Bible book cake
Did you know that when you use these shaped pans, the instructions that come with it, are for box cake mixes. Well I did not know until I rented a bible shaped pan from a baking shop. So how was I supposed to know how much cake batter or which recipe will yield the same amount as two box mixes. By trial and error.
I first used the Beer box cake recipe my mom uses when she bakes a sheet cake. This recipe makes a lot of batter but the resulting cake was so small and flat. I doubled the recipe and it filled the bible cake pan perfectly.
Ingredients
1 litre water
300ml vegetable oil
300ml cocoa
4 teaspoons vanilla essence
16 eggs
3 cups castor sugar
7 cups flour
60ml baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
Method
Preheat oven to 180 °C .Beat the eggs and castor sugar in a mixer. Boil together the water, oil, cocoa and vanilla essence. This mixture could overflow so be careful not to over boil. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Once the eggs and sugar mixture is light and fluffy; fold the flour mix into the egg mix. Finally add the cooled down, boiled mixture to the batter. Do not over mix. Pour the batter into the pan and Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 30 – 45 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. I just test it in 10 minutes intervals to ensure it doesn’t burn.
Basic plan of action:-
- Prepare all the fondant decorations in advance.
- I did small plunger flowers and created the baby from a mould.
- The cross was cut free hand by my brother
- Keep all the fondant decorations away from any humidity
- Ensure you have more decorations available than what you think you need since some could break or melt due to humidity.
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- Bake cake at least 2 days in advance
The most important lesson I learned was to ensure you have plenty of time available, since so many things can go wrong. I had a week and everything only came together on the Saturday night.
The recipe yields a moist chocolate cake that is not too difficult to cover with fondant.
