How to Make a Skating Rink Cake
Cake eaters will be amazed, surprised, and delighted by the visual impact of this design. Although the cake doesn’t pay homage to a particular holiday, it’s a great choice for any wintertime occasion.
Assembling and Decorating the Skating Rink Cake
Tools: Two 9-x-13-inch cake pans, #864 icing tip, 8-cup glass measuring cup, large glass bowl
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Baking time: 35 minutes plus 30 minutes for cooling
Decoration time: 45 minutes plus 3 hours for refrigeration
Yield: 12 servings
2 batches modified Most Excellent White Cake batter
1 cup flaked sweetened coconut
2 batches Stiff Decorator Frosting
1 batch Buttercream Frosting
6-ounce box berry blue gelatin
Leaf green food coloring gel
3 ice cream cones
Jumbo marshmallows
Gummi penguins and bears
Preparing the Coconut Cake
Prepare the cake batter according to the recipe, but in each batch, fold 1⁄2 cup flaked coconut into the batter before pouring it into the pan.
Bake for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs attached. Let the cakes cool in the pans for 10 minutes before you run a knife around the edges. Invert the cakes onto racks to finish cooling.
After the cakes are completely cool, apply a crumb coat (thin layer) of buttercream frosting to the cakes, place one atop the other, and refrigerate them for 1 hour.
Frost the stacked cake with buttercream. Use a bamboo skewer to sketch a free-form lake in the center of this cake. With a fork, carefully hollow out the lake, digging out the cake to a depth of 1 inch (only dig out the top layer of cake).
Prepare the gelatin as follows (don’t use the directions on the box!): With a large bowl of ice water standing by, pour the gelatin into a large glass measuring cup, and stir in 2 cups of boiling water. Set the measuring cup in the bowl of ice water, and continue stirring the gelatin for about 8 minutes, just until it thickens very slightly. Pour the gelatin into the lake on the surface of the cake. Refrigerate at least 2 hours for the gelatin to set.
Tint 2 cups of stiff decorator frosting leaf green. Outfit a pastry bag with a #864 tip and green frosting.
Rest the ice cream cones upside down on a piece of wax paper. Moving vertically up and down the cones, pipe boughs on all the cone trees with the green frosting. Start at the base of each cone, and draw the frosting away from the cone to a point before moving onto the next bough. Place the trees on the cake around the lake.
Position marshmallows around the scene to resemble snowy drifts. Skewer the bottoms of the penguins and gummi bears with toothpicks, and insert them into the cake.
