Orange Crate Cake
What do you get when you add 24 cups of orange creamsicle cake batter, 3 lbs of dark chocolate ganache, 10 lbs of modeling chocolate and 6 lbs of fondant? An insanely heavy, insanely delicious, insanely fun cake that’s perfect for summer!
Backstory
To start, let me give you a little backstory into this cake design. I’ve had this cake design idea swirling around in my head for at least a year now. I actually intended for this design to be my submission for a cake sculpting competition this past spring, but like everything else in 2020, the competition ended up being canceled. But even though I couldn’t make it for the cake show, I still thought it would be such a blast to make, so I just couldn’t help myself!
Cake Design
I always try to make cakes from as much actual cake as I can (instead of having certain elements be rice krispie treats, dummy cakes, etc.), and I’m so pumped that this one ended up being 100% cake. The crate was a two-layer, orange creamsicle cake topped with dark chocolate ganache and then the “wood” fondant decoration, and all 20 oranges were all individual orange creamsicle cakes topped with modeling chocolate. I thought it would be such a fun idea for everyone to pick off their own “orange” from the top, then still have the “crate” to cut into for even more cake slices.
When I say this cake was heavy, I cannot even begin to convey how much this guy weighed. While I don’t know exactly how heavy it was, I have a kitchen scale that goes up to 30 lb and it immediately maxed out when I tried to weigh it. My friend Abby was sweet enough to take the photographs of this cake, and I’d say in-between every 8 shots, my husband actually had to run up and hold the cake because my arms kept giving out (PS I’ve never made it past 5 lb weights for working out, just to level set on my lack of upper body strength).
I have definitely been on a citrus cake kick this summer (cue my Lemon Bowl cake), but I have to say that I think oranges ended up being my favorite to make. I don’t know what it is about them, but they are just the cutest fruit! I had such a blast working on all the little details on each orange, from making the peel texture down to the coloring to show the various shading. And then I made a couple orange blossom sugar flowers and leaves to mix in when stacking all the oranges. Finally, I had my husband design a vintage-style crate label that I printed out on edible icing paper. I think it really is the cutest detail of the entire cake!
Photos by: Abby Murphy Photo