Le Beer Elixir of Life

It’s been a couple of years since I participated in Threadcakes. I wanted to do a painted cake this year because I have a new baby so I figured this would be easier to return to when constantly interrupted than a sculpted cake. I chose “Le Beer” because it has white on on black and I’ve never done one of these “chalkboard” cakes before.

I bought premixed black fondant (because who wants to deal with that) and the Wilton “White-White.” I mixed the white with different ratios of “Buttercup Yellow,” “Brown,” and vodka. I used a toothpick to scratch and stipple the beer and foam to add the black outlines and shading. For the chalk marks throughout the design I mixed the food colouring with vodka for a diluted effect. This was a little difficult because it always looked intense until it was dried so it wasn’t until I was almost done the project that I found the best ratio.

I painted all the design freehand but I did use a stencil for the outlines of the major components just to ensure they were all to scale. I was able to use vodka to erase any mistakes (and I mean literally as an eraser, this isn’t a drinking euphemism). My main issues were drawing straight lines, making the chalk marks look faint enough, accidentally dragging my hand in wet colouring, and that darned keg! The beer was difficult too because the colour of the paint changes so much as it dries so I had to redo it a few times to get the right colour.

The timing worked out that I could make the cake for my brother-in-law’s birthday, and he just happens to be fond of beer, but there was a catch: Gluten free. I ended up buying the Betty Crocker GF cake mix. I googled making cake mix with beer and actually found a recipe on their site for a cake that compliments the flavour profile of a Whitbier using orange, coriander and ginger. I used the Driftwood Brewing White Bark Whitbier (which, yes, un-gluten-free-ified the cake a bit, but he’s not really that sensitive) in place of the water in the recipe. I also made a simple syrup with the beer, sugar and orange to use as a cake soak and made orange buttercream icing. I had made the fondant plaque a little bigger than the finished cake so I wouldn’t have to think too much about how big it should be once the cake was iced. I just placed it on the iced cake, trimmed the excess, and added black fondant to the sides.

I spent about two weeks on painting the cake and a day baking, icing, and finishing it. If the baby weren’t “helping” it could have been done in about 2 days.