Book Cake

This weekend I worked on an antique book cake. Here is how the cake takes shape.

Step 1: Bake cake. This one is vanilla with lemon and ginger.

vanilla - lemon - ginger

 Step 2: Prep cake. Cool completely. First on racks to room temperature and then wrapped in the fridge. Once cooled they can be torted (split into layers), and filled with fruit or jam.

Step 3: Carving. This cake started as a square, so it needed to be resized. Then a channel near the binding provides the spot for the cover to come together. 

Step 4: Crumb coat. Thin coat of buttercream makes the cake tasty and provides glue for the fondant and chocolate.

carved ridge for the cover binding, crumbcoat and add side pages

 Step 5: Add spine and “pages”. Modelling chocolate applied to the spine side, and shaped at the top and bottom into a smooth binding. The effect of the pages is done by taking sheets of white fondant and running an imprinted rolling pin (covered in horizontal lines) over the edges.

add binding

cover- top and bottom

book cake

Step 9: Singing, fire, and knives. Serve the cake. If it is a birthday, don’t forget to light candles and sing!

The radiant birthday girl!

Cake Details:
 
Cake: Vanilla birthday cake with lemon and ginger (10″ x 8″ rectangle)
Filling: Strawberry
Icing: Rolled modelling chocolate on buttercream
Decoration: Rolled chocolate, piped chocolate, fondant flower