The Cake Project

So a friend of mine wants to comission me to make a cake for her for a friends birthday and I accepted. I love a challenge and this is definately a challenge. I'll post the progress here.


THE CHALLENGE:

To make an eggless cake with rolled rondant in the shape of a Luis Vuitton purse AND have accessories to go with it also made outta fondant.

Oh and it has to be done by the 20th of February! You wonder "How is she gonna make a Luis Vuitton cake while taking care of 4 boys, going to the gym, keeping up the house and doing errands? Will she EVER sleep?"

Fear Not my young deciples! I, the Master of my Universe, will show you that it CAN be done!

I may go crazy a few times, but I will get it done.....LOL

Step 1: Find an eggless cake recipe that does not taste like crap! (oh I guess I forgot....Why an eggless cake? Because the lady whose birthday it is, is allergic to eggs and I don't realy like killing people. Its bad for business and friendship....VERY,VERY BAD!)

So In my quest to find the perfect and elusive eggless cake that tastes good I happened upon a few pages of recipes at http://www.allrecipes.com/.  I came across a recipe called Plain Eggless Cake. It had 91 reviews and a 4/12 of out 5 star rating. So I read through the reviews and since most of them sounded quite positive, I thought, what the hell lets try it.

So I printed off the recipe and read the ingregient list and thought orange juice? in a cake? Hmmmmm. Okay I'll roll with it. Here's the recipe....

Plain Eggless Cake

2 1/2 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk

1 cup orange juice

1 cup melted butter

2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees C. Grease and flour a 9x13 cake pan

2. Combine flour, baking powder and baking soda together and then make a well in the center. Add condensed milk, orange juice, vanilla, and melted butter. Mix until batter is smooth. Pour into the cake pan and put in oven for 30 to 40 minutes.

In all the while that I have been making cakes I have had yet to find a scratch cake that could measure up to the box cakes in the store. The scratch ones were always either to heavy, to crumbly, to gross tasting, to labour intensive and tricky, to this, to that, etc, etc. But I can't believe how easy this was to make.

The trick in this batter, and it's such an easy trick that we learned when we made volcanoes explode, is that the acid from the orange juice mixed with the baking soda creates a chemical reaction that makes bubbles form in the batter. This is why it is so fluffy and light. OMG, How incredibly simple is that! It just astounds me!

Look at all those holes!!!!!



My next experiment is to take out say 1/3 cup of flour and replace it with cocoa powder to make a chocolate cake, but that will be for another time.

EDIT: I have made this cake a billion times now, and I have made a few changes to the recipe.  I have cut the melted butter down to 1/2 cup and increased the orange juice to 1 1/2 cups in order to have the 2 cups of liquid.  I have also substituted oil for butter successfully.