Some of you may know what a big fan of colors I am. In fact, I even have the additive and subtractive color spectrums tattooed on my backs on my wrists. So it should come as no surprise that I was inspired to create a CMYK cake!

My plan was something like this:

But, as usual, my plan didn't come to fruition as fabulously as I hoped. However, it did turn out better than I expected, after a few setbacks.

The cake is entirely gluten-free and has SO MANY components that it actually took me three days to complete. And I had to re-bake the lemon cake because I didn't put enough baking powder in the first batch. Darnit! My process went something like this:

DAY 1

• raspberry curd
• lemon curd
• blueberry puree

DAY 2

• lemon cake
• raspberry cake
• blueberry cake
• chocolate cake
• chocolate ganache frosting (yes, the black is chocolate!)

DAY 3

• re-bake lemon cake
• blueberry Italian meringue
• assemble and frost cake

By the end of it, I have to admit that I was rather exhausted, which would explain the not-perfectly-evenly-cut cake layers (resulting in the angled top) and the not-perfectly-smoothed frosting job. In the end, it looks cool, but it could have used a lot more filling in between the layers to make it taste better. Darn.

And look! The cupcake makes you happy! Such fantastic luck that I sh--

WTF is this? Ingredients: simple  flour and an egg? Flour. Simple flour. And an egg. That's it? And this is going to make a tasty cupcake that will make me happy?

I have to admit that after my last WoW baking adventure, I was slightly optimistic, yet also a bit leery about these in-game recipes. Certainly there was some magic involved in turning two gooey spider legs into a delicious pie! But folks, I just couldn't bring myself to believe that any kind of Blizzard magic would turn simple flour and an egg into anything tastier than the most boring "bread" anyone's ever tasted.

Because I always give the benefit of the doubt, I decided I'd at least try this "recipe".

Mise En Place

Well, there's not much to it, is there? Simple flour and an egg.

(I actually added a little water to make it a somewhat decent consistency, but don't tell anyone.)

What do you know? It made enough for TWO cupcakes! Maybe this will turn out all right after all...

The Finished Product

I don't know about you, but I don't think this looks much different than it did before I put it in the oven. (In case you're wondering, it was hard as a rock, and I couldn't even bring myself to taste it.) Well, let's see what the final product looks like in-game.

Okay, this looks nothing like that. And on top of that, it's supposed to yield FIVE cupcakes, not two! What a rip-off! I found this whole thing rather unacceptable, friends. So unacceptable, in fact, that I decided to let Blizzard know about it.

Ahhh.... After letting off some steam (even though my message got cut short, god damnit), I decided to make myself a cupcake that was actually tasty.

A Real Tasty Cupcake

And since I'd been looking at, and expecting, a cupcake that looks like the one in the picture, I decided to make mine look like that. Once again, it's a chocolate-looking cake and a berry-looking topping. Well, I deviated a slight bit; hope you don't mind.

Rich Brownie Cupcake with a Red Buttercream Rosette

I used this Best Cocoa Brownies recipe, using my own gluten-free flour mixture as usual, and baked it in mini muffin tins instead of in a brownie pan. I made a pretty typical American buttercream, colored it red, and piped little rosettes on the top.

These are so effing delicious, it's a good thing I made them in miniature size so I can ration them out!

I also made some with a fresh banana buttercream glaze (which doesn't look that pretty, sorry), which you can see here.

My newest endeavor is taking recipes from World of Warcraft and attempting to recreate them in my own kitchen. If you missed my first experiment, go see how my [Delicious Chocolate Cake] turned out. This time around I'll be doing another cake, but with more sinister ingredients: the [Gooey Spider Cake].

Recipe Assessment

Things to note about this recipe:
- It only has one ingredient: gooey spider legs
- Its result looks more like a pie than a cake

Mise en Place

With only one ingredient, this should have been pretty easy to prep. I'll tell you what, folks. I must have killed two dozen spiders (which takes a while for a holy paladin who doesn't do much damage) before I got enough [Gooey Spider Leg] drops to complete this recipe. Luckily, the last one I killed yielded exactly two [Gooey Spider Leg]s.

