Glittery batter?

[Thethemestrisses]

I have a client requesting the INSIDE of her cake be glittery. I haven't heard of or seen this before. What are some tips or items that can achieve this?

[jmacnaughtan]

Are you making a layered cake, a single block or an entremet? If it's an entremet, you could just add edible glitter to the mousse or inserts, and if it's layered to the buttercream or ganache. I'm not sure how well it stands up to heat though, so a monolithic cake might be a problem.

[Thethemestrisses]

She wants it in the actual batter. It's going to be a green tea cake with pink swirls and she wants the pink cake swirls to be glittery. I thought about using the glitter gel but I figured any edible glitter is made out of sugar and will melt under heat while baking, right?

[Mjx]

Pure gold and silver leaf are food safe, so if you can get hold of some of that in flake form, you could give that a go.

[lebowits]

That's expensive glitter.

[Mjx]

That's expensive glitter.

True, but since the cost is by weight, the price isn't prohibitive (e.g. gold leaf flake), and no question, the stuff sparkles.

[Shel_B]

Not that I'm going to make a cake with gold or silver leaf, but I am curious as to how much of the leaf would be needed for a cake as described above.

[KennethT]

I wonder if you could put a bunch of the leaf flakes in a mortar/pestle or a spice grinder and grind it into glitter?

[DianaM]

I wonder if you could put a bunch of the leaf flakes in a mortar/pestle or a spice grinder and grind it into glitter?

I have only used gold leaf so far, it has a lot of static, that's what makes it stick (to chocolate at least, that's where I used it). Not sure about the flakes, but the gold leaf would just stick to the bottom or sides of the grinder or mortar, and I believe it would be impossible to scrape off.

[Mjx]

Don't even think about putting gold flakes, dust, whatever, into a mortar, unless you want a gold-leaf interior to it.

My idea was that the flakes/dust be simply added directly to the fluid pink batter that is to be the swirls. Add maybe half a teaspoon, mix it well, and see how that looks, then add more, if it seems like a good idea. A combination of dust and flakes might make for the best effect, although more Marie Antoinette than Hello Kitty.

[jmacnaughtan]

You could add gold or silver dust to some finely chopped nuts, toss them in it to coat, then fold that through the batter. The dust tends to stick to nuts very well, and you'd have more visible "glitter" in your cake.

[Thethemestrisses]

Oh coating something is a good idea. I wonder if I could cost batter bits the same way in case anyone has a nut allergy.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Can you get sesame dragées or something similar? Those can easily be coated with leaf, and hold up well in the batter. They also avoid the whole nut-allergy issue.

[Mjx]

Coating bits of somthing seems like it would involve using more whatever-glittery-substance-you-choose, but with less sparkly payoff. I admit I'm a fan of gold flakes and dust, although I've only gotten it on the inside of things by accident. The thing about gold is that it is really hard to kill the gleam of it, you get sparkle from every angle, so every tiny flake is doing a 720° job.

[judiu]

Why don't you make a single cupcake to try out the glitter gel. If it works, great. If not, THEN worry about alternatives!

[ChrisZ]

This thread reminded me that I tried adding silver luster dust to a white chocolate ganache, rather than brushing in on afterwards. While it kinda sparkled, it actually made the ganache look like it had split, even though it hadn't. I wouldn't do it again.

[JeanneCake]

@ ChrisZ: Swiss Chalet is selling a chocolate glaze with metallic sheen in in both white and dark; I don't know if they only sell to the trade or if consumers can buy from their website.

I've been seeing pictures of cakes that have animal prints inside the baked layer (leopard); and ones where people bake cake balls in that special pan and then put the baked balls into a pan of cake batter and create a cake with polka dots in it. You can buy sparkle airbrush color, which you could use to color cake batter (think red velvet), but honestly, the sparkle will be very very faint because it's a shimmer color not a neon color. But it's worth a try.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Hold up, is coarser edible glitter not available up there in North America? I asked my local decorating shop about solving this problem, and Rocío recommended stirring in a coarser grade (as opposed to lustre-dust fine) of edible glitter just at the swirling point, which should work. The stuff that's available here is heat-safe, so there's no degradation of glittery-ness in baking.

[curls]

Found two products that may be of help:

Wilton Cake Sparkles http://www.wilton.com/store/site/product.cfm?id=3E310D1E-475A-BAC0-5E0EF1DB7697E8A1

Edible Glitter http://www.michaels.com/Edible-Glitter/bk0394,default,pd.html

I have not used either of these but it looks like they were made to do exactly what your bride wants. Please let us know what you end up baking.

Edited to add... looks like these products are supposed to be put on the top of cakes and cupcakes not in the batter. Also most of the stuff that is truly "glittery" appears to be non-edible.

Edited January 23, 2014 by curls (log)

[pastrygirl]

I'm curious to see if you can get this to work. Wouldn't the batter, however thin a coating, interfere with the light reflecting and therefore the glitteriness?

[Mjx]

I'm curious to see if you can get this to work. Wouldn't the batter, however thin a coating, interfere with the light reflecting and therefore the glitteriness?

I've no idea how this works with edible glitte, but real gold flakes show up really nicely: I inadvertently got a few inside a cake that I was planning on decorating with gold flakes (I couldn't resist poking about in the bag, and they stuck to my fingers, then ended up in the batter), and even this sparse, accidental scattering of flakes really stood out.