How does one design a Karate Cake?

When asked to create a cake for a group of Karate people, what kind of designs come to mind? For that matter, what kind of cake comes to mind?

While there were loads of suggestions (red velvet cake to simulate the blood of your enemies is a good one that comes to mind), I was pressed for time on the big day and stuck with one of my all time favorite cakes that never seems to fail and always seems to please: a trusty chocolate cake from a Halloween Martha Stewart Living Magazine from 2006 (or something like that). In between the layers I smeared a fresh made strawberry puree, and to top it off I coated it in vanilla-lime swiss meringue buttercream (of the Martha Stewart variety). Yes, I know the lime flavour is kind of odd when combined with chocolate and strawberry, but I wanted to try something a little different and see if it worked. The thing was eaten so quick I don't even think anyone noticed anyway!

As for the design... a few ounces of melted chocolate in the buttercream gave it a nice brown that was easy to pipe some fun designs with.

I even went so far as to revisit my days of relative Japanese proficiency and write some kanji on the sides.

Not too bad for a cake done on the fly, eh?

A Rainbow Cake

Last week I was at work and one of my favorite customers approached me and asked if I would make a cool birthday cake for her thirteen year old daughter. The cake was only going to serve around 15 people and it didn't have to be too fancy, just cool enough to impress her friends. This was exactly the excuse I needed to make this beautiful, multi-coloured, confectionery, monstrosity.

I got the idea to do this type of cake from a post I had seen on WhiskKid's blog a year ago. Using the same basic concept, I made a simple white vanilla cake recipe, divided into six separate bowls evenly by weight, coloured the batter in each bowl a different colour using Wilton's gel food colouring, and baked the individual cakes for 15 minutes each. This is what came out:

The colours were vibrant and way nicer than I thought they would be--the only issue that I had with the cake was that the flavor wasn't nearly as vibrant as the colours.

For the pristine white icing, I made my favourite (and possibly the most reliable icing I know of) Martha Stewart Swiss Meringue Buttercream Icing.

When I made this cake, I went through 18 egg whites. EIGHTEEN! Jeez. That's a lot of albumen. I gotta say though, de-yolking eggs is one of my favourite things to do when baking. The slippery feel of the white sliding through your fingers and the delicate yolk cupped in your palm... for some bizarre reason it's something that I find very calming. You need to concentrate and focus or you might nick a yolk, get a yellow stain in your precious whites and potentially ruin the whole thing. I'm a weirdo, but I'm starting to figure out how to make pretty cool cake!