I’ve been wanting to make a salad cake since I first saw this cool-ass one on Reddit maybe a year ago. Then, my mother-in-law, son and I were watching The Great Canadian Baking Show and the very cool Chi made such an artful, beautiful salad cake that we all gasped together. I also found this wonderful Chocolate Salad Cake by Nina that features white chocolate painted romaine lettuce leaves which look so cool and realistic – and likely more buttercream-friendly than painted edible wafer paper lettuce. Plus, I really wanted to use my coconut jelly eggs for the cake, as I hadn’t seen anyone do that yet in the cake world!
Every time I try a new cake, I have a vision in mind. I wanted to try making the white chocolate lettuce and cake pop-like cherry tomatoes like Nina did in her chocolate salad cake, and I figured if I’m melting the damn candy melts, maybe I’ll make “croutons” as well!
Life sidebar: we don’t have a microwave in our household. However, I’ve been debating purchasing a little baby microwave (for melting chocolate or candy melts and I guess re-heating food??) for the last six years, lol. So I loose-cannon decided to buy a microwave! I hate having stuff cluttering up our countertops because: anal retentive, but geez I’ve had this thing for two days and we’ve used it like nine times already. Including melting white chocolate candy melts, with the intention of dipping cherry tomato cake pops up in there, and painting romaine lettuce leaves to get cool realistic veiny (yuck?) leaves!
Note to you, cake maker: do not get ballsy and think you can override the instructions of candy melts. Cool Times Cocky Candy Melts Sung thought I could microwave in one minute bursts on power 5, when the candy melt instructions said 30 seconds. Guess what, reader. BURNT IT. Caramelized it?? But still tried to use it. And the result was the cherry tomatoes looked like GORY HORROR MOVIE MEATBALLS. Not the look I was going for for my salad cake.
But I digress, brutally. Sorry.
SO!!!! At least I had my coconut jelly eggs, and I had a big brain idea: chocolate chip cookie croutons! I always have cookie dough balls in the freezer, so I baked up four cookies and just as they came out of the oven, I used a square cookie cutter to punch out small squares. Then I froze the mini squares, then quartered them with a sharp knife into crouton-like shapes. Sort of. They’re more like little cereal squares. NOT BAD! And better than the turd croutons I attempted earlier.
However, I was really wishing I had something red and tomato-y for a pop of colour. So I dug deep into my cupboard of cake supplies and found some maybe probably old red gumdrop things! Ideally I was looking for red Swedish berries, but panicked cake makers can’t be too choosy. Red gumpdrop things, it was.
WAIT! I forgot to tell you about the edible wafer paper!!! This stuff was cool. I bought a 25-pack from the Evil ‘Zon out of desperation. To paint it lettuce-green, I mixed VODKA leftover from Christmas with green and yellow gel food colouring. I laid out the wafer paper on parchment paper and happily painted away. When I tried to flip the paper, it got all bunched up and tore. But it weirdly looked all scrunched up like lettuce, so I was like, “happy mistake, me!” Now here’s the cool clincher. I read online that you can quick-dry painted edible wafer paper in the oven on a low temperature. So I popped the sheets in the oven at a low temp, and they crisped up like a dream!
Reader, you may be wondering what edible wafer paper tastes like, all crisped up. If you like rice crackers like me, you may be pleasantly surprised to learn that it kind of tastes like crispy nothingness, but it’s not bad or gross! Yay!!!
Geez, I haven’t even told you about the journey of the Bowl Cake. I’ve made many beautiful DOME CAKES in my cake days, but I forgot that I would be flipping it upside down and having gravity work AGAINST MY ASS to make a salad bowl. Here’s a tip: keep that thing CHILLED. Never let it get to room temp until it’s locked in with powerful Swiss Meringue Buttercream. Even still, my Cake Paranoia (trademark) would keep it in the fridge until basically forever.
My bowl isn’t the bestest bowl I’ve ever made, it’s not the smoothest frosting job ever, but that’s okay, because I used a large open circle tip to “finish it” better, and it improved it quite a bit. But you know what improved it the most? SALAD!!!! Putting the accoutrements on was so fun, and it’s the type of cake that after you make it, you are all proud of yourself, after all of the colourful swearing and near-tears (every. time.) you take a million photos of it, and you post it on your cake blog. HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my wonderful mother-in-law Beth, who I made the salad cake for!!! The cake was vanilla cake with milk tea soak, strawberry jam and vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream.
xo Lyndsay
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