Strawberry Shortcake

by Mrs. Cindy Hobbs
(Ballarat, Victoria, Australia)

Strawberry Short Cake

The cake tin, well, these special cake tins can be purchased or hired from cake stores. I just happened to purchase this one from ebay. The cake tin is large and takes two average packet cake mixes to fill it.

After mixing up the cake mix, I let it sit at room temperature for a while. This ensures that the cake does not rise too much in the oven causing the cake to have a rounded underside and therefore not sitting flush when the cake is turned out.

I beat 500 grams of vegetable shortening (also known as so lite) until it is light and fluffy. I then add 500 grams of icing sugar and mix until all combined and it is a good piping mixture thickness.

I use a flat spatula to ice the sides of the cake all the way around in one color, generally white is a good color as it makes the image on the top of the cake pop.

Separate the icing mixture and tint them with the colors that you will be needing to pipe onto the cake. I found it easier to have many different piping bags lined up with the colored icing loaded and ready to go. This saved time in having to stop and rinse and clean the piping bag ready for the next color.

Once the cake is cooled, pipe the colors onto the cake. There will be a character outline of the image imprinted into the character cake tin as a guide line. Once all of the colors have been piped take your darker color, either black or coco tinted icing and run a boarder line around the different sections of the picture and also add the eyes and mouth or any other shadings that may need to be added.

I find that doing this at the end makes the cake's image more defined and you don't run the risk of over piping the lines there for having the lines lost in amongst icing.

I added fresh strawberries where I felt fit. This added to the dimension of the cake.