I've decided to do a huge Rubik's cube with a rocking chair(s) on top for my dad's retirement. Edencakes has an amazing one that is my inspiration. I have some general questions for you guys though...

1. Do I have to do anything different to make sure I don't lose the corners of the squares? That would be BAD.
2. How do I make very black icing?
3. What would be a good cake to use that would be dense and easy to work with to retain the really square sides? I got some good recommendations of cakes to try from the CMD book in the Recipe forum. I just don't know which of those are going to be easy to work with to do the cube.

Any other helpful tips?


Thanks!!

1. there's a tutorial on the home page about how to get a really good square edge, I'll see if I can find it for you.

2. For black icing, I make chocolate, then it takes very little black coloring, and it doesn't get bitter...if you dont want to use chocolate, try making brown first

3. are you wanting a scratch or a box mix?

GOOD LUCK!

Here it is:


http://www.cakecentral.com/article51-How-To-Frost-a-Square-Cake.html

I can do either, but since I'm going to have 6 cakes to bake, I'll probably do doctored mixes.
Thanks for the link!!

If you want a really nice, easy to ice edge, use a Magic Line pan. They have edges that are 90 degree angles and stack perfectly on one another. I would also suggest using a plastic joint spatula (you can find various sizes at Lowe's for cheap) to get the icing smooth with crisp corners and very little effort. After you get it really smooth with the spatula, let it crust and then place a piece of computer paper on each side of the cake and rub over it with a fondant smoother (or your hand) to make it ultra smooth.

All this being said, I have found that it is not so much the cake mix that makes a difference in my cakes, but the pan. After I started using pans with 90 degree angles, my cakes magically improved---no more bulging in the centers, either!

If you want specifics about batter, the lady who owns my local cake store (at least 30 years of experience talking here) says that as far as boxed mixes go, Pillsbury is the easiest to work with and Duncan Hines is the hardest. However, I've been using a great large quantity doctored recipe here lately that someone posted on another forum and it works and tastes great:

2 DH butter recipe cake mixes
2 cups all purpose flour
1.5 cups sugar
2 sticks butter
2 sticks margarine
2 2/3 cups water
6 eggs
1 box french vanilla pudding mix (instant)
2 tsp. baking powder

Cream butter, margarine, and sugar together. Add eggs, mix until blended. Add cake mix, pudding mix, flour, and baking powder. Blend on low while drizzling in water in a thin stream. Mix until smooth and bake as usual. This yields about 15.5 cups of batter, so use a large bowl. I have a 4.5 quart bowl and it works fine.

I've been using this lately and the people at my husband's work love it! It tastes really good with cream cheese icing and cream cheese buttercream, too.

If you want a really nice, easy to ice edge, use a Magic Line pan. They have edges that are 90 degree angles and stack perfectly on one another. I would also suggest using a plastic joint spatula (you can find various sizes at Lowe's for cheap) to get the icing smooth with crisp corners and very little effort. After you get it really smooth with the spatula, let it crust and then place a piece of computer paper on each side of the cake and rub over it with a fondant smoother (or your hand) to make it ultra smooth.

All this being said, I have found that it is not so much the cake mix that makes a difference in my cakes, but the pan. After I started using pans with 90 degree angles, my cakes magically improved---no more bulging in the centers, either!

If you want specifics about batter, the lady who owns my local cake store (at least 30 years of experience talking here) says that as far as boxed mixes go, Pillsbury is the easiest to work with and Duncan Hines is the hardest. However, I've been using a great large quantity doctored recipe here lately that someone posted on another forum and it works and tastes great:

2 DH butter recipe cake mixes
2 cups all purpose flour
1.5 cups sugar
2 sticks butter
2 sticks margarine
2 2/3 cups water
6 eggs
1 box french vanilla pudding mix (instant)
2 tsp. baking powder

Cream butter, margarine, and sugar together. Add eggs, mix until blended. Add cake mix, pudding mix, flour, and baking powder. Blend on low while drizzling in water in a thin stream. Mix until smooth and bake as usual. This yields about 15.5 cups of batter, so use a large bowl. I have a 4.5 quart bowl and it works fine.

I've been using this lately and the people at my husband's work love it! It tastes really good with cream cheese icing and cream cheese buttercream, too.

Thank you so much for that advice.
I ordered those exact pans and some assorted spatulas last night, so at least in the tools department, I'll be set!

You're welcome. I totally skipped over the black icing part of your question last night--sorry--but I saw it tonight. What you'll want to do is make dark brown icing first ( get it as dark as you can by dumping dark cocoa powder in your regular buttercream and adding some water to compensate for the powder if you need to--a little bit of hershey's syrup adds a nice flavor, too). Then, you add black gel food coloring until you get black icing. If you try to make black using just the food coloring, it will take a ton a food coloring and will taste bitter. The other way is faster and tastes much better.