Layered Cake with a Chocolate Cage (and bunting decor)!

Hey You,

I was SO EXCITED with how this cake turned out!! This is the first time I have ever baked a layered cake, yet less with awesome decorations. I was determined to make a fantastic birthday cake for my lovely friends Rachel Hall and Grant Hall. This is by far the coolest thing I've ever made.

This is how I made my cake! I'll show you in sections. 
1. Layering the cake
2. Chocolate cage
3. Bunting decoration

I made a red velvet cakes with cream cheese icing (Rachel's favorite). I bought 2 red velvet cake mix boxes and 2 cream cheese tubs from the grocery store. I just followed the instructions and ingredients from the box. Yeah, sorry...I didn't make it all from scratch. One step at a time!

I used two 9 inch circle pans to bake the layers. Their baking time was around 30 minutes.

Toothpicks were my best friend here. I used them to make sure the cakes were done in the middle and on the sides. 

The cakes rose in the oven a lot more than I thought they would. It made me sad because I knew I would have to chop off the "muffin top" to make the cakes level. 

I had to wait for both cakes to cool before cutting the muffin tops off. I did try eating a little of the remains because I felt bad for just throwing it away. It was tasty.

Next, I plopped a decent amount of icing onto the first layer to use it as glue to hold the 2 layers together.

I flipped the 2nd layer over so both cut sides (Severed muffin tops!) were facing the middle. That way I had a smooth even layer for the top of the cake!

This is where it got fun. =)

I FELT LIKE CAKE BOSS!

As "Buddy" from Cake Boss says...I "dirty iced the cake" and put it in the fridge for about 5-10 minutes.

Then I was able to put about 1.5 tubs of icing [nom] on the cake for the final layer. I did try a few icing techniques but gave up on them pretty quickly. I need to invest in some tools like Buddy has.

I didn't want it to look perfect. Especially since I determined to make the Chocolate Cage work.
So this part I was really excited about but also nervous. I didn't want to ruin my awesome cake! Making a chocolate cage is a little difficult. It's all about dimensions and timing.

I measured the circumference of my cakes to be 28 inches. I cut it in half to 14 inches because I figured it would be easier to put on the cake in 2 pieces. I also measured the height of the cake to be about 3.5 inches. I went ahead and made my Chocolate Cage Swirl template 4 inches so the chocolate would stick up higher than a cake a little bit. I used non-stick parchment paper to create my template.

I melted a lot of mini chocolate chips and scooped them into a large zip lock bag. I used this as my chocolate swirl marker by cutting the corner tip of the bag. Cut smaller than you think! I made the mistake of cutting it too big and had to start over. 

There was a lot of trial and error with this cake.

Finally I got to work and started SLOWLY swirling the chocolate in large ovals. (If you squeeze the chocolate out too quickly it comes out all squiggly and funky.

I wanted to make sure there was plenty of overlap so the chocolate would have something to hold on to. I wanted the chocolate to be thick enough to stand up once it hardened. 

My technique: Making large oval swirls from top to bottom all the way across then going BACK over them with smaller swirls on the bottom to make the chocolate cage stronger.

This is where TIMING IS KEY.

I trimmed down the parchment paper along where the chocolate started. I put both stripes CAREFULLY into the refrigerator for 3 minutes. You DO NOT want the chocolate to hardened too much. It needs to be flexible for you to bend around the cake. This part was tricky for me because my kitchen was so warm at this point. The chocolate kept melting quickly so I had to work fast. 

I put 1 chocolate strip around the cake and pushed gently into the icing. I put the cake in the fridge for a few minutes then took it out to put the second chocolate strip on. 

I left the cake in the refrigerator with the chocolate and parchment paper on for 1 hour. After an hour I was able to remove the parchment paper easily and the chocolate swirls stayed on the cake. 

I GOT SO EXCITED AT THIS POINT BECAUSE IT LOOKED SO COOL! I was extra careful and left my cake in the refrigerator for a few hours so it would not melt.

Then I had a cake photo shoot.

I had never heard of "cake bunting" before until I saw it trending on Pinterest. There are so many cool ways people use bunting to decorate all sorts of things! I decided to have mine say "Happy Birthday" and used 2 wooden skewers I bought in a pack at the grocery store.

First I found a template to help me cut out my little flags to spell out 'Happy Birthday.' I used this print out: http://www.yellowblissroad.com/printable-chalkboard-alphabet-cake/

I cut out one of the flags and traced the shape onto scrapbook paper I had. I do like the chalk board look, but I wanted something colorful for this cake. 

I used string and glued the flags around the string to spell out "Happy Birthday." I added some more colorful string pieces to make it more colorful.

The finished product looked mighty fine. ;)

How it all came together!

This cake is the coolest thing I've ever baked. I was so happy with the outcome! 
Thanks for reading!! =)