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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

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.

crumbcoat and pages

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.

crumbcoat, pages, and binding

add binding

Step 6: Add cover. Modelling chocolate in various shades of red is marbles together, rolled out, and cooled in a rectangle. The key is cutting it with an appropriate amount of overhang, so the cover will look realistic. By cooling the chocolate, it is stiff enough to handle and place on top, but warms up easily for shaping at the spine and edges.
Step 6: Add bottom cover. Add thin strips of matching chocolate (spine+cover) to provide the back (bottom) cover. I also added strips of red with stiching to the spine and binding to give it a finished and aged look. 

cover- top and bottom

cover- top and bottom

Step 7: Decorate. Add the title, decorations and spine detail.

Book cake

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!

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

Posted in Celebration Cakes.

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