Planet Jupiter Cake (Spherical Concentric Layer cake)

Well, leave it to a nail polish maker to challenge me to create something I've never made before- an edible planet!  I was up for the challenge, and the result is what you're about to see below.  Meet my very own Jupiter cake!

Now, this was not my idea.  A fabulous independent nail polish maker- Mei-Lynn at My Ten Friends- tossed out a challenge: the first person who could replicate the Jupiter cake from www.cakecrumbs.me would earn a bottle of nail polish.  And since I am a huge My Ten Friends fan, I had to try this!  If you want to see all the recipes and detailed tutorial of the Jupiter cake, give www.cakecrumbs.me a visit.  I made this cake over a few weeks time, freezing the layers as I went along.  Time-wise and depending on your cake skills, this could take you at least a few days to create.  Just take your time, and you can do this, too!

My kitchen: this is how it all began!

I had to make a few edits of my own to the process, so I'll tell you what I used in my creation.  For the cake, I used three different sized hemisphere pans made by Fat Daddio.  The smallest is 2.75 x 1.375 inches, the medium is 5 x 2.5 inches, and the large one is 8 x 4 inches.  I recommend purchasing two of each pan if you're planning on completing a full planet cake.  It took me a long time to complete all the layers because I only had one pan of each size.  I also have two ovens, so if you have just one oven to work with, then you may not want this, though.

The center chocolate layer.  This was the easiest one to make.  So cute, too!

I used the recipes on the cakecrumbs site for the cake.  However, if you plan on using the size of pans I did, you will need to make some changes:

• Make one batch of the chocolate batter for the 2.75 x 1.375 inch pan.  You will have lots of batter for lots of little hemispheres.  Make extras.  You may need them in case something runs amok with your layers.  And if it doesn't, then you've got lots of little bite-sized chocolate cakes.  Damn, they're yummy, too!
• Make two batches of the almond cake batter (one batch for each half) for the 5 x 2.5 inch pan.  Bake at 325 degrees for 70 minutes- check for doneness at 65 minutes.  Use an oven thermometer!
• Make four batches of the vanilla cake batter (in other words, two batches for each half) for the 8 x 4 inch pan.  If you're using the 8 inch pan, you may even want to make 6 batches of the vanilla cake recipe (three batches for each half).  I didn't feel like I had quite enough batter with four batches, and carving before the last phase of assembly would have been easier for me.  Bake at 325 degrees for 80 minutes.  Check for doneness at 70 minutes.  Again, use an oven thermometer!

Blurry, but you can see the fully baked chocolate layer inside the almond batter.  It's about to go inside the oven.

It is really important to grease/flour your pans well!  I use Pam for Baking, and it so totally rocks.

Uh oh.   This is what happens when you don't have any support under the hemisphere pan when baking.  Lopsided center!  Gah!  Time to try again.

Make sure your baking hemispheres are completely level before putting them in the oven.  If you don't, you'll end up with some serious spillage over one side while baking, and your center layers will move off center.  Not fun.

Trying again, I had the idea of stabilizing the hemisphere pan with a silicone muffin pan.  It worked!

Perfect.

When working with hemisphere pans, you will need to reduce your cooking temps and increase your cooking times.  For my medium and large hemisphere pans, I dropped the temp to 325 for 70 minutes for the medium pan, and 80 minutes for the larger pan.  You will need to test doneness with a wood skewer to ensure it is cooked all the way through.

Remember how I mentioned about greasing/flouring your pans well?  Again, Pam for Baking is awesome, and my cake easily popped out of the pan.

I didn't think I had enough batter for this layer.  I figured that I should try anyways!

Looks like a huge wave crashing along side a cliff!

I made sure this was level before putting into my oven, supporting it with a silicone brownie bite pan.  Baked nicely!

Half on the left is complete, the right half needs to be baked into the bigger pan here.

Both finished now!  I wrapped them up in plastic and foil, then stored them in the freezer until I could get to the last part- making fondant!

