious. Seriously. I must be one of the luckiest husbands around...

Cakespy said...

You're my hero. This is amazing!! I don't know why I'm so obsessed with sweets that look like non-sweets, but I am so glad that someone shares my obsession and is so creative and artistic about it!!

You rule!

me, b & a said...

Amazing. I absolutely LOVE it.

Coco Cake Land said...

like the kool-aid man says: oooohhhh yeah!!! (hmm, suddenly i had an idea for a kool-aid cake, with kool-aid instead of sugar...!) and of course in the shape of the kool-aid man.