Hello Sugar Lovers!
The day I made a Pocky cake will forever be ingrained in my memory. This cake tested not only my patience but my ability to stop myself from throwing a cake out the window. My lovely friend Lisa inspired me to make this cake. So thanks to her for the idea! If you want a challenge then come with me on a journey through the Pocky Doomsday!
Ingredients:
- Red Velvet Cake Mix
- Butter (2 sticks)
- Icing Sugar (2 cups)
- Vanilla Extract (1 Tsp)
- 5 rasberries
- 1 small roll of white ribbon
- Pink icing colouring
- 1 Bulk package of Pocky 10 small packages inside
- Baking spray (butter flavoured)
Kitchen Items:
- Mixer
- Small deep dish cake pan (usually for stuff like lava cakes)
- Piping bag with a flower like tip
*Everything else you can find in your kitchen*
First thing your going to want to do is make the cake batter. Some boxes have icing inside with it. You won’t need this because we will be MAKING icing today. Yup, I finally found the courage to make my own butter cream frosting.
Once you have made the batter and coated your pan with the butter spray you can pore it in. Baking instructions will be on the back of the box. You may have to tweek it a little bit because the box typically gives you examples of cake pans or cupcake pans. I usually start at the lowest time and then check it every 5-10 minutes or so after that. Again, a great way to test if it is done is taking a toothpick and sticking it in the centre. If it comes out clean then your good to go!
You can do this step while the cake is baking if you would like. Duh Duh Duh….. its time to make the frosting. Your going to get your mixer set up. Put 2 sticks of butter, 2 cups of icing sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla. I found that this can also be altered as you see fit. Another thing to note so you don’t make my mistakes. Make sure you have softened the butter a little bit. Taking it out a bit before hand will help with that. If you don’t your mixer will definitely protest. Set it up for about 5 minutes. Because my butter was hard my timing was a bit off so I’m sure I could have went a bit longer with it. It was kind of thick.
Once its done you can take it out and put it in a bowl. Add the pink icing dye to the icing. I used about 3 toothpick swipes. Mix it up and if your happy with the colour than your done this step.
Now I waited to cut the pocky until the cake was out of the oven. I did this because you will need to cut the cake how you need it so you can line up the Pocky to the height that you want it. Now take the cake out and make sure you let it cool quite a bit. We are going to need to cut the sides a bit. The reason being is because its a deeper dish there is a curve around the edges. Cut it so that it has flat edges. This will help the pocky stick much better.
Once it is cooled and you have the sides all cut you can line up a pocky stick and cut it to the length you want. Use that one as a guide to cut all the rest. If some are off by a bit its ok. I left a hole on the inside so make the pocky stick up a bit more than the cake so when you put the icing on you still have a but of a dip from the top of the pocky to where the icing is sitting.
Now this is the part where I almost tore down our entire kitchen and burned the ashes. It can be a bit complicated because the sides you just cut are still a bit crumbly. My cake was falling apart because it was to soft so the icing was pulling everything away. Something that I would advise would be to pop it in the fridge for a bit to help harden the sides. This will help because when you put the icing on you don’t want it to destroy the sides of the cake. You will need to icing the sides of the cake to get the pocky to stick. Don’t worry to much if the sides don’t look good because it will be covered up by the pocky anyway.
Once you have the icing on and you have learned from my horrible error in judgment. you can stick on the pocky’s one at a time. Now, what do you know, this is where I also made a very bad decision. The pocky has a yogurt type covering on it so if you keep it in your hands to long it can start to melt and then you have a lovely disaster everywhere. If this happens to you put them in the fridge for awhile to cool them down. You may not have to if you have put the cake in the fridge between putting on the pocky then you should be fine.
Once you have finished that be sure to put the ribbon on to keep everything in place. You can then icing the top of the cake with your frosting using a piping bag and a flower like tip.Do this almost like you would a cupcake. Finish it off with some rasberries on top and your good to go!
I firmly believe that baking takes patience but you will have some road blocks to that for sure. The only thing you can do if something isn’t going your way change it up or take a break from it for awhile. The best rule of thumb that I have figured out is “when in doubt just put it in the fridge”. If you have been following my blogs this tends to be a common mistake I make and who knows maybe I will learn my lesson one day!
Thanks for reading guys and happy baking! Thanks again Lisa!
Your friendly neighbourhood baker
The Baking Project 