This week's cake project had me diving into my first ever Scout cake... more specifically, a SEA Scout cake. Yes, there is such a thing as Boy Scouts on water, and their equivalent to the Eagle Scout award is the Quartermaster Award. Sea Scouts is a co-educational program which means that not only do boys participate in all their sailing adventures, but girls do, too!
This was the first time I experimental with food-friendly metallic painting. I've used various luster dusts before to give some of my ribbons a little shimmer, but this is the first time I turned those powders into a "paint" and went for the full blown metal effect.
After cutting out my pieces of the quartermaster medal from fondant I had tinted gray, I piped on some finer details with royal icing. When that dried, I mixed CK Products silver luster dust with a little clear vanilla and made what was, essentially, paint. I had been told that you're supposed to mix vodka or lemon extract with the luster dust, and I had intended on using the lemon, but in my foggy head of late night television, I grabbed clear vanilla by accident, and it worked just fine! Phew!
Need a recipe for royal icing? All the ones I have make a ton of icing which is much more than what I needed for my little medal, so I went to allrecipes.com and found a recipe that I scaled to make a solid 1/2 cup. Plenty for my little project.
Royal Icing (makes 1/2 cup)
2-1/4 teaspoons meringue powder
- 1 cup sifted confectioners' sugar (always use pure cane)
- 1 tablespoon and 1-1/2 teaspoons water
I jut mixed all the ingredients with an icing knife for 5 minutes or so until it had a peanut buttery consistency and a slight matte finish. Worked great! Oh, and the cake pictured above is a 14" round chocolate cake with raspberry mousse filling and vanilla buttercream on the outside. Yum!
I googled around and read a few sites (little did I know just HOW popular these little sugar bombs are!) and decided to go for it. First, I made a small batch of chocolate frosting and mixed (not too much of it) with the crumbled cake. Then I scooped up the cake mixture and rolled it into balls. I took some lollypop sticks and dipped them in some melted white chocolate candy melts and inserted one into each cake ball. Next, I put them in the fridge for an hour or so to harden a bit and then rolled them in melted chocolate (tinted yellow). I sprinkled them with some decorations and stuck 'em into some styrofoam. Voila! Cake pops! After they dried, I grabbed some little bags (yes, I do happen to have all this stuff lying around) and tied them with some ribbon. Trick or Treat!