I make my own MMF- marshmallow fondant.  Here's the recipe I use:

Ingredients

1 (16 ounce) package miniature marshmallows

• 4 tablespoons water
• 1 teaspoon Lorann baking emulsion (I use Princess or Sweet Buttery Dough, but you can just plain ol' vanilla if you want)
• 2 pounds confectioners' sugar, divided
• A few tablespoons of butter or Crisco

Directions

1. Place the butter or Crisco in a shallow dish, and set aside.  You'll need this later to put on your hands when kneading the fondant.
2. Place the marshmallows in a large microwave-safe bowl, and microwave on High for between 30 sec- 1 minute to start melting the marshmallows. Carefully stir the water and vanilla extract into the hot marshmallows, and stir well until the mixture is smooth. Slowly mix in the confectioners' sugar, a cup at a time, until you have a sticky dough. Keep 1 cup of powdered sugar on the side for kneading. The dough will be very stiff.
3. Rub your hands thoroughly with butter or Crisco, and begin kneading the sticky dough. As you knead, the dough will become workable and pliable. Turn the dough out onto a working surface dusted with confectioners' sugar and continue kneading until the fondant is smooth and no longer sticky to the touch, 5 to 10 minutes.
4. Form the fondant into a ball, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap, place in an air-tight bag, and let rest for a few hours.  You can leave it on the countertop overnight- refrigeration is not required.  It will last for a few weeks.

Yep, that's me, getting ready to carve up my layers! Garrrghhhh!!!

Gently carve off the top layers until you get something that looks like this.  How deep you need to go depends on the size of your medium pan.  You'll need to measure the diameter of your baking pan for this.  My pan is 5 inches in diameter (a little less inside, actually), so I cut until the diameter of the middle (white) layer was just under 5 inches.

Do your best to keep your layers level while carving.   Take your time!

When both sides have been carved and level, use some buttercream frosting and adhere those layers together!  Planet Sandwich- yum!  

Go ahead and now crumb coat your newly born planet.  Crumb coating is just applying a thin layer of icing on your cake to seal in the crumbs.  Refrigerate it overnight to help the icing to solidify.  The next day, you can go crazy with frosting, or if you want to paint on it, you can then apply your fondant.

I like to use The Mat for rolling out my fondant.  This makes it ridiculously easy to get nice, smooth fondant, and you don't need to worry about rushing.  

The Mat is actually two pieces of food safe vinyl.  They seal your fondant in while you roll it out.  You can move your fondant around and not worry about it tearing, and it doesn't dry out.  And you can roll it really thin, too!

















Here you can see my fondant before rolling it out.  I microwave my fondant for about 15 seconds before kneading and shaping it on The Mat.  This makes it really soft and pliable- and reduces the amount of effort getting the fondant rolled nice and thin.

And now here it is all rolled out!  It took me about 5 minutes to do.  My cake is 8 inches in diameter, so I made sure my fondant was rolled out to 18 inches to be sure I had some extra to work with.

Boo!  Looks like a ghost.  

When you're ready, take the top layer of The Mat off.  The fondant will stick to the bottom layer.  Then pick up the bottom layer of The Mat, position it over the cake, and let the fondant gently pull itself off.  Check Youtube for a full tutorial on The Mat- you'll be amazed at how it makes working with fondant so easy!

All smoothed out.  Looks like a planet to me!

After I smoothed out the fondant, it was time to do the fun part- paint!

My box of edible painting supplies.

A plate worked well as my painters' palette.

With my food safe paint brushes, gel food coloring, and some photos of Jupiter on my computer, I was ready to go!

And this is what it ended up looking like.  I'm not a painter, so this is as good as I could do!  And just so you can see it all the way around, below is an animated gif of it in action.  I can't say it's 100% accurate as Jupiter, but it's not a bad representation, I think!

Jupiter cake rotates (animated gif).

Later we cut into the planet...  I don't know why, but doing this made me incredibly nervous!

I wasn't sure if it would look right inside.  I mean, it's relatively easy to bake a single cake flavor in a hemisphere pan, but three?  How would it really look when put together?

Whew!  It held up great!

And it looked nice on the plate, too.

Because the slice was so big, it was necessary for me to divide it in half for my kids.  They didn't care- they loved it all!

If I had to be critical of my work, it was that the layers didn't align up perfectly as I wanted them to.  Part of the reason for this is that I didn't make enough batter for the blue layer, and I had to cut away more of that layer when carving to get it all nice and level.  Next time I'm just going to make a huge amount of the blue vanilla batter to avoid this problem!  Still, overall it looks pretty dang cool inside.

And you can see that the kids were happy with it, too.  For me, that's what really counts!

Have you tried making a Jupiter cake?  Or any other spherical/hemisphere cakes?  What did you think about the process?    And again, I have to thank Mei-Lynn over at My Ten Friends for sending out this challenge.  I don't think I would have tried this cake if a bottle of My Ten Friends nail polish was not involved.  :)  Cheers!