Last week was Jason's birthday and I wanted to make him a cake. A Dreamcast cake to be more exact. Some of you reading may wonder, what's a Dreamcast? Well if you were a kid or teenager of the late 90's you may recall it was a Sega gaming system. It happens to be Jason's favorite gaming system of all time, so what better way to celebrate a birthday than making a cake that looks like a Dreamcast? I'm not the first to do it either. Just google "Dreamcast cake" and you will find some results.
I googled everywhere and came across the best chocolate cake recipe ever from Ina Garten. I've only made a few cakes from scratch before so I was nervous, but this cake was just the perfect chocolate cake. It was moist, included coffee in the recipe and was not too rich, which is how I like it.
The frosting was another story. I almost hate buttercream frosting because I know I am just eating a ton of butter and sugar. The thought of that makes my heart stop... haha. But I knew it would be good on a cake, so I decided to try it again. I tried it once before, and it literally tasted like butter and I must have done something wrong. This recipe from Brown Eyed Baker worked really well. It actually tasted like frosting and nothing like butter! Together, this made the best base for the world's best Dreamcast cake.
Now came the hard part- or what I thought would be the hard part. I had to use fondant to decorate the cake. I've never used it before and was anticipating the worst. I read up on several sites and still had fears. It just sounded complicated, but there was no going back. I bought my fondant from Surla Table and took some pointers from various websites and got to work.
And surprise, surprise! It was actually really easy! I rolled the fondant out evenly in just one go. Covering the edges of the cake was a little tricky, but not so bad for my first time. The rest of the details just came to me and in maybe 1 hour, I had a fully formed Dreamcast cake and a really happy Jason. It was almost sad to cut the cake, because it looked pretty darn good! But we did cut it and it was tasty!
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| Pre-fondant |
Ingredients
• Butter, for greasing the pans
• 1 3/4 cups cake flour*
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cups cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• dash of salt*
• 1 cup buttermilk, shaken
• 1 stick butter, melted*
• 2 eggs, room temp*
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup strongly brewed coffee
Instructions
1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
2. Brew 1 cup of coffee anyway you know how. Make it strong and pour into cup so it can cool as you prepare your cake batter
3. In a bowl, add flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix until well combined.
4. .In another bowl, combine eggs, vanilla, butter and buttermilk. Add slowly to the dry ingredients and mix on low until completely combined.
5. .Slowly mix in the coffee until incorporated.
6. Grease two 8 inch pans with butter and dust with some cake flour until coated.
7. Add batter to pans and bake for 30-40 mins or until done.
8. Cool for 30 minutes in the pan, then remove from pans and cool for another 30 minutes.
9. Add your frosting of your choice and enjoy!
*Substitutes
Ina’s recipe called for all purpose flour, 1 tsp kosher salt, ½ cup oil and 2 extra large eggs. I used cake flour, a dash of table salt, 1 stick of butter and 2 large eggs instead.
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| Completed Dreamcast Cake! |
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