Display Cakes Weeks 3

For Week 3 of Display Cakes, we made an ice cream cake. We got to make our own ice cream. We divided into three groups, and each got to make a different flavor. One group made mango, another made pistachio, and my group made coconut. These ice cream cakes consisted of two stacked quarter sheet cakes (so a total of half sheet) with the ice cream sandwiched inbetween. I filled mine with half mango, half coconut. Once filled, the cakes had to quickly placed in the freezer. The ice cream started melting as soon as the top cake layer was placed on top of it. Once in the freezer, we practiced scroll work using simple buttercream.

Or in my case, Japanese....

Once frozen, we applied the crumb coat to the cake, and placed them back in the freezer. The next day, we took them out to do the final Swiss buttercream icing. Chef showed us the proper way to frost them...which should be done quickly, so the ice cream won't melt too much.

Chef also showed us several piping techniques.

Finished decorating! I couldn't take too many pictures while decorating--I was in a hurry to get it done before the ice cream melted. It was a workout getting this cake into my car--it weighed as much as a huge watermelon, so probably around 15~20 lbs.

I served it to our guests during Bible study. While the ice cream part turned out good, the cake wasn't as good. It tasted like an average commercial cake mix, far inferior to the made-from-scratch chiffon cakes that I'm used to. And as you can see from the photo, there was a very generous amount of buttercream smeared all over. Even with the seven of us, there was quite a bit of cake left. I scraped off the buttercream to use it later to frost cupcakes. We ate the ice cream part, and tossed the remaining cake into compost. Eating cakes like these made all of us appreciate the taste and the quality of my cakes...