Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Ombre` Cake!!


Are you sick of the ombre` trend? We get SO many emails about this trend I literally can't not talk about it (double negative schouble negative).

Apparently I am not, because I just did nude ombre` nails on myself last night!

Here Sonia tried the ombre` cake that we have all been seeing all over Pinterest. She decided to make this cute little treat for her coworkers for Valentine's and as a bonus she could show off her mad skills!
Check it out!
The Original

Fun right?! And such a fancy frosting job too! This fun sight Eddie Ross , which I immediately thought of as "Martha Stewart-esque", is actually quite Martha-esque. He used to be one of the head designers for Martha Stewart Magazine, and is now on his own with several returning articles in different magazines around the country. Also I didn't even realize it till now, but I just a read an article about him in Country Living! I LOVE Country Living magazine. Like really, love! Anyone else with me?! Anyway we will leave the biography for another time yes? The cake!

I love this cake, it just screams "EAT ME!!"!

Here is Sonia's take on it...

The Pinstrosity



Here is her story:

"...I can say in my own defense that I never looked at any of the instructions. In fact, I just went out and bought 3 white box cakes and 4 cans of vanilla frosting, and thought "what the heck, can't be that hard".

So away I went with the first box/layer of my cake. I just squeezed the heck out of the little tube of hot pink gel food coloring until I had a nice shade of dark pink. Baked it as instructed on the back of the box. I wish I would have taken a picture of the first layer coming out of the pan. My first failure of the day. The dang thing stuck around some of the sides leaving my bottom layer weak from the get go. I figured I would just use some of that icing to "glue" those pieces back together.

For the next box/layer, I squeezed about half of the gel color into the cake. Looked a lot lighter and what I thought was a good in between pink shade. This layer came out great! Didn't stick at all as I made sure to spray the non stick spray on every square centimeter of the pan this time twice.

Now for the final box/layer I squeezed that tube of gel color again. Only the color of the last cake looked very similar to the second cake. So I squeezed what I had left in that little tube and tried to get a different shade of pink. The cake turned out great with no sticking at all.

So, I began my layers.

Spreading that icing nice and thick using what I had to glue back together the pieces of cake/layer one and in between and on top of the cake.

Now here is the epic fail of the entire project.

The dang thing was so heavy and that first layer that I had so easily glued back together just wouldn't hold up. And so the leaning tower of Ombre` began to lean to the right.

We had quite the laugh at how ugly the dang thing turned out. I decided there was no way I was taking this ugly leaning mess to work and show my co-workers what an epic fail I had made for them. So my sweet husband decided he would give it a taste. This is when I realized my Ombre` cake was really just 3 layers of pink cake two of which were the exact shade of pink! Ugh. At least he thought it tasted great. "

So what happened? Well unfortunately for Sonia, this one has not instructions. This recipe is just one of those picture projects. I know some of us do ok with those, but others don't. Everyone has a different learning style, and when a recipe is involved I think it always turns out better if it is written word for word.

Now the Eddie Ross cake has 6 layers. One the one hand that would be easier to tell a subtle difference in colors from top to bottom, however on the other hand it would be difficult to make slight changes in food coloring amount for the batters!

On the original pin, he has the varying different shades of pink batter, bakes them, lets them cool completely and then shaves the top and bottom off all the cakes to 1. Make them thinner for layering. and 2. Make them have even flat surfaces for easier frosting. I don't think Sonia did this which may have contributed to her leaning tower of ombre`.

Another thing, if her first layer came out pretty awful like she said, she may have been able to salvage it by making it the top layer instead, and shaving off what makes it uneven. Once it's frosted no one would notice. The ombre` would then just start with dark at the top and light at the bottom. Just a small deviation.

To make her ombre` come out more apparent she may need to really make the first layer dark pink. The middle layer a medium pink like she had, and the last layer just a slight hue of pink. All though I really don't think her cake colors came out bad at all (I think it looks nice!), her leaning cake is a problem. I did a layer cake for Thanksgiving, and it definitely takes some practice to get those layers to sit even!

As for Eddie Ross's frosting job, he makes it looks super easy, anyone want to test it out and let us know how it goes?!





Anyone have any luck with the Ombre` Cake?! Let us know!
Happy Wednesday Pinstrosipeeps!



15 comments:

  1. I actually tried this, without the fancy frosting, and it WAS difficult, but turned out pretty great. I just used plain box cake mix (two of them), made a double batch and used Wilton food color gel. The gel is in a little jar and you just dip a toothpick in and add a teensy amount to the batter. It's concentrated so it doesn't affect the consistency.

