What kind of a cake do you make a guy like this?
A bicycle cake of course! But wait! He has thrown me a curveball. Anthony, unlike his previous birthday-havers, requested a cake recipe. I realized, after looking at the recipe, that a chocolate stout cake is definitely something that would get Anthony excited. That actually made my life easier. Thanks, Anthony!
There was one problem with the recipe, however. How was I going to ice a bicycle using a chocolate icing? It would be a 100% brown bike... That would never do. Anthony needs a red bicycle birthday cake. I began to search for an icing containing some sort of alcohol. Look at this! It's perfect. The combination of flavors had already been tested! The original cake recipe looked better to me, so I decided to stick with that one. The other advantage to it was that it made a larger batch, and I needed to make 2 round 8-inch and one 9x13-inch.
I was not so sure about this recipe.. FOUR sticks of butter? Beer? Simmer them together? But I continued on...
After baking the cakes, I realized the recipe had stated it was best to line the pans with parchment paper. Guess I missed that part. The left cake is very sad. But the one on the right is not so bad... only because you can't see the underside!
I grabbed the 1/3 less fat version of cream cheese at the store. Those four sticks of butter were haunting me. If you make this recipe, you will definitely want to double the icing. It originally called for 4 oz of cream cheese but I ended up using the whole box and wishing I had more.
After icing the round cakes poorly, measuring twice, cutting once, and assembling. It was actually coming together! I think my drawings were more helpful than expected!
That's more like it! This is probably my favorite state of the cake. Only because the icing got so messy, as you can see in the next photo.
You might ask, what is the white icing doing there? Well I ran out of the cream cheese icing, so I had to resort to the seven-minute frosting. Only this time, instead of adding vanilla to it, I added baileys. Excellent choice!
The white parts should be a darker brown/black/gray. But white is more euro, right?
Now for the finishing touches of chocolate sprinkles left over from Wyatt's birthday cake.
I think it's pretty cute! Quite messy, but look at the proportions!
Now wait, Anthony won't even be back until tomorrow night.. And my fridge can hardly fit a gallon of milk.. How on earth do I store this without letting it get stale? Saran wrap was my only option. Saran wrap was also my worst option. It loves to stick to icing and pull it right off, ruining your design. This is when I use my problem-solving skills and my creativity.
The result:
Too bad they don't make giant cake boxes! Luckily I had plenty of cups to keep the wrap from touching my masterpiece. This took me five hours total.
It was an absolute masterpiece, and I was honored to be in it's presence last night!
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