Beer Bucket Cake

There is a familiar theme whenever I have to make a cake for my hubby... it's usually soccer or beer or wine. Ha. For his birthday this year, I decided to make a beer bucket cake, an "easy" design that was quick to throw together, cuz as usual, I was procrastinating and didn't decide on the design until the afternoon on his actual birthday!

Beer Bucket Cake

I've been wanting to try an earl grey chocolate chip cake recipe, so that's what I ended up baking up! Finally got a chance to open up that pack of Earl Grey tea that someone gifted my hubby last year too. I steeped the tea in milk for 10 mins and used that, together with earl grey tea powder to flavour both the cake and the Swiss meringue buttercream frosting. 

Earl Grey Chocolate Chip cake

To decorate, I marbled different shades of brown fondant together, rolled it out and cut it into thick strips. I used a fondant veiner tool to add a woodgrain pattern, and then stuck the fondant pieces around the dirty-iced cake. 

"wood" marbled fondant

empty beer bucket

I didn't bother covering the top with fondant cuz anyway, there would be "ice cubes" covering the surface.

naked top

The ice cubes were made out of isomalt, using a quick method I found on YouTube, which I tried a couple years ago for my girl's birthday cake: mix 1 lb of isomalt crystals and 3/4 cups of distilled water in a pot. Heat to 340F without stirring. Immediately pour into moulds (I used an actual plastic ice cube tray). Once it's completely cool, about an hour later, voilà, isomalt ice cubes. If you are worried about isomalt being "edible", you can use sugar instead, but ice cubes made from sugar tend to have a yellow tinge cuz it starts to caramelize at high temperatures. 

isomalt crystals and water in a pan

heat until the mixture reaches 340F

Technically, isomalt is edible