I had originally disregarded the idea of doing a shirt cake, as the carving process seemed too complicated. I used cakecentral for inspiration and thought I'd do a round cake, white, with red shorts/shirt/logo details. You need an account to view the galleries- but it's free and so worth it! If you're like me and hate junk e-mail, make sure you opt out of the e-mail newsletter.
So having decided on a simpler cake, I was in Looses cookshop in Norwich- whose top floor is a mecca for cake decorators. I'd never been up there and didn't ever want to leave. It's not cheap- but the products are good quality and the staff are extremely knowledgeable and helpful. I saw that they hire out novelty cake tins- genius, as you don't usually want to use them more than a couple of times! I got a t-shirt pan for a week for £5 plus a refundable £20 deposit. All tins are the same price no matter what their size. I'm going to bake another couple of "shirt cakes", do a crumb coat of buttercream and freeze them for future use. Cheeky!
Using the chocolate cake recipe they gave me- which rose beautifully, was deliciously moist and very easy- I baked the cake and let it cool for a couple of hours. I decided to try Sugarpaste (UK, or Fondant, US) and bought my first ever gel food colouring. I've wanted some of these for ages and they really are brilliant. You need to be careful colouring buttercream as the colour darkens over time, but sugarpaste stays fairly similar. Needed a good 1/2tsp to colour 1kg of sugarpaste that Liverpool red. I used a clean work surface dusted with icing sugar (good for compensating for the ish significant liquid contribution from the gel) and always placed the colouring in the centre of the sugarpaste, shaped like a flattened ball and pulled the edges over the top of it. Just a toothpick end amount at a time.
I cut the icing pieces free hand from thickly (3-4mm) rolled shop bought icing (*slaps hand). The adidas wording was a thin rolled "snake" of icing, rolled into the letters. Fiddly- but worth it!
Thrilled with the results, but would like to know how to cut away excess sugarpaste from the corners of the cake during the initial covering so that I get a smooth finish?I was pinching the ecxcess into triangles and slicing away, before crudely smoothing over with variable results. Any ideas?
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