Mod Squad Cake

This past Tuesday, 15 very fortunate Foodbuzz bloggers myself included, rolled up our sleeves for a very worthy cause.

Electrolux and Foodbuzz invited us to help decorate 5 beautiful cakes in an effort to help raise awareness and support for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (OCRF).

With the help of Buddy Valastro and Kelly Ripa we were armed with everything we needed to know to decorate all five of the beautiful Cake Off cakes.

The designs were chosen by Buddy himself, he purposely chose simple designs that most of us could easily and realistically replicate at home.

Buddy taught us how to do simple piping, roll out fondant, and how to make piped roses.

Well here it is everybody! The Mod Squad cake! What do you think? Doesn’t it look fantastic? You know this is the cake you want to vote for.

Here’s a close-up of our cake… make sure you get a good look!

Buddy wasn’t the only one keeping us on track, we also got great tips and help from Frankie and Remy, both sweethearts.

I figured you might want to try this at home too, so here is all you need to make your own “Mod Squad” cake!

Let’s start off with a yummy cake recipe.

Calor’s Bakery Cream Cheese Pound Cake

2 1/3 cups cake flour
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Butter and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan.

With an electric mixer, cream the butter and cream cheese together until fluffy.

Sift the flour.

Beat in the sugar, flour and vanilla on low speed. You want the mixture to be just mixed through and to have a dry and crumbly appearance.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each egg is added.
Pour batter into the Bundt pan. Place pan in the middle of the oven and bake for 50 to 60 minutes.

Remove from oven. Allow cake to cool in pan for about 15 minutes. Invert onto cake rack and continue to allow cake to cool.

To keep the cake moist and help the fondant adhere we gotta have frosting!

Calor’s Bakery Simple Buttercream Frosting

1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons corn syrup
1/2 cup water
3 eggs
1 pinch salt
1 pound butter

Put sugar, corn syrup and water in a saucepan over high heat.

Meanwhile, beat eggs and salt until fluffy.

When all fo the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is boiling, pour over beating eggs.

Cut butter into cubes.

When the eggs-suger bowl is lukewarm to the touch, slowly add butter while continuing to beat until fluffy and smooth.

Now to finish it off and give it a million dollar look we cover the cake with fondant.

You can purchase fondant at your local craft or cake supply store.

First knead and soften the fondant.

Using a rolling pin, roll out to approximately 1/8″ thickness (use a little cornstarch to prevent it from sticking to your work surface).

Drape fondant over pre-frosted cake and and adhear to top and sides.

Using a pizza wheel, trim the icing along the base layer of the cake.

My teammates Sabrina from Rhodeygirl Tests, Tina from Carrots ‘N’ Cake and myself worked hard to decorate this beautiful cake.

But all work and no play is no fun! I looked around for a flour sack or two, but there were none to be found. So I made do with a piece of fondant. Yeah, it doesn’t quite have the same effect.

Decorating the Cake

To decorate our “Mod Squad” themed cake we used purple fondant to cover out cakes.

After the cakes were covered in fondant, we rolled out yellow, green, pink, and chocolate fondant for the flowers.

Using scalloped fondant cutters we cut out various sizes of each of the rolled colored fondant. Then we layered the cut pieces in alternating colors and finished them with a chocolate fondant dot.

Once we were ready to begin placing the flowers and mod dots we used a steamer to steam the area where we would be place each flower.

You can find these and a few other “Cake Boss” tips by visiting Kelly Confidential.

Buddy and Frankie were so easy going and sweet.

Buddy signed pretty much anything we would put in front of him. He was kind enough to sign my “Cake Boss” T-Shirt.

Don’t forget to vote for the Mod Squad cake!! GO TEAM Mod Squad!

Oh and can I say one last thing? I want one of these… they are so cool! Know what it is? It’s a super cool induction oven, it’s so amazing you can melt chocolate without using a double broiler! How sweet is that?

Buddy literally put a pot with chocolate right on the cooktop let it sit there for about 5 minutes while he was doing a demo then went back and picked it up… the chocolate had melted perfectly! The oven has “Luxury-Glide” oven racks which means no spilled cheesecakes when trying to slide back the rack in place.

I may not be able to afford one, but I know of a sneaky one of us can win one. If you log on to Kelly Confidential and send a virtual cake to a friend or loved you will automatically be entered for a chance to win one and Electrolux will donate $1 each day for every virtual cake you send, in addition to the $1 donated for every vote you make in the Cake Off.

My participation in Kelly’s Cake Off for a Cause was sponsored by Electrolux and Foodbuzz who provided me with travel arrangements to and accommodations in New York to participate.

Official Sweepstakes Rules are available on Kelly Confidential.

Tagged as: Buttercream, Cheese, Chocolate, Frosting, Icing, Vanilla