Move along.
This is not the red velvet birthday cake you are looking for.
What kind of cake do you bake for a 30-something pop culture geek? An R2D2 cake, of course! I think it is pretty amazing that Wilton provides decorating instruction PDFs for cake pans that haven’t been available in stores for decades. This tin was purchased by Aaron’s mom when he was a wee geek. I used this D*lish Red Velvet cake recipe because the frosting is appropriate for cake decorating. YUM! The cake itself garnered rave reviews from our friends. I was a bit shocked when I saw how much food coloring it needed, so between the cake and the frosting I blew through several packages of food coloring. If I do this again, I will be picking up professional grade food coloring, and not the wimpy stuff from the supermarket.
Speaking of frosting, this was an amazing opportunity to use my counter top mixer. I have a vintage Sunbeam mixer that my Nana received as a wedding gift, and I rarely get to use it. This was my first foray into making this type of frosting, and I can’t imagine trying to make it with a hand mixer. Yikes.
If I make this cake in this tin again, I will split it and fill it with frosting. I didn’t fill this one because I was afraid of breaking the cake to the point where it couldn’t be decorated. As a consequence, I wound up with LOTS of extra frosting.
The cake was really easy to decorate because I had official instructions, and it didn’t take very long. The one catch with this frosting is that it softens quickly, so I used small amounts in the decorating bag and re-filled often from the chilled batch in the fridge.
I definitely need more excuses to decorate cakes.
Jenn Likes to Make Things 