The going away party cake…
Purse is 8” chocolate cake, cut in half, then each torted in 3, with dark chocolate mousse w/ morello cherries, with their syrup soaking the cake layers.
Suitcase is 9×13” Garash torte, 6 batches of the recipe for this size – only ahm…36 eggs and 2lb of butter among other things…
Leather effects are done with a stonewall roller and marbling.
I had a blast with the details on this one…
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A couple of people on a cake decorating forum that I frequent asked me about different details of this cake, so I ended up writing up a few paragraphs, figured I may as well post them here, since I have been very word-less lately…
About the Purse cake:
It is a generic 8” round, about 2-1/2” thick, came out of the oven completely nice and level because of the baking strips (a.k.a. wet kitchen towel) that I’ve gotten into the habit of using. Mousse is like any other run-of-the-mill version – milk, heavy crème, cocoa, powdered sugar, some dark chocolate blocks and a left over small box of Nestle’s dark chocolate mousse mix (never using that stuff again, I finally read the contents and it has gelatin in it!).
I used the word “soaked” to describe the syruping of the cake layers, but that’s probably a little too strong of a word… In the jar of sour cherry preserve there was about a cup of juice, and it is very heavily sugared, so its not super runny like water. Each of the six 1/2 tortes got about 3-4 tbsp of it, and the cherry fruit were mixed in the mousse…
This “soaking” word created some questions about how the moisture of the cake is kept from ruining the fondant. So… here’s some process guaranteed to avoid wet fondant… What I do is assemble the cake, including a very thin crumb-coat of the leftover filling (yesss, the milk-and-crème-based mousse!) all the way around (cake was lying on its side, not standing up like the completed purse) and let it set well in the fridge for a few hours – this one was left overnight. Then, I made very simple buttercream from two sticks of butter whipped with a very generous amount of Ghirardelli chocolate powder (the kind used to make hot chocolate), dissolved in 2-3 spoons of heated heavy crème (so the cocoa and sugar crystals from it are not grainy in the buttercream), and I just kept adding until it tasted like rich chocolate, nothing like butter. Then I GENEROUSLY coated the now solidified, already standing up cake with it, so butter was all around everything, cake, mousse, and all. In the freezer for a couple of minutes only to set the butter fast but not affect the cake or filling, then back in the fridge for an hour or so again while I got my decorating stuff ready. As a result, fondant only touches buttercream, no cake layers and no mousse — nope, didn’t even do a dam on this one — everything is completely sealed by the butter. I’ve learned my lesson with wet fondant after my first fondant cake (the Baby Buggy), in which I slapped fondant all over pastry crème filling and coating – in the morning, I had a wet, sticky, runny mess dripping all over my fridge. Scrape all off and repeat!…
About the Suitcase ‘Garash’ Torte:
Yup, I did use a roller that is called ‘cobblestone’ (sorry, not ‘stonewall’) for a leather effect. It’s a tiny 2” thing that I got when I was making BloodRayne’s Fortess, but hey, it worked quite well, if I say so myself…
And yes, everything is edible, buckles and all, fondant with a touch of gum paste, though I wish I hadn’t used the gum paste as it ends up very fragile when dry. In retrospect, the amount of time I spent to make the studded holes in the belts is a touch on the ridiculous side, yet I enjoyed the process – I’m sure there’s some tool for it on some website but I just used a straw to cut the holes, and wiggled it around to widen it a bit, then rolled super thin rope and looped it around a wooden dowel to form a ring. While still soft and on the dowel, into the belt hole it went, some more wiggling and adjusting to set nicely, and by the third, I had figured the process out, but the first one is really bad…
The layers in the pictured slice are not in fact cut ( or ‘torted’ from a thick cake like the Purse cake), they are baked individually. The suitcase is made out of 2 separate tiers on top of each other (you can sort of see that in the pic, the way the fondant folds inwards in the middle around the cake board of the top tier). Each tier was made of 6 layers of cake – though I don’t know if “cake” is the right word to use in this context – the layer is just is just egg whites, walnuts and powdered sugar. Each layer was baked individually on wax paper, takes only about 11 minutes, like a cookie. The filling is made of the egg yolks, cooked on low heat with some heavy cream mixing constantly (even though my recipe calls for only 2/3 of the egg yolks, and whips them to the butter raw – yuk! – I cannot fathom eating, let alone feed to other people, especially to kids, raw eggs under any circumstances!), then sugar and unsweetened cocoa is added until all is nice and smooth, and the pudding-like mixture is taken of the heat and whipped cool before adding the butter. I actually had a large semi-sweet chocolate block I needed to use up, so I tossed it into with the cocoa and sugar – just like butter, chocolate can’t hurt the chocolate filling. 🙂
Garsh Torte is insanely rich, one can only eat a small slice… In my opinion, it is best served when it has had a chance to adjust to room temperature, though people are used to eating it right out of the fridge… Ok, now it’s time for some leftover cake!
May I have an extra slice, please?... 
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