JAG Cake

Today was mandatory fun day for the JAG corps, or organization day as they like to call it.  It wasn’t mandatory for me, I went of my own free will.  There was a pot-luck lunch, music, frisbee, corn-hole…you know, the normal day at the park fun times.

There had been an on-line sign up for foods to bring.  I somehow deleted the e-mail and had to ask for it to be sent to me again.  By the time I got to it I had the option of baked mac and cheese or cake.  That choice wasn’t a hard one to make.  Cake, of course!

I have been looking at cakes online that are covered in black fondant then written on with white chocolate or a mixture of white food coloring and vodka.  They end up looking like chalk boards and I really wanted to try it out.  I had made a friend’s son a birthday cake a while back and had some left-over black fondant so I rolled some out and started experimenting. 

Straight white chocolate didn’t work for me.  It kind of left a smear but no good lines.  I couldn’t find white food coloring and had no time to order it so that option was out also.  I tried wetting powdered sugar into a paste and painting it on, but it was thick and looked more like a 80’s puff paint shirt than something to eat.  I then painted straight water onto the fondant and sprinkled powdered sugar on top.  That actually worked! As long as the fondant is just barely wet the effect works. The powder sugar sticks to the water and you can just wipe the excess sugar off with your hand, even over where it is painted.  

I’m not sure why, but I thought about some color mist spray I have in the cupboard.  You are supposed to spray it on top of frosting for a shimmery look, but I decided to spray it into a little cup and use as paint.  It worked so well!  It was silver and was so sparkly pretty against the black.  The only problem was that it was sparkly pretty, not chalkboard pretty, so plans changed as they so often do.

Instead of doing a chalkboard look I decided to paint a design on top.  I looked down at my shirt and I had the perfect inspiration, the JAG crest. I looked up the crest on-line and realized it should be in gold not silver.  On the next trip to the PX I grabbed the last can of gold spray.

I practiced painting the crest and it was fine, but just not as interesting as I hoped it would be. Fondant is pretty much like playing with clay so I sat down at the table and went to work forming the crest piece by piece.

Not too bad for a first try.

Here are my tools for the painting part.  Wilton brand color mist in gold and a paint brush.

 

And now here it is all painted up.

So cool, right?

Next came the base for it.  To get a perfect circle I placed a cereal bowl on some rolled out fondant.  I painted “JAG ORG DAY” on top and the date on the bottom.  I had started forming all the letters out of fondant, but that proved to be not worth the effort.

 

Next came putting the cake together.  I used two boxes of white cake to make three layers.  One red, one white and one blue.  I’m not sure how much food coloring I used, but two long squeezies gave the batter a good rich color.

After stacking them with white frosting I did a thin layer of frosting for a crumb coat and put it in the fridge to set.

 

 

After the crumb coat hardened I put the frosting on and the crest decoration, but it was lacking a final touch.  It needed a boarder.  I rolled fondant into long strips, twisted them together, placed them around the edge and painted them gold to match.

 

And here it is all put together.

 

I managed to get it to the park without incident. I was really worried that I was going to drop it, though I can’t remember that ever being a problem.

There was a lot of food at the party and it all went quickly, but no one was eating the cake.  I’m pretty sure it’s just because no one wanted to be the one to cut it.  When I got the knife people were asking me, “Are you really going to do it!?” and asking each other if anyone knew who made it.  I’m not going to lie, that was really fun to listen to.  After a bit I let them know I made it.  They were then okay with my cutting it.

The layers turned out!  I wanted to take a better picture, but I felt weird taking pictures of it with people standing around.

 

Once the first piece was out people didn’t mind getting a slice.  Whew!

Want to hear the best part?  Towards the end of the party someone in charge (he had the mic, he looked official) thanked everyone for coming and said he was going to announce the winners of the pot-luck.  I didn’t even know there was a competition!

Guess who took first place?  ME!

 

I won a lunch bag and the Golden Spatula.  How fun is that?  Okay, so it’s not some major award like a leg lamp, but I was just as excited!