Me either!
I did the smb recipe I posted, but whipped it forever between sticking it in the freezer and whipping it some more to cool it enough to add the butter, which I also had to periodically stick back in the fridge because the meringue wasn’t cooling down fast enough. I ran out and had to make a 1/2 batch more mid-icing the ombré outer layers. Because so much whipping deflated it. Normally, it only took the one recipe to make enough.
Yes, they are all about Pinterest. And I remember back when they wouldn’t even put a bag of chips into a bowl, lol. I bought a cake box off Amazon that I really liked because it wedges the cake foam board/round into the corners so there’s no chance of the cake slipping. It came in a two pack. I’d definitely buy again/reuse for longer car rides. I have a reusable tote bag from a local bakery that fits cakes, and it paired perfectly making transport a breeze.
A 10” standard cake round, in my case I used a foam core foil wrapped one, from the cake supply store fits perfectly in the base of the box. So yes, exact dimensions. So the round base is supported on all four sides of the box, so it can’t move inside the box. Given my cake was 8”, on a ten inch board/round, it means the board base, but not the cake itself, touches all sides of the box. Given I’d “glued” the cake to the board w buttercream, and chilled it, that cake wasn’t going anywhere (I actually wanted to recenter it on the board, but I couldn’t get it to move).
I don't think I'll ever try smb now. Luckily I'm not a frosting person, I like ganache.
I’m going to try it again, probably next week to test if the changes above will help, and report back.
Your cake is gorgeous, Maria! Congrats on getting it there in one piece!
This whole icing issue has me doing research. One idea I'm tracking is the amount of water in egg whites. It seems the older the egg gets, the more the whites convert to water. I wonder if the original Sweetapolita author used very fresh (read: expensive) eggs? It doesn't seem as though size makes a difference (large versus medium); the water ratio is still the same. But...when I was doing various tests for my library pastry cream and lemon curd classes, I noticed the cheaper "store brand LARGE" eggs were slightly smaller and weighed less than the "just laid" large eggs I get JUST FOR ME from a local farm. That meant in my instructions, where I gave weights, I also had to give a range of eggs necessary to get to that weight.
My eggs looked on the small side (organic pasture raised, I don’t remember the brand) so I weighed them. It did take one additional egg white, but that might’ve been because one of my eggs was a double yolk. I did make an additional half a batch and for that I used older Costco organic pasture raised eggs.
