Episode 51 – Red Velvet Scrabble Cake

Episode 51

The Red Velvet Scrabble Cake

May 22, 2011
Red Velvet Scrabble Cake

If there’s anything that you can incorporate into your cake to make it more fun and exciting to your cake’s admirers you don’t have to search far and wide for elaborate gimmicks, edible fireworks, or towering sugar artistry.  Instead try incorporating an interactive component to your cake – yes, something even more interactive than eating it.  That was the idea behind the Red Velvet Scrabble cake – a way to make a simple sheet cake more than a sheet cake without over complicating it and causing myself stress.  And what better way to add interactivity than an edible board game?

Close up of the Red Velvet Cake Layer

My best friend Jaisyn’s birthday was last Sunday and his favorite cake is red velvet cake – and actually when I was growing up my Grandma’s red velvet cake was my favorite cake!  Unfortunately, before she was able to copy down her recipe and give it to me it was destroyed in a water (possibly coffee) related catastrophe.  She looked online for a similar recipe and gave me the recipe I have today.  If you love red velvet cake too, try out this recipe!  I know you’ll love it.

If you can’t tell from the video I actually had to make this cake while I was sick.  I did

The scrabble cake with the marbled fondant put on

everything in my power to will the illness away – from chugging chicken soup to eating a box of coldeeze (okay, I didn’t really do that) but it just hung in there.  For the most part I didn’t have any trouble coping with decorating the cake while I wasn’t feeling well but there are times in the video where you can tell I wasn’t all there – for example: leaving a room temperature stick of butter in the microwave over night.  So that’s why my icing was so dense!  Oh well, at least it iced very well.  P.S.  If you make this cake yourself use the largest batch of the swiss buttercream recipe.  I had barely enough icing to ice the cake and I feel that it should’ve had a little bit more.

The scrabble cake with the fondant border added

If you’re better at measuring than I am you’re cake will definitely come out much more accurate than my does.  I’m absolutely terrible at measuring – I could measure the same thing three times and get three different measurements.  But even if it isn’t perfect, you can still get the idea across and the end result still looks great.  That just goes to show you that sometimes driving yourself crazy striving for perfect might not always be worth it.  Always do your best of course, but stressing yourself out for the most absolute perfect cake may be more exhausting than satisfying.

As you’ll find out in the video, the cake is covered with ivory fondant that is kneaded

I measured the gridlines along the edge and then connected them with a piece of floss. Afterward, I went over it with a knife to make the line more noticeable.

slightly with chocolate fondant to get it a marbled look – almost like fudge ripple ice cream, although I was going for wood.  The tiles are made the same way but with a little extra chocolate fondant.  The border along the edge of the cake is made with red fondant mixed with chocolate fondant.  If you’re interested in the measurements here’s how it breaks down:

• The cake is 13x13x2
• The red border comes up about 1/2″ around the edge making the board about a 12″ square
• The grid lines on the cake were drawn as 13/16″ squares
• The royal icing was piped with a wilton 2 tip creating a 1/16″ line – maybe even thinner
• The tiles are about 11/16″ squares

I then used a really stiff royal icing to pipe the lines. My hand was killing after I was finished! Maybe it was a little too stiff!

More or less that’s how the measurements were supposed to come out.  Of course, because I’m not so great with measuring (and not so patient) the squares and borders become a little askew in a few places.  To get the gridlines on the fondant I took a strip of paper and marked it every 13/16″ so that I wouldn’t have to use a ruler and all its crazy lines distracting me.  Then I scored the edge of the cake along the red border on all four sides using the strip of paper.  Then I connected the marks on the opposite ends of a cake with a piece of floss so that I would create a very straight line without having to draw it with a knife.  Next time, I would do this with the floss before I put the red border on – that way I could pull the floss taut and dig into the fondant.  With the red border on I couldn’t do that because I would end up ruining the red border.  Live and learn!

In the video I also explain that you can use a little bit of vodka with food coloring to create

To turn food coloring into edible paint, all you have to do is add food coloring to vodka. The vodka will evaporate quickly and leave a nice dry colored finish.

an edible paint that you can use on fondant!  It’s a great technique that can even be used on royal icing – and I think white chocolate that has set up.  Take about an ounce or two or even three of vodka and put in enough food coloring that it saturates the vodka really well – probably a 1/8 of tsp of gel food coloring.  Stir it up really well and that’s all.  You can’t really use gel food coloring straight out of the bottle because it won’t ever really dry.  It’ll stay all soft and gelly and sticky so you won’t be able to touch it or stack anything on top of it – plus it’ll have a really strong food coloring after-taste.  The one caveat I found with this is that the color doesn’t really get darker the more coloring you add – it just because a little truer, if that makes any sense.  So if you’re trying to get pink from red for example I don’t think it

The Fondant scrabble tiles before painting the letters on

really works well to just use a little bit of red – it just comes out light red or pale red – so I recommend getting a pink food coloring.  Now this might not be everybody’s experience but while I was working on the board I noticed that I couldn’t just use the same blue to create different shades of blue.  Also, I’m a little surprised how much royal blue and sky blue look alike.  I think if I were going to make this cake again I might actually use navy blue instead of royal blue.

I don’t think there are any kinds of paintbrushes that you shouldn’t use for painting food

The fondant scrabble tiles after the lettering was painted on

coloring – though correct me if I’m wrong!  Just make sure that you keep any equipment that came into non-food safe materials away from your food.  You don’t want to use a paintbrush that came into contact with acrylic paints for example.  This painting technique works great with powdered food coloring and especially the metallic colorings – you can create a gold or antique design that looks so real you could sell it at Antiques Roadshow! haha

Anyway, here is the recipe for red velvet cake, the recipe for swiss buttercream (remember this one is chocolate, just leave it out and replace it with vanilla), and a recipe for royal icing (keep in mind you may need to add up to 3 more ounces of powered sugar for an extra stiff icing that won’t move after you pipe it).  If you prefer to make your red velvet cake with cream cheese icing here’s the recipe for that – just remember that you have to refrigerate it if you use cream cheese icing.  That recipe is actually for cream cheese filling but works well as an icing – feel free to adjust it with powered sugar or a touch of milk to make it more icing-like if necessary.  You will also probably have to increase the batch in order to have enough icing to ice a cake that large – otherwise it should ice a two layer 9″ cake.  Enjoy the video below – I really enjoyed making this cake, I hope that comes through!  Thank you for watching!