How to make a 'floating' Up House Cake: Part 1

source: http://maries-bakehouse.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/how-to-make-floating-up-house-cake-part.html

The Up House Wedding Cake

The Up House Wedding Cake

 

 

It's fair to say that this has to be my favourite cake so far. It presented many challenges, many firsts, and the rather large problem of how it was to be transported in one piece, but I loved every single minute of making it. I could not have done the technical structured part of it without the guidance of two very talented cake friends, Rhu of Pimp my Cake by Mama Rhu and Heather of The Enchanted Cake School. Huge thanks go to them, and to the group of amazing cake friends who listened to me rabbit on about this cake in the run up to making it. You know who you are ladies xx

 

Klair, of Love Umbrellas, approached me many months ago and asked if I would make this cake for her wedding day. Right away I knew I wanted to make this unique cake for her and Stephen, and the idea evolved into having it look like it was beginning to float, as that is what happens in the film.  I studied many pictures of screen shots, pictures of the actual house that was built, and line drawings of the house, and decorated the cake as close to the Up house as I could. It was an honour to be asked to make this special cake, and to be told how thrilled they were with it. I have spent well over 30 hours putting the cake together. But it was definitely worth it. I love it, and I hope you do too.

I don't have photos of each and every step, but hopefully the ones I do have, and the descriptions will mean you can attempt to make this yourself too!

So, the internal structure....

 

The main part of cake was made of 2 x 8" square cakes which were 4" deep each, so the cake drum board I used was a 9" square. This sits on top of a 9" square of foam core board which also had the additional parts on it which would support the two bays and the porch steps. These boards were glued together, and then glued on top of a 4" square, 2" deep polystyrene cake dummy, with 2" deep 1" wide wooden batons, which were glued in the four corners under the foam core board, slightly in from the edges (you can just about make out were the pencil marks are on the board which mark the edges of the boards). And all this was attached to a 14" square piece of wood. This was all stuck directly in the middle of the board. It worked, but in hindsight, I would have set it maybe an inch or so towards the back of the board to account for the front bay and porch at the front of the cake.

 

With the help of my very patient husband, all of the pieces had a hole drilled through them- so through the middle of the cake drum, the foam core board, the cake dummy, and the wood, and a metal stud bar (a threaded bar) was put through the middle, with washers and nuts holding it together each side. The wooden board was sat on beading round the edges, to lift it to give room for the nut and metal bar underneath the board. This drawing may perhaps show it clearer:

 

 

Obviously this isn't food safe, so we covered the metal bar with a plastic water pipe. In order to have one that covered the metal bolts at the bottom of the board, we would have needed quite a big pipe, so we used a connector, and had that covering the bolt, which then allowed us to cover the metal bar with a narrower plastic pipe. The pipe was cut down to about 26" tall.

 

 

This picture perhaps shows you more clearly how the cake was lifted off the bottom board.

 

 

And to have an extra precaution, the pipe was then covered in melted chocolate to add an extra food safe dimension to the proceedings!

 

The cake was made in an extremely hot English Summer, and I did struggle to get the chocolate to solidify. The structure was too tall to fit in the fridge, so I had a very cold bottle of water stood in front of a fan blowing on to the cake as a make shift air conditioning system instead!

I had baked two layers each of chocolate mud and peppermint, and chocolate and Irish Crème cake. Each was levelled and torted, then I cut a hole out of the middle of each layer using a small round cookie cutter and threaded each one carefully over the top of the pipe, lowering it onto the cake board, and filling each layer with buttercream. In between the two flavours of cake, I also added a thin cake board and dowelled it to add extra support as there was going to be quite a lot of weight on top of the cake. I also gave the cake a thin crumb coat of buttercream to seal it. Then using the drawings of the house I had made before I started, I marked on the cake where I needed to carve. This for me is always a leap of faith when making any cake!!

 

After carving, I made the two bays using Rice Kripsy Treats, and also added some RKT to the tops of the roof to create more height. I then covered the whole cake in ganache. This required three layers which took some time in between as the ganache took a while to set.

 

*As an aside- ignore the white dowels. For some reason I decided that I would try and keep the top of the porch as cake, and stick the sugarpaste to that. In reality it was much easier to attach the parts of the porch than I imagined, and harder to keep up this section of cake. I tried inserting a thin cake board underneath it, and prop it up with dowels which I intended to make as part of the porch but, after sleeping on it, I cut the cake away and had the top of the porch as the thin cake board which separated the two layers. Much less of a headache!!*



 

 

Just before the last layer of the ganache was reaching setting point, I added a thin layer of white sugarpaste. This didn't have to be really smooth, it was being covered with lots of much more detailed decoration, but in my mind, I was going to be working on the cake for a few days, then the wedding was a couple of days later, I wanted all the moisture locked into the cake, and also have a clean base for adding decorations - not brown chocolate- then there would be no chance of chocolate seeping through the joins of the decorations and spoiling the cake.

 



And now on to the really fun part!......