Anchor Beer Cake

Here's a fun gravity-defying beer cake to celebrate an Anchor Beer fan's 35th birthday. The birthday guy's sweet wife wanted to do something special to surprise her hubby with on 35th birthday! Anchor beer, his name and 35 were the specs she gave me, and here's what I came up with! I was actually joking with her that it's too bad her hubby's fave beer wasn't the Singha brand! Ha. 

Anchor Beer Cake!

The cake essentially a 2-tier cake: a 4" beer mug on top of a 6" cake, both tiers made of devil's food cake with whipped dark chocolate ganache filling. Playing off the Anchor Beer can logo for the bottom tier, I cut the birthday boy's name out of fondant using block letter Clickstix, and "35" out of the italicized number Clickstix. The anchors were made using a mould. 

name and age in Anchor Beer-style

For the beer mug, I made the handle out of fondant a day in advance so that it would dry hard and be able to be stabbed into the side of the cake with the help of BBQ skewers. I wrapped the cake in fondant dyed with Americolor gold. 

beer mug with royal icing "foam"

I added the indents on the side of the mug after I had wrapped it, using the back of a teaspoon and smoothing with my fingers. The Anchor Beer logo in the front of the mug is an edible icing image from Edible Icing Prints, though I wish that the resolution and colours came out a bit better. 

I had intended to pipe the foam out using buttercream, but on second thought, went ahead using stiff-consistency royal icing cuz I could add better texture, plus royal icing is bright white (vs. off-white/yellowish buttercream). Which then gave me an issue of whether or not this baby could go in the fridge afterwards cuz all the things I've read online so far say that royal icing shouldn't be refrigerated! The issue being that the condensation that would form upon removal from the fridge would dissolve the sugar in the royal icing and cause it to liquefy! More on this later.

back of the cake

The "flowing beer from a can" effect is achieved by wrapping a long wooden chopstick in the same gold fondant, bending the top at an angle so that it will hold the can up nicely. 

"pouring the beer"

I'm not an Anchor Beer fan (or any kind of beer, for that fact), so I asked my husband if he wanted to drink the beer or else I'd just pour it down the sink cuz I really only needed the empty can (whoa! I know, what a waste of precious golden liquid, right?). Of course the guy poured it into his fave beer glass and chugged it on the spot! 

care for a mug?

Anyway, I washed the can out and made sure it was nice and dry before propping it on top of the chopstick, and here's the overall effect of the beer being "poured" out of the can into a beer mug!

in the fridge with my beer and cider stash!

 Ok, so back to that refrigeration issue. I mean, condensation is already an issue for fondant cakes, which is why these types of cakes always need to be in an air-conditioned room, but I always refrigerate my fondant cakes prior to delivery and the condensation does eventually evaporate, as long as it is placed in a well-conditioned room directly from the fridge! 

safely delivered!

Anyway, I asked my baker friend Ximicake for advice, and she said just wait for the royal icing to crust over (like when making macarons and drying out the shell surface) before refrigerating, and then allow the cake to "thaw" out in an air-conditioned room for half an hour after removal from the fridge, and it'll be fine! 

ready to party!

So I let the cake sit out in air-conditioning for a good 4 hours, til the royal icing was nice and set, and then I crossed my fingers and popped the whole cake in the fridge. 

whoo! no condensation issues!

Thankfully, everything turned out A-OK! The cake went straight from the fridge into a cool, air-conditioned car and was delivered to the party without incident! Here are a couple of pics shared by the birthday guy's wife. I'm so happy that her hubby was very happy with the cake and that all their guests loved how the cake looked and tasted! Happy 35th birthday, Singa!

It's an Anchor Beer party up in heeeerrrrre!