Make Craft Game

The base of this landscape cake is the cake itself. I decided to pick a carrot cake because I wanted to make one, and this seemed like a good excuse to accomplish that. I started with two bowls, one for the dry ingredients and one for the wet ingredients. The bowl for the wet ingredients was the one compatible with the mixer.

I put the flour and spices into the non-mixer bowl, while the wet ingredients had a bit more of a process. To start, I added the vegetable oil, brown sugar, and white sugar into the bowl and beat them together until it became a cohesive mixture. Then I added the eggs one at a time. I wanted to make sure the egg had been completely incorporated before adding the next one. The vanilla was also added with the last egg.

After the wet mixture is thoroughly mixed together, I added the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. This process was done by adding ¼ cup of the flour mixture at a time. Adding in parts allows for a better incorporation of the ingredients.

The cake batter is ready! I divided the cake batter between the 3 9-inch pans (to the best of my ability). I could have weighed it out to make sure the batter was evenly spread, but I didn’t think of doing that in the moment.

The next part to make for the landscape cake was the cream cheese frosting. I started with the butter, beating it until it was light and fluffy. Then I added in the powdered sugar one cup at a time. I tried to hand-mix in some of the powdered sugar before using the mixer because it tends to go everywhere when the mixer is involved.

Next, I added vanilla extract and cinnamon to the frosting for some flavor. But cream cheese frosting needs cream cheese. I added the cream cheese roughly one tablespoon at a time. At this point, I tasted the frosting to make sure I liked it.

Homemade frosting always tastes too much like butter for my liking. It’s why I normally switch to vegetable shortening instead of butter. I didn’t do the swap out for this recipe because I thought the cream cheese would be enough to overtake the butter flavor. It didn’t. To help the flavor, I kept adding cinnamon until I got the flavor to my liking.

The last component for the landscape cake is the walnut white chocolate ganache. It is important to use candy melts because they will regain their structure to make the ganache. I started by slightly melting the candy melts. The chocolate shouldn’t be fully melted, just slightly softened.

While this is happening, I also put the heavy whipping cream in a small pot on the stove. I wanted to bring the cream to something slightly above a simmer but not a rolling boil. I wanted to use the ganache to coat the outside of the cake as well as one of the inside layers. The walnuts would make the outside of the cake lumpy, so I thought I should split the chocolate to make two ganaches without the walnuts as well.

I then poured the hot heavy whipping cream evenly between the two bowls of chocolate. The heat from the cream will help the chocolate melt. I let the cream and chocolate sit for about 5 minutes with a cover on top to help retain the heat. Then I mixed the chocolate into the cream to get a consistent texture.

This is where the two bowls become different: one got the crushed walnuts, and the other got blue food dye. The mixtures were still too hot to work with, so I let them cool before putting all the components together to make the landscape cake.

The last step is to assemble the landscape cake. I first started with the cake layers. The bottom is a layer of cake. Then a layer of cream cheese frosting. Next is a layer of cake followed by a layer of the walnut white chocolate ganache. The last cake layer covers the ganache with a layer of frosting on top.

I used the frosting to fill the cracks on the cake as well as use it for a crumb layer. This will help make the cake smoother, which gives a better finish. The blue white chocolate ganache was used to coat the outside of the cake on all sides.

To make the island, I started by using some of the extra walnut crumble that I had to make the outer edge of the island. I thought that it looked like sand, so it was perfect for the edge. There was some extra cake crumble from the earlier construction, so I decided to use it to make the island have a bit more height. It looked more dynamic to me.

Then I used the green dyed frosting to create a texture on the top of the cake. I really need to explore the piping tips I have because I am never sure which is the right one for which project. I also wanted to make a palm tree out of fondant, but that turned out to be a small disaster because I couldn’t properly judge proportions.