    For the ombre effect, I added just a bit to the whole batch to start with my lightest color. I filled a cake pan about half way full and baked it. Then I just kept adding a bit more color to the remaining batter and baking a single cake.

    I had some issues with getting the layers level, but throwing a bit more frosting in seemed to do the trick - oh, and a cake leveler. Those things are fantastic.

    This is a pic of the last remaining slice (so the frosting is a bit wonky): http://i51.tinypic.com/2nsp3sy.jpg

    It was a big hit and the ombre effect is really impressive even when its not perfect.

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    Replies
    1. Oh my gosh, that looks beautiful! Nice job!!

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  2. Haha I too am so sick of the Ombrè trend, but even more than that, I'm really sick of the mason jar trends!

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  3. I'm sick of the ombre trend & most of Pinterest in general.

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  4. I haven't tried ombré yet, but I did the rainbow one and it was awesome!
    http://kellys-krafts.blogspot.de/2012/09/rainbow-birthday-party.html

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  5. Did she not put any frosting between the cake layers? It looks kinda creepy without it. The white stripes may have helped differentiate among the colors, and as it is, I'm not sure how the cake's staying together.

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  6. I did an ombre cake for my daughter's 17th birthday earlier this month. Since she loves purple that's what I colored it. I found a great scratch bake tutorial for it. Since I don't scratch bake substituted two cake mixes to make the 6 layers. My pinstrosity was I made homemade sprinkles in multiple purples. But girly loved her cake so it was a good day.

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  7. Raspberri Cupcakes has a beautiful purple ombre cake with instructions and some pictures of the process. I think her cake recipe is both a little more dense and less puffy than mixes tend to be, but if you're willing to trim more cake a mix should work fine. Lack of enough frosting is probably the biggest problem when it comes to the actual look of the cake though.
    http://www.raspberricupcakes.com/2011/11/purple-ombre-sprinkle-cake.html

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  8. I love Country Living magazine too!

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  9. I did the ombré cake using the Raspberri Cupcakes recipe. My 7 year old wanted pink and it came out beautifully. It's actually features in my Pinstrosity debacle here http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com/2013/01/happy-to-help-husband-hazards-birthday.html?m=1

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  10. I made a kind of-sort of ombre cake with a white cake mix I separated into three bowls and three different kinds of Jello mix. The Jello helped to keep the cake from plumping up in the middle and kept them from crumbling when I took them out of the pans.

    Here's a picture:
    https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/408642_10150543098148563_1182123848_n.jpg

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  11. Love this blog so much!! @kaelyn in 14 years of decorating I've never heard of adding jello right into the mix -- and now I don't know why people don't do it all the time! Pin it, lady, I'm sure it'll go viral :-). Now I'm gonna try making this and here's how I'll go about it: I'll use at least 3 aluminum pans with straight sides; wrap damp towel around the outsides so the cake will rise evenly; use lots of batter so I can carve level layers; start with white cake batter and fill pan 1, then add pink to ALL the batter and fill pan 2; repeat with pan 3, bake, then make a STRAWBERRY cake for the next wave of baking, adding more pink and a little red for the deepest colors. After cooling and leveling I'll use a spray bottle with Kern's strawberry nectar and use a very thin layer of buttercream to stack the layers. I'll poke a drinking straw thru all layers and chill then frost with homemade icing --not because it tastes better (although it does) but because canned icing is a sticky nightmare even for professional decorators! The recipes I would use are available on my website: www.sweetcelebrations.us "half scratch cake" (because it doesn't fall apart and is firm but moist) and "Laurie's favorite buttercream" or "silky smooth buttercream" the basketweave technique is at www.wilton.com and is different (and easier) than the photos shown. The key is to not give a crap about how the cake "weave" comes together in the back, hehe happy decorating! Laurie xlaurieClarkex on Pinterest #sugar dome

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  12. Quick tip for making smooth layers, use string to cut through cake. Works like a charm, we did this same project in 1988 for home economics.

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  13. Wow, the jelly is a tip I'll certainly try. I made a 3 layer pink ombre cake but I didn't know at the time about the bright pink food gels, so I just used the red food dye I had in my cupboard. I judged the colour on the shade of the cake mix before baking, and in retrospect could have added more dye to make darker and more differentiated shades, but the red dye worked out just fine for producing a delicate pink! Here's the result

    http://biybakeityourself.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/3-layer-pink-gradient-cake.html

    (also, as someone who doesn't like to use tons of sugar, I usually don't frost the outside of my cakes - just personal preference! In order to display the ombre, I trimmed each layer so you can see the colour of the sponge from the outside of the cake)

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