CORONA BEER BOTTLE AND A BEER MUG CAKE

"Thirty is the new twenty" that is how my dear hubby responded, when he was asked, how does it feel to be thirty. Though his birthday was yesterday (the 8th of Sept), we celebrated it on sat the 6th.
We had a party at home, with friends, food, music and drinks. Since I had decided to make all the food along with the cake at home, my prep work started on Thursday itself. hence the reason for no posts for nearly five days.
With around thirty guests, I had to think of something that was easy to prepare, and needed less time to assemble and serve. more over, I had challenged myself to make a very different birthday cake this time. so I needed a lot of time.

This is what I planned:

DRINKS: Margarita, coke, juice,corona beer (there was a lot of corona!!!)
SNACKS: paneer bread circles, mini samosas
MAIN COURSE: chana masala and kashmiri aloo dum.
ACCOMPANIMENTS: peas pulao, naan and boondi raita.
DESSERT: the birthday cake.

apart from the mini samosas (I used frozen store bought ones) and the naan (we ordered them from an indian restaurant), rest was all to be made by me, from scratch. made the chana masala and the cake on friday. Saturday morning made the kashmiri aloo dum and the snacks ofcourse. my husband and my brother in law (who had come down from San Jose),were in charge of the drinks.
The main work went into making the cake, actually icing it. I have usually made simple round cakes with all different icings, usually made using cream. This time I thought of doing something really different. I thought of making a cake shaped like the corona beer bottle and a beer mug. I saw this idea here.

I did not want to use butter cream icing, I wanted to use cream cheese, whipping cream, and chocolate. While doing my grocery shopping, I spotted real cheese cake filling. All one needs to do is spread it on a crumb base and its all set. I thought that this could be a good substitute for the butter cream, and I could add the required food colouring.
Here is how I went about baking, carving and icing the cake.

FOR THE CAKE

You will need

• 4 eggs
• 2/3 cup flour
• 3 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 cup sugar

You have to

1. sift the flour. melt the butter.
2. beat the sugar and the eggs together with a beater at high speed. keep beating till the batter reaches a ribbon consistency. to check, lift the beater and let the mixture fall on the surface of the batter. it should leave an impression.
3. slowly with a spatula fold in the flour little by little.
4. add the melted butter along with the vanilla essence.
5. fold everything together.
6. pour it into a greased sheet pan. I used a 12x8 inch Pyrex glass cookware. bake in a preheated oven at 350 degree Fahrenheit for 25 mins. or till a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
7. cool. slice it.

I made two cakes like this for the beer bottle.

I made one cake with the same measurements, in a 8x8 cake pan, for the beer mug.

FOR THE ICING

You need

• 1 tub philladelphia ready cheese cake filling
• 3 cups heavy whipping cream
• 2 cups melted chocolate
• yellow, black and brown food colouring
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• piping gel

You will have to

1. whip the cream with sugar, till soft peak stage. chill in the refrigerator.
2. empty the cheese cake mixture into a large bowl and whip it. add yellow and brown colouring to around two cups of the mixture. mix. check for the colouring. This is a trial error method till you get the exact beer colour. You might have to add a little bit of black too.
3. mix black colour to the piping gel and set aside.
4. mix black colour to one cup of the whipped cream.

for the filling

1. cut the two sheet cakes into four layers.
2. alternate each layer with the cheese cake filling, the melted chocolate and the whipped cream.
3. cut the 8x8 into two layers and spread the filling. I spread cheese cake on one side and melted chocolate on the other.

To carve the cake.

I ran a knife along the surface of the cake to get the shape and then cut it. But the best way to do it, is to get an enlarged picture and make a cutout. that can be placed on the cake to be carved.

for the icing

1. I started with the bear mug. simply spread the cheese cake mixture coloured to a beer colour, all over the cake. leaving the top empty.
2. cover the top with plain whipped cream. let a little tip over the yellow colour, to look like froth.
3. fill an icing bag with melted chocolate,fit it with tip # 3 and pipe out the border.
4. for the beer bottle, I started with the cheese cake mixture coloured yellow. then I iced the white part with whipped cream. next the black part was also whipped cream.
5. the writing was with plain whipped cream. the black writing was with the piping gel.

here are some important things to take care of.

1. after each layer of icing, it is important to chill the cake for at least half an hour. otherwise the colours will run into each other.
2. I realised the white writing could have been done with plain white cream cheese.
3. food markers are an easy way, but I do not know how well they will work on a cream icing.
4. for those who love to have butter cream icing, it would be less taxing to ice it with that.
5. To spread the icing on the cakes, I used an angled spatula.

though there were a lot of small imperfections in the icing, but I was happy with the overall result. For my first attempt at 3-d cakes, this one surely came out well, and tasted good too.
well with cheese cake filling, whipped cream and melted chocolate, should we be expecting any less.
enjoy