Mirror Cake, First Attempt

It was a fail!

I made the glaze strictly according to the recipe I had, colored it purple, cooled it to the exact temperature required, and got one of the cakes from the freezer.  I chose one of the plain lemon cakes.  I didn't want to use the mousse cake for my first attempt.  I set the lemon cake on a stand, then poured the glaze over it and swiped it with an off-set spatula smeared with red food coloring to create a nice design.  It seemed to work perfectly!

At first.

Fairly quickly, the glaze ran over the sides and also got sucked into the cake itself.  The glaze is =supposed= to run over the sides, but it's supposed to harden, not soak in.  That's why the cake is frozen first.  The recipe very clearly says that mousse cakes worked best, but =any= kind of cake would do.  Well, clearly not.  The results were edible, but not at all mirrored--or even pretty.  The white chocolate and condensed milk soaked straight into the sponge of the cake.  I tasted it to see what it was like, and it reminded me of a Tres Leches Cake.  Very good, but without the desired effect.

I wondered if I'd made the glaze wrong, so I tested it.  I dipped a finger in it and let the glaze run off.  The glaze behaved exactly as it was supposed to, forming a thick mirror coating on my finger, with drips that solidified like icicles down the side, despite the fact that my finger wasn't frozen, or even cold.  So I'd done the glaze right.

I decided it must have been the absorbancy of the cake.  Clearly you have to do have a cake encased in mousse or ice cream or frozen whipped cream or something non-absorbent.  Even a frozen sponge-style cake will absorb the glaze.  Okay, then!  Next time, we'll try the mousse cake.

Meanwhile, I have a tasty-but-ugly cake in the fridge . . .

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