You'd think that it'd be easy enough to get what I needed after only one spider, since they have eight legs and everything. I guess sometimes they're just not gooey enough. Or something.

On to the Baking

That wasn't so bad! And now, just to bake the cake.

I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical of this recipe, having only one ingredient, but I figured Blizzard wouldn't let me down so I decided to forge on with the baking.

Final Result

Tada! Wow, that was way easier than I thought it would be. This WoW baking is pretty cool!

(If you'd like to learn about an alternate way to make this pie, er I mean, cake... check out this blog.)

In order to bridge the gap between World of Warcraft and my kitchen, I've decided to embark on a new endeavor to make WoW food in real life. That is to say that I will be taking in-game recipes and attempting to recreate them in my own kitchen.

There will, of course, be a certain amount of improvisation on my part, in order to make some of these (unrealistic) recipes work; however, I do intend to stick as closely to the game recipes as possible. As time goes on, I also intend to branch out into recipes from other video games, but in the beginning it will be purely WoW items. If there's one you'd like to suggest, please send me a PM.

Blizzard's Delicious Chocolate Cake

I figured that a good place to start would be with a popular item from Burning Crusade days - the Delicious Chocolate Cake. (Since I am a pastry chef, I intend to stick to the baked goods, but we'll see where things go in the future.)

Recipe Assessment

Things to note about this recipe:

• Simple Flour, not cake flour - this means the cake will be light and fluffy.
• Ice Cold Milk - this means the cake will be rich, especially in ratio to the flour
• Mild Spices - perhaps this could be the chocolate? I'm not sure what to use for this.
• Small Egg - high ratio of eggs-to-flour. This cake will be rich and thick after all.
• Flask of Port - quite a large amount of alcohol, although this could be tasty.
• Mageroyal - this could be lumped into the spices, or add an accent to the chocolate.
• There is no chocolate listed in the ingredients. Interesting.
• There is no sugar listed in the ingredients. Also interesting.
• There are berries in the picture (below) but not in the recipe. Heh.

Image Assessment

The first thing that I noticed is the icon doesn't look anything like a chocolate cake. It looks like white cake with some sort of berry filling and green goo on top. I could decorate it to look like that, but let's see what the item looks like in-game.

So in-game, the actual item looks (or is presumed to look) more like a chocolate cake with some berries on top. I'll shoot for this model because it seems more fitting for the name anyhow.

Kelley's Delicious Chocolate Cake

Now that I'd seen what the original recipe and cake look like, it was time for me to recreate this in my own kitchen. I decided to do this in the style used by Mythbusters. I'd make one cake using the exact recipe from the game (substituting spices/mageroyal as I see fit). Then I'd make another cake using the recipe but expanding it to make it an actual delicious chocolate cake.

Translated WoW Recipe

• 8x Simple Flour = 2 cups flour (assuming 1 part = 1/4 cup)
• 4x Ice Cold Milk = 1 cup milk (assuming 1 part = 2 tbsp)
• 4x Mild Spices = 4 tbsp cocoa (assuming spices = chocolate)
• 8x Small Egg = 4 extra-large eggs (cause who can find small eggs?)
• Flask of Port = 1/2 cup port wine
• 3x Mageroyal =1 tsp lavender (it's a flower, at least!)

I decided to go for the normal (non-French) mixing style and just mix the wet ingredients and then add the dry ingredients. The batter turned out looking pretty good.

I was a bit leery, however, that the recipe called for four eggs, but no leavening of any sort. Would the cake rise?

That's right, folks. The cake came out very flat and very dense.

So dense, in fact, that I decided to use it as a makiwara.

It barely rose, meaning the final cake was about 1.5 inches in thickness. It had barely any flavor (thanks to there being no sugar in the recipe, Blizzard).

So. Almost total fail. Next it was time to try this with some revisions, because by now it was clear that I needed a real delicious chocolate cake.

