Chocolate Orange Cake

I grew up on Betty Crocker Super Moist cake mix.  Making a cake from scratch, it's difficult to achieve the American Dream of soft, melt in your mouth cake.  The closest I've tasted was the Surprise cake recipe that uses mayonnaise.

Chiffon cake is definitely not super moist, so you have to brush sugar water on it.  Even then, it's still a dry cake.  I'll try to keep my disappointment at a minimum.

The law of synergy didn't work for me here.  We had delicious orange diplomat cream for filling, and a rich swiss buttercream frosting.

To ice a cake, pipe a bunch of frosting onto the sides and top.  Spread out the icing on the top, and then the sides.  The top will need to be touched up after you finish the sides.

For garnishment, we cut orange peel into flowers, then candied them.

Then Theresa piped the edge with the "reverse shell" border.

We also spent a little time this week with bubble sugar.  Mix a little colored isomalt with plain isomalt, and bake it between two silpats.  The air trapped inside the silpats creates hole in the sugar, and a marble effect with the color.