Words With Friends Cake

I turned into a mad woman this weekend. A mad, crazed, obsessed woman to be exact - all because of a cake. It clicked in when Demos and I were out on friday night. I mentioned that one of our friends would be back on Monday from a month long trip. "Great, going to get my ass kicked on Words with Friends (WWF) again". You see, our friend that is returning is what can only be considered a professional Words with Friends player. For those that don't know, its an absolutely addictive game on the iPhone and iPad, where you play a real time scrabble game against different users and friends.  "Danni-jack" is the girl to beat, and im sure she suffered severe WWF widthdrawals while travelling. What better way to surprise her then with a Word With Friends / Scrabble themed cake?

I was up and motivated on a Saturday morning. Forget the fact that it was Macaron Day, I was a girl on a baking mission. I should point out however, that my baking escapades should be called The Empty Pantry... and baking supplies and ingredients needed to be bought! With my long shopping list in tow, I was off!

Orchard ready to roll icing - $4 a box

Someone had told me that Spotlight sold cake decorating supplies, but as soon as I got to Town Hall (in torrential rain mind you!) I found out that the CBD store had closed. After a minor detour to Victoria's Basement and impulse cookie cutter and piping bag purchases, I then drove to Burwood to buy actual cake ingredients from Coles, luckily for me the had plenty of White Ready to Roll Icing for $4 a box (Thanks to The Dainty Baker for the tip!). Of course I bought some extra packs of flour, sugar, butter, buttermilk... but I still had no gel colouring to dye my fondant! Next stop was another Spotlight store at Birkenhead Point. They had a few tools, decorations, writing icing but no gel fondant dyes.

Creative Colour Dyes for colouring fondant - $7.95 each

I then drove to Balmain, and oh, it was so painful to drive past the Zumbo store and not want to wait in line on Macaron day! I got to say 'Hi' to Simon through my car window - and he was holding his precious Macaron haul! Thank goodness for Essential Ingredient at Rozelle - now why didn't I think of going there first! I went a bit overboard, and finally headed home - not just with my precious fondant dyes, but with a new rolling pin, cake leveller, spatula and maybe a few new cake tins as well.

Now for the baking. I decided on a Red Velvet base, with a Buttercream Frosting. I used the Red Velvet recipe from Joy of Baking as well as their Frosting recipe. I filled my 8x10 rectangular cake pan with this goes red mixture and after leaving it to cool, I iced them to smooth the surface in preparation for the fondant.

I use the extra batter for red velvet cupcakes which I set aside for my next project :)

 

I roll out the icing to cover my cake slab, which I do ever so carefully. Its harder than it looks to get a smooth layer - and up close, my cake looked like it had a bit of cellulite. Not bad though for my first attempt! I also use my gel dyes to colour the fondant, lucky for me I only needed primary colours as I wanted to keep it as close to the image of the game as possible.

You cant really see it in my photos, but I also then rolled out a light grey piece to go onto the white slab - this is the grid board. Using the straight end of a butter knife, I cut out the individual tiles. The hard part was trying to connect all the words together, folling official scrabble rules of course! I position the tiles by making marks directly on the icing, and then I draw the grid using a tube of black writing icing. I was surprised that the lines I drew were not too wonky, and I that the tiles I used were (mostly) a similar size. I had to throw in the word 'QI' as it was my friend's signature word - if it is in fact a word!

I am still very proud of my first decorating effort, and danni-jack's reaction and excitement was well worth the effort! The red velvet cake was definitely a good choice as it was not too sickeningly sweet, something i'd like to avoid with already a thick layer of icing. The end result is well worth the effort and once again, Welcome Home danni-jack! 

Stay tuned.. I have another decorating feat to share, those cupcakes needed some detail too..and I can't wait to post the end results! On a side note, my Words with Friends username is 'Gbangs' and i'm always up for a challenge! Until next time!