Kelley's Revised Recipe

• 8x Simple Flour = 1.75 cups flour
• 4x Ice Cold Milk = 1 cup milk
• 4x Mild Spices = .75 cup cocoa, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp baking soda
• 8x Small Egg = 2 extra-large eggs + .5 cup vegetable oil
• Flask of Port = 1/2 cup port wine + 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3x Mageroyal =1 tsp lavender (it's a flower, at least!)
• MISSING SUGAR = 2 cups sugar

As you can see, I altered the recipe to include some leavening, some sugar, and a slight alteration of wet-to-dry ratio. I also replaced some of the flour with more cocoa. The batter turned out nice and dark, and had a bit more volume than the first recipe.

The cakes rose beautifully, and I had no trouble at all removing them from the rings.

I baked two cakes and cut them both in half in order to stack them. I used three for stacking and the other for tasting. The cake was chocolatey and moist, but the port was a bit... odd. I knew I would need a very tasty frosting in order to even out the flavors. And I was glad that the images showed berries on the cake, too.

The Delicious Chocolate Cake

I decided to use a chocolate fudge frosting to fill between the layers and on the top. I also used sliced strawberries in between the layers, and halved strawberries to garnish the top of the cake.

So, the cake looked pretty, and actually rather WoW-ish. But... would it taste good? I sliced a piece and gave it a taste. The fudge frosting and strawberries were actually pretty perfect for balancing out the flavors. Yay~!

Final Thoughts

Blizzard was on the right track with this recipe, but in actuality, it didn't turn out so well. Hint: if you're going to use the word delicious in the name of your cake, you had better put some sugar in it. I'd also recommend leaving the port wine out, and replacing it with something more tasty, like coffee or maybe even some Kahlúa -- and less of it.

Oh, and by the way -- yes, it's completely gluten-free.

I figured the best way to do this would be to make some decorated sugar cookies in the shape of goats. I decided to go with my trusty (and fricking fabulous, thank-you-very-much) gluten-free shortbread recipe and substitute goat butter instead of regular butter. (As always, click the images to see them bigger.)

The goat butter turned out to be a lot more like shortening than I was expecting. It was white and very greasy, but it assimilated into the dough better than normal butter did. The dough had the proper consistency, though, and was a dream to roll and cut, so no problems there - yay!

They seemed to brown a bit quicker than with my normal recipe, so I baked them a bit less time than usual. They also spread a bit more than I was expecting, but they didn't lose too much of their goaty shape, so it's okay.

Next day I set about decorating them! I decided on white goats and black goats, each with a little red heart (you know, for the Valentine part of this whole project). I used my entire jar of black powder coloring and my royal icing STILL wasn't black, so I had to make a quick run to the store to get some (real) gel coloring - thank goodness they hadn't closed yet!

And, since I am devious, and goats are often associated with the devil, I decided to make a red devil-goat cookie, complete with a BLACK HEART. Isn't he cute?

As for the taste? They're awesome. The cookies are softer than my normal shortbread recipe, but still sturdy enough that they don't fall apart in your hands (which is especially important in gluten-free baking). The royal icing keeps them together well, and the flavors work great together. Interestingly, the goat butter seems to have made these cookies taste a lot milkier than the normal cow-butter recipe.

One of my favorite things about this season is that Blue Bell starts selling their amazingly delicious peppermint ice cream. It is, without a doubt, my favorite ice cream of all time. And doesn't it look pretty in that adorable little penguin cup I got at Target?!

I also found those super cute kawaii food stickers at Borders today and couldn't pass them up! ^_^

In other news, I was busy making dinosaurs and snails out of gum paste during my make-up class this week (while the rest of the class was making flowers). It was pretty fun. The dinosaur's tail broke off, but here's a picture of my little snail!

And in my normal (night) class, when we finished up with the dessert buffet, my teacher made us practice our piping (again). This time I decided to try and appeal to what they really want us to do (instead of something I find more fun, like my mermaid cake). My teacher was pleased. I actually think my piping is getting a lot better. I took a picture for later reference when we have to make a cake to go on top of our croquembouches in a couple weeks.

The Wedding Cake

As I'm sure you already know, my wedding cake was the mermaid cake I wrote about not too long ago. Since they were foam forms, we were able to keep them for the past few weeks until the final.

The Pastillage Showpiece

I have already written about this too, but only had some crappy cell phone pictures to show you. Now I was able to take some better ones with my real camera!

The Sugar Showpiece

The sugar showpiece was to be an underwater scene made entirely of sugar. The base, water, seaweed, and coral were made of poured sugar (boil it to horrendous temperatures and pour into various things for different effects). The pumice was made of rock sugar (boil sugar and add a spoonful of royal icing at a certain temperature to make it all foamy). The fish and jellyfish were made of isomalt, which was blown and pulled for various effects. Unfortunately, most of my jellyfish's tentacles broke off. :(

The Chocolate Box

The chocolate box was made completely out of chocolate, which we tempered the hard way - on a marble slab. :P The decorations on top were piped onto plastic and very carefully glued on with chocolate (and the help of some awesome chef's grade canned air stuff to freeze the chocolate solid very quickly).

The Mousse Cake - Night and Fire

For the mousse cake, we had a few different ones to choose from. I chose this one because, well, I like it! The bottom is a pistachio genoise, the middle is a chocolate hazelnut mousse, and the top is a raspberry mousse. It's topped of with a thin layer of raspberry glaze, wrapped in some more tempered chocolate, and decorated with some of my leftover chocolate decorations (from the box) and strawberries (because we were all out of raspberries - boo!).

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the way things turned out, although everything could have been a lot better. :P

A quick run-down on the details:
- 3 tiers, all must be covered in fondant (white fondant only)
- at least 2 kinds of piping
- at least 1 kind of flower
- everything except the flower wiring and pistil/stamens must be edible (which is amusing, since we were working on foam molds :P)

Of course, I didn't want to do some boring wedding cake. I'm not into wedding cakes at all, and most of the piping techniques (extension work?!) he showed us were boring, or not my style at all. So, naturally, I went with a mermaid theme!

First off, I am extremely pleased with the colors for my seaweed. They are better than I could have hoped for, and using two different sized leaf tips gave a great effect! The white swirly, bubbly piping on the top 2 tiers was purely improv. I knew I needed another type of piping and I didn't want any more color (aside from the flowers), so I went with white. Again, I'm really happy with the results.

My shining star (pun intended) actually turned out to be my little starfish! I wasn't really sure about the color, or how I was going to make it, and when I first began piping it, I was getting disappointed. I practiced first, but didn't think about the angle it was on, and some of the icing started drooping down. But luckily, it gave the starfish a more organic feel, and I had a lot of fun piping all the little white dots on top!

As a fun little play on words, I decided to go with anemones for flowers. I would have LOVED to make anemone sea creatures, but it really didn't seem plausible with gum paste. So I went with some pretty blue anemone flowers, and a few red ones for a nice accent color. I also made a cute little pearl, just as a little something extra.

This project was a LOT more fun than I was expecting, and I think I am overall, the most pleased with my cake out of all the girls in my class. I really wish my flowers were a LOT better, but they were the best I could do, and for my first time making gum paste flowers, I think they're not half bad. Of course, this wasn't a traditional looking wedding cake, and my instructor didn't say much to me after the first night when he helped me do my fondant and work some of my flower middles. So who knows what kind of grade I'll actually get!

This semester I am taking the level 3 pastry class, which basically boils down to fancy decoration techniques (and some mousse cakes). We spent several days working on these pastillage showpieces. Pastillage is a sugar sculpting paste that is a lot harder than fondant, and not quite as elastic as gum paste.

We made the pastillage. We cut, shaped, and cleaned all the pieces. Then we had to airbrush them (and on the butterflies we did some drawing with a black marker and scratching away with an x-acto). Then we melted some sugar down to a goo that looked like hot glue, and we used it to stick all of the pieces together.

It was a lot of fun, but I wish I had realized the creative freedom he was actually allowing us, because I would have done a lot more colors on mine. Oh well! Oh, and please excuse the horrendous quality of the images, but I had to take the photos with my phone.