Ben 10 Cake Tutorial

Ben 10 Birthday Cake

When I am designing a new cake I like to gather all my ideas and resources together before I start.

I put all my images on one page and then take a screenshot. I have an iMac and I simply Preview/File/Take Screen Shot.

Screen Shot

Cake tin and cake boards

• 11.5″ diameter tin
• 11.5″ diameter thin card cake board. This board help you to move the cake around when you are decorating it and as the cake shrinks a little during baking, this board becomes a guide when ganaching. As you pull your spatula round the ganached cake to smooth it just press against the card board circle underneath as a guide and you will get the perfect thickness.
• 16″ diameter 6mm thick cake board. The cake will be heavy so you need a strong base. I use a pedestal base for this cake but I would normally have used a 6mm thick cake board.

Dark Chocolate Mud Cake (from Planet Cake Cookbook)

Ingredients for 11.5″ cake
359g butter

359g dk choc

41g coffee

261ml water

204g SR

204g plain

82g cocoa

.8 tsp bicarb

784g caster

6.5 eggs

11.4 tsp oil

163ml buttermilk

Dark Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients for 11.5″ cake

1960g dark chocolate, finely chopped

980ml pure cream

Fondant

GREY 1700g sugar-paste to cover entire cake and other bits and pieces.BLACK 500g cake details

GREEN 400g watch dial and trousers.

YELLOW: Lettering

WHITE: No.5 and figurine top

FLESH: Face and hands

BROWN: Hair

Dark Chocolate Mud Cake Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160C. Grease the tin and line the base and sides with a collar that extends 2 cm above the top of the tin.
2. Put the butter, chocolate, coffee and water in a saucepan and stir over low heat until melted, then remove from the heat.
3. Sift the flours, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar and make a well in the centre. Add the combined egg, oil and buttermilk and the chocolate mixture, stirring with a large spoon until completely combined.
4. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 2 hours (for 11’5″cake) or until a skewer poked into the centre of the cake comes out clean, though it may be a little sticky. Leave the cake in the tin until cold.

Dark Chocolate Ganache Method

1. Put the chocolate pieces in a large bowl
2. Put the cream in a saucepan and bring to boiling point. Pour the cream over the chopped chocolate and mix with a hand whisk until the ganache is smooth. (Do not use an electric whisk, as you will create too many air bubbles in the ganache.)
3. Allow to cool completely and then leave to set overnight.

Baking Diary

 

DAY 1

Colour sugar-paste

Make ganache

Bake cake

Wrap cake in foil and place in fridge overnight. (I use my bar fridge as the temperature is not too low)

Cut finger nails. There is nothing worse than making a mark with your long nails on your completed cake just before your guests arrive

DAY 2

Take cake out of fridge first thing in the morning and allow to come to room temp.

Torte and ganache cake then leave it to set.

Once set cover with sugar-paste.

DAY 3 

Decorate and complete the job.

DAY 4 

Stuff up day. You never know what might happen when making a cake so always pencil in a stuff up day.

 DAY 5  

The day of the party

Day 1

Wilton Icing colour pastes, Bakels Ready to Roll (RTR) white sugar-paste in 7kg box and some left over coloured sugar-pastes from previous projects.

I like to keep sugar-paste in cheap freezer bags inside zip lock bags like these ones from IKEA

Add colour to the sugar-paste with a knife, cutting into the paste a little so that the colour doesn’t squidge out when you start to kneed it in. All up I used 28g of black Wilton icing colour on this cake. I had meant to buy ready made black sugar-paste but forgot that the online supplier was off till 10 Jan!

I actually made about 2200g of grey coloured sugar-paste first then converted 500g of it to black. Making the coloured sugar-paste early in the week gives the sugar-paste time to unwind and time for the colour to intensify. This picture is just the start of tinting to grey

Making the baking strips using Aluminium Foil and two old drying cloths (damp)

Tin is double lined and baking strips attached.

My lovely 6.7 litre Kenwood Major Titanium mixer

K beater up and batter ready to go!

Use a pastry brush (or similar) to ‘paint’ the top of the cake with boiled water to keep it moist and save cracking. Then cover with a clean tea cloth to reduce evaporation. I remove the baking strips once they can be handled or use oven gloves to remove them. Let cake cool completely before taking the cake out of the tin. Wrap the cake well in cling film (do not squash cake) and put in fridge till morning.

Day 2

Covering the cake with sugar-paste

Excess trimmed off

Day 3

Design for top of cake

Cutting plan

Using the template to cut out the shapes

Ben 10 becomes Cameron 5

I used Franklin Gothic Heavy font in photoshop to get as close to the Ben 10 font as I could. I had to make the letters broader and the spaces between each letter much smaller. I also moved some letters up and down to make the effect a little crooked. All of this was done in the ‘Character box’. I then duplicated the layer and added a stroke and a drop shadow. Too easy!

Adding the lettering, one letter at a time.

Day 4

This is stuff up day so if everything has gone to plan you can put your feet up!

 

Day 5

Party time!

Figurine was made without Tylose powder. I forgot to buy some yet again.  Baby Ben 10 would have looked so much better if I had added some of the Tylose powder to the sugar-paste.

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