K8memphis

I was thinking about trying Brian's formula with white choco--maybe have to tweak something a bit like maybe less cream but boy that recipe sounds fantastic. 20 minutes in the food processor seems like a long time, but hey, if it works it works. Unless that was supposed to be 2 minutes?

Bigboy, what do you mean? Please explain. Thanks J_elias86, thank you for your painstaking translation and glittering treasure trove of information you are sharing.

Your blog is cool and I can't thank you enough for the the great dessert formula. I'm not in that part of the world often (ok, I've never been there) but it makes you feel like you've visited when you can read blogs like this. Very cool. Interesting with the mashed up cookies/ice cream cones. Hmmm hmm hmm, cake decorators always have kibbles & bits that they've sliced off of cakes here & there and we never know what to do with them. I wonder how it would be to dry them out like so many bread crumbs (with and without butter) and do a take off on this formula with cake crumbs and the chocolate. Cake + chocolate usually is not a problem. When I make something like this, I know I can make something tasty, but I always wonder what the original is like to compare it to y'know??? And, I am fresh out of gold leaf, but I can get a few strawberries! Thanks again.

Familiarity breeds pie.

I would check it at like 35-40 mins in. It might be done. 30 minutes is kinda fast to be done at 325 degrees, but you can get a good feel for how much additional time is needed by the condition it's in at that point too. See your pan is deep and narrow and will cook faster than a bundt pan that is more spread out. The heat will be able to get to the batter really efficiently. If you baked two identical batches in different pans, like this, or this yours would be done quicker. Gonna serve it with berries & whipped cream???

As Michaleen Oge Flynn said to Feeney when he saw that Feeney was betting against the Squire, "Ooh, ya traitor ya!" Or perhaps, more accurately, this seems to me kind of like a drug dealer who convinces himself that he is somehow better than his clientele because he, "doesn't use the stuff." Cake is how you make your living. Pie is not how you make your living. Perhaps you need to sit down on the edge of the river and watch the barges go by while you ponder this important moral conundrum. ← Well, you see, we Memphians have been so busy of late, what with heads of state flocking to our fair city to sing Elvis and see Graceland all the way from JAPAN So as I sat high on the bluff, watching the river roll by, I quietly traitorously mused, pie pie pie. But I only make it once or twice a year. And cake nowadays attaches permanently (sell you light) due to age and thyroids and similar other dusty reasons. I do eat much much much more cake than pie. But when the cake maker celebrates, she personally celebrates with pie. But then, didja see my new website? I did it myself and it's a miracle and it's all about cake. Now Koizumi and the King share the same birthday--so I bet he's had a least one Elvis birthday cake. Probably never had a birthdapple pie like other special Memphians. So I'm not sure how to add that in to the cake/pie battle, er fodder, er stats, but, viola.

I am staying out of the fondant debate, but I will stick my nose in on the "american buttercream" debate making it with butter is not unusual all my English cookbooks use a butter + powdered sugar buttercream, and that was what my grandmother and knowing the tradtions in my family her mother, used so I wondering if american buttercream started out with butter, but the birth of crisco gave rise to the current "monster". ← Well yes I totally agree with y'all. And I make cooked icicngs too. And I use fondant and crisco and all manner of controversial contraband. And I'd like to see someone do a quilted cake, not lattice, not piped on, but quilted, where it's impressed into the surface and the bride does not want fondant. As we've discussed, many brides do not want fondant. Crusting buttercream is as much a decorating implement as the ball tool and cake pan. Y'know what? I like grocery store cakes. I LOVE hostess cupcakes--the chocolate ones. Ate them every day for lunch in high school, got the celulite to prove it too. My son works in a place that Zagat's compares this way, "Heaven comes in second place and it's not close" You can find Chef-boy curled up upon ocassion with a comfy box of Zebra cakes. Crisco is another great ingredient if you need to bolster your icing from humidity and heat issues. It happens. Or if you need to tune up dry fondant. A discussion about fondant means it's a discussion about decorating. If you do tier cakes, it's a no holds barred activity. Crusting buttercream is the answer to cakes that look like fondant and still melt in your mouth. PC's do awesome awesome stuff in the way of those elaborate sugar displays and chocolate creations. Generally those travel a few feet or a few floors in one building. When you start traveling out doors and in traffic and temperature extremes with sugar creations you gotta use everything you know and everything you can find out and everything you can get your hands on to do it. Not to mention in your spare time being an essential part of fulfilling the young lady's lifelong dream. I just encourage people to broaden their horizons within their own personal tasteful and creative reason. Long live UNREAL buttercream and everything else too .......................... [merrily waves arms in air]

Yeah, that Disney show didn't help anything. And Wilton should be shot for the disservice they are doing to truly damage perceptions concerning fondant--making it taste like it was toxic waste. It's candy. Umm, but Wilton is truly effing things up. Idiots.

I like powdered sugar and I like powdered sugar icing. I like powdered sugar glazes for stuff. It's pretty on baked goods. It's good stuff. It's sweet like ahh, icing. My recipe for American buttercream made with powdered sugar, cream and butter is very good. Some people like to eat it. Not all people of course. Powdered sugar is a nice ingredient. It's ok. It's an ingredient. It has no social skill or value. Of course, let me hasten hasten to disclaim that American buttercream is not 'real' buttercream. Why you ask? Because, silly, you need hot eggs to make 'real' butter-cream. So shoot me for liking and using and supporting the cause for UnReal Buttercream.

RODNEY, ELAINE!!! That's it!!! That's it!!! Leave it to fellow Hoosiers to solve the dilema of the ages!!! Fondant needs bacon grease!!!

Yeah I totally agree with what Lindacakes said. It's a balancing act. Sure we're all gonna eat a little food color & ingest ocassional weird stuff. Some of us will scrape our kids off the ceiling, some of us will pop some Tums, whatever. Life will go on. My husband's Mom and my Mom were both on inordinate amounts and astrononically priced drugs their last days. So from that experience, my little saying is, "He who dies on the least drugs, wins." And be good to everybody 'cause everybody's having a tough time, as that other saying goes.

I don't keep track of exactly what it is at any given moment--I know too much as it is. Jaymes, close your eyes It's just one of the nastiest products on the planet that I have to personally use in my business and I still use it as often as I need to. I mean lots of the products we use, like you said sausage (and I'm Polish!) will kill us if taken in high enough doses or long enough periods or ruin our thyroids or whatever. We all know too much. And the less I know about food coloring the happier Me & Jaymes will be. Diet Coke is dissolving our gums out of our mouths. The list is endless. Where do you draw the line between chemicals and from nature? Even if we got the chemicals from outer space that's nature too huh? What's natural about distilled bug butts/bodies?

I tried to warn yahs. You really don't wanna know what's in the poo bottle.

Thanks for explaining all of that. Now I get it. Even more reason to take a stand for cake over pie. We don't even have pie here in the States. Perhaps I should retitle the thread: Delicious, skillfully made Cake vs. Fruit Goo between layers of poorly made pastry That should take care of any confusion. ← Live by the cake (sword), die by the cake (sword)...or maybe not. Even though I am a seller of cake...there is no contest, question or discussion but to hands down choose my own ethereal apple pie. Three pounds of apples in that luscious deep shiny ceramic dish, dotted with butter, loaded with tons of spicy Asian cinnamon, a drop or two of lemon. Flaky flaky crust, fitted, fluted & fluffed with fun cut outs of dough, brushed lovingly with milk & sprinkled with sugar. The aroma engulfing the house and swooning the airwaves with olfactory pleasures beyond mere mortal words to describe. Causing our frenzied minds to drool in thoughtless anticipation. pie pie pie pie pie pie pie pie We eat it for breakfast on holiday mornings. pie pie pie pie pie pie pie pie My husband made me Happle Birthdapple pie. pie pie pie pie pie pie pie pie PIE simple simon met a....

I'm not sure who your comment was intended for, but if it was for me, I would respond that, given the choice between cake and pie, I would choose a piece of both! As long as they were made with butter. Eileen ← All diets aside, if I get to choose, I'll take my heavily cinnamon-ed apple pie made with lard and saigon cinnamon. And for cake, I'll take a crusty rum cake encrusted with all manner of finely chopped coconut and pecans & brown sugar (just a tid tad of flour so it adheres to the cake & relases from the sides of the pan. 86 the fondant!

High five

Naw, if I get an invite, buddy, I'm eating whatever you serve especially the home made goodies (except I'm not big on raw fish) But I'd sing a few bars if you start me off. The kid is 6'4" now and a chef--he hated his diet--it totally worked--would still work if he stuck to it. No, I just couldn't let all 'the food color is completely harmless' stuff pass unchecked. Didja see the part where I said I use it in my line of work?? I mean I had a girl the other day want a yellow & black scooter cake to match her work logo. I talked her into yellow and chocolate instead. Stuff like that. What time is supper???

Well, that's another reason why I'm not a fan of the red velvet. Red food coloring can certainly be immediately harmful to hyperactive children. Hey, it's been in chocolate cake mix for example, bar-b-q chips, cheese products etc.. So those kids are problems anyway, but oh my yes it does send them further sky rocketing into space. And there are many other very harmless food items that can be avoided that will keep some of these kids from pinging off the ceiling. About fifty percent respond well to diet changes. However, I respectfully disagree that red food color is not harmful. I believe it is harmful. And still I use it as needed in my line of work. Who can deny, in general, the less junk we put in there, the better off we all are? So an ocassional foray into food color land is understandable. But it certainly can be harmful sometimes, if not undetected and harmful all the time. Besides it tastes like poo.

I just recently switched over to Sylvia Weinstock's butter cake, but I've used a certain butter cake forever. I call it 'golden cake'. To get around the 'white flavor' that Sugarella mentioned didn't exist. I just use part whole eggs and part whites--comes out pale golden. Appeals to brides gets me off the hook. Umm, but how do you get a crumbly powdery angel food cake? They are so moist they would wad up well and make more ammo in the fondant fight fad mentioned upthread. But I do understand the powdery kinda flavor, is that what you meant? But crumbly?? But as far as trends and decor goes. The brides drive that. What they see is what they want. If they grew up wanting a lighted pink fountain cake with bulbous swags and shells and rainbow colored satelites all perched on gangly dangly white columns with staircases a plenty so be it. To quote RLBerenbaum's Cake Bible page 211, "...One of those hulking white Baroque numbers, adorned with plastic Grecian columns and insipid cupids." Where the rub is there, is that some of today's decorators don't how to do that stuff. All that pipey sh*t is another learning curve. They/we do strings out of fondant now--what a great idea though--those buggers are murder to pipe--but once you got it you got it. If you can just squirt fondant out of a clay gun & attach 'em--guys, fondant ain't going nowhere.

Well yeah it's the sugar but it's also those 'plastic' fats they use too. Simply decorated cakes require a greater degree of expertise and so are much more difficult to produce because you have to be uber exact and without the Rococo to slather all over & cover it all up--you gotta be real dang good at icing stuff ...or...use...f-o-n-d-a-n-t. I like spaced tiers. I like stacked too. I had a bride the other day look at a five tier cake with a symetrical fondant drape all the way down (page 246 in the 2006 Grace Ormond book, the green & white) with scrolls & blablabla and she says, "Oh that would be easy." I took a leveled look at her & said, "A cupcake is easy." But truth to tell, the cupcake wedding cakes are so labor intensive they cost just as much as tier cake, or should cost just as much. Custom made stand, come on. Less decor is much more expertise unless you stay rustic. Rustic meaning broad strokes and no fine lines, rough iced--which I like that too. But if you're after the smooth & sleek--it ain't easy, folks. Fine lines take expertise out the wazoo, roll out the fondant* or wield a wicked spatula. *shhh, don't tell the Mayhaw Man

Ok the biggie here is the mouth feel for Americans. When we think cake, we think creamy and sweet and meltiliscious. Fondant needs chewing. So that keeps our mouths at odds with fondant. It doesn't matter how it tastes, we just don't chew icing. And it's a big deal. As far as pure taste goes, fondant is candy. It's sweet, it can be a canvas for flavors. As rose petals and shamrocks & little diddles on cakes it's great. As a covering for cake, it does not melt in our mouth and that is the unpardonable sin. Add to that the incredible disservice that Wilton is doing with that pure horsesh*t they produce and call fondant. That puts the last prolific nail in the fondant coffin. Decorators cannot talk people into fondant for the looks. Brides already have to want it. We do buttercream in faux fondant looks. Umm, we can add white chocolate and candy clay to fondant and that helps it a bit. But that whole gelatin in the icing thing goes too much against our grain. Now fondant can be applied very thinly to a cake and it can meld into the buttercream and that can work. But the best baker and decorator cannot change our perceptions to that extent if we have made up our minds. And once the populace has tried Wilton fondant that they bought at Hobby Lobby or Michael's nobody is gonna wanna try it. I just had a friend say nobody would even eat the (fondant covered) cake. I have another friend who cannot sell her family on eating beans, white beans. Nope no way. If she puts it in a bowl and calls it bean soup they can't get enough. You say potahto and I say potayto.

Right. Exactly. We agree. Cool looking stuff should also, just as importantly, be good to eat. Otherwise bakers could just use those bakers dummies and make a stack to the ceiling. Good cake that looks great is even more fun than just good cake. My complaint is good looking cake that is not good tasting because it has been covered in a sugary version of plastic. What's the point in calling it cake? Wouldn't it be more accurate to call it a one of a kind, sugar art, centerpiece? ← It is a one of a kind sugar art centerpiece. That's exactly what it is. And well yeah, we do set up cake dummies all iced up to be grand and beautiful. All of the above is true. Sometimes one portion of the cake is a dummy, sometimes one portion is cake and the rest is dummies. Fondant can be so easily removed and is so artistically essential. I mean I make shamrocks and rose petals out of it. I flavor it raspberry and nobody knows it's f-o-n-d-a-n-t and they eat it up like candy. Y'know what??? I can't hardly eat any kind of icing at all except chocolate. I don't like the other stuff anymore probably from having consumed inordinate amounts earlier in life--it's icky. However, it would make my job ever the more difficult to do cakes without icing. But you are right fondant as a cake covering does not agree with our palettes probably never will and Wilton is fanning the flames on this hot topic. However it does not affect the taste of the cake inside it's offending shell. And the cake is iced with something else too. So peel it off and enjoy Or wad it up and throw it at someone. Geez we should start a new trend. Like kicked up spit wads. Hmm, I could so get into this...especially if my brothers were around...

Jaymes. It's good to know there's a good formula out there for red velvet, obviously I haven't tried your recipe. If I get an order for red velvet and I can't talk any sense into 'em (on the excessive food color issue) I'll surely use yours. And yes, the movie made that cake flavor very popular. Red velvet wasn't created for the movie, the movie popularized it. And popularized the armadillo cake as well.

You've obviously never made a tier cake. Construction project is exactly what it is plus so much more. It is both dessert and engineering feat of magic, delivered with pinpoint freshness and designed to slice & serve like buttah in all the right colors and flavors not to mention artistically designed to be the breathtaking* focal point of the reception hall. *hopefully breathtaking in a positive way

It's basically like a buttermilk type cake with a coupla tablespoons of cocoa in it and an obscene amount of red food coloring. Now my little Mom made a red devil's food cake back in the day that was to die for. Oh my yes it was a very Happy Birthday or any other happy day with a big ole' slice of that stuff. But red velvet is popular because of that movie with Julia Roberts, was it Steel Magnolia's? It really seems to be a weany cake--not rich not particularly moist, just carbs loaded with enough red food color to hyperactivate schools full of children. Merely a platform for red food color to the point sometimes it weeps red. And generally slathered with cream cheese icing to give it some flavor. Maybe it needs the cream cheese tang to balance the red food color aftertaste. Loads of recipes on the net though. In my opinion, it's an oxymoron to say good red velvet recipe. No offense to anyone.