How To Make A Full Sheet Cake Box

What a calendar month April had been...phew! Crazy busy and my oven had been baking cakes and goodies non-finish :-) Thankfully all my projects turned out fine and now its fourth dimension to share them hither ane-by-1...so there'll exist dorsum-to-back cakes and treats beingness posted here. Not a bad affair is it?

A cake as big as a full sheet deserves a total length coverage right? ;-) So here goes...

Earlier concluding month the regional customs that Manish and I are part of conducted a fun competition event but for kids of various age groups. While deciding upon the food, snacks and drinks options I was asked if I could make a Sheet block for the kids. I accept to be honest when I say I but jumped at the opportunity ;-) And another honest fact, I have never fifty-fifty seen how large a total sail block is in real life!
The event named 'Varnolsavam' had a logo competition for the kids for which several kids submitted their entries and 1 was finally selected as the winning logo and since I couldn't come up with any other interesting ideas I decided to draw the winning logo on top of the cake to symbolize the event. It was a tough telephone call considering how poor an creative person I am, just I went ahead with it.
So today I'll share how I went ahead making a whole sheet block at home and my fun experience at drawing on a cake. Gear up?? :-)

Let'southward start with some measurement knowledge on sheet block sizes. I'one thousand talking nigh the sail cakes that are atleast 2" high in thickness (not the thin jelly roll sheet cakes)
Quarter sheet cake - 9" x thirteen" ten 2"
1-third canvass cake - 11" x 15"x 2"
One-half sheet Cake - 12" 10 18" x 2"
Full Sheet Cake - xviii" x 24" x ii"

Our regular home ovens are big enough to support upto a half sail cake pan. So I had to make 2 half sheets to get my full canvass cake.

I baked the cakes a twenty-four hour period in advance and made around 4 batches of my favorite rich & moist Chocolate cake batter for 1 Half sail cake, so in total made 8 batches of cake batter for both the one-half sheet cakes :-) Once broiled and cooled, I placed them on their cooling racks itself , wrapped them in foil and refrigerated them.

Then I made a sturdy Cake base: Used a 2ft x 2ft plywood board and covered it in aluminium foil. Over that I taped together 2 half sheet cake boards and stuck it on superlative of the foil-covered plywood board.
The cakes were then carefully placed on the cake lath and tightly pressed together (I din't utilize any buttercream to stick them together)

And so I made my favorite American Vanilla Buttercream. For a cake this huge I needed lots of buttercream. I just did a blind math and decided to make 5 batches of this recipe (Thankfully I decided non to torte and fill the block....imagine the amount of buttercream I would had to brand and so!!)

Buttercream and Block was ready, at present its fourth dimension to frost this baby....

The below motion picture is just to testify y'all how big this cake was to frost! Information technology took me a proficient 1 hr or more than to go it quite polish and straight. I used my start spatula and later a demote scraper along with hot water for this.

Later piped a neat border with a hot orange shade (mixed orange and lemon yellow gel colors into my vanilla buttercream until I got desired color)

Everything good so far....Next was the daunting chore in front end of me, pigment the logo on this vast cake sheet!

First let's hear a brusque-story on my art-skills ;-P
I recall in my 8th grade, we had a very strict arts teacher who was also our PT teacher. It was certain that we would all get negative grades in his arts form as he was never happy with anything we drew.
But when the final scores came, he gave me the highest marks...ME!! of all the artistic kids in class! O bviously the kids in my class went scrambling over my arts book to see what extraordinary pictures I had drawn to purse such high grades, and in that location was nothing even close to extraordinary.....merely some colors and some shapes that remotely looked like human beings or cars or trees :-P
When the kids in my course asked him why I was given the highest grade (at present pls imagine me sitting in my seat, looking very very pink, firstly 'coz I was the happiest girl in course and secondly due to a slight shame equally some of my classmates din't remember I deserved it), he gave the reason that I was the only girl in class who was always punctual with my arts assignments and always neat & tidy with my work. Hmmmmm....zippo to exercise with my fine art work I know, but well, that was his reason for giving me the highest grades. My classmates went off mumbling under their jiff, totally wanting to disagree with him...merely hey, here I am today sharing my only proud 'art' moment...hehe. Otherwise I'm no creative person at all and cannot even depict a bird properly! Anyways...

The original logo was beautifully drawn by a talented 12 year old girl, Namitha. The issue beingness a kid's contest event on various activities like dancing, singing, essay writing, painting, coloring, malayalam and english speech etc for kids of ages three-16 yrs. Namitha beautifully captured the entire essence of the event on her logo and I knew I had to do justice to this gorgeous visualization of hers.

Varnolsavam Logo - fatigued by Namitha

I kept pondering a scrap every bit to the best option to draw on a butercream block , then it struck me...GlitterGel colors! I din't have all the needed colors so off I sent Manish to get me all the colors on the logo...and he did but every bit told...hehe!
I used a toothpick to make very mild markings on the cake where each part of the moving-picture show went and colored inside it with the gel colors. This was how information technology looked in the end. Phew! This took me well-nigh 2 hrs, considering my drawing skills and the fact that I couldn't gamble much ;-)

And simply when we idea everything was good nosotros realised that the large box Manish got from Costco to fit the cake wasn't sturdy enough and was too big to fit in our car trunk! Then came our friends to the rescue, they saturday downwardly with Manish and re-sized the box and gave it enough padding, converting it to a sturdy cake box, that could bear the weight of the cake and as well fit in our car trunk ;-) Thanks to all who helped!!

All things were finally sorted out. Other than a hairline cleft in the buttercream that happened while placing the cake into the block box and finally into the car, there were no other problems and it landed safely at the venue.

The kids were super excited as they crowded around the cake waiting for the cake cutting and ofcourse their slice.... Namitha insisted that I likewise join in the cake cutting and nosotros cut the cake together. Some wanted the piece with orange cream, some wanted a slice with the gel colors , while other'south just wanted a big piece ;-) Information technology was a lot of fun and both kids and adults enjoyed the block, me too! And in that location was plenty block for more than one serving. And my lil'Appu couldn't have given a bigger grin while enjoying his piece :-)
(below pics are courtesy of my friend Anjana, who graciously took most of the pics at the event)

In all information technology was super fun issue and this experience of making such a large block and so sharing it with the kids is what'southward going to stay in my eye forever!

Hopefully you lot enjoyed reading this post and now you lot know its not also hard to make a full-canvass cake at home!!

More gorgeous treats to follow, so keep watching out this space or my Facebook Page for updates .

-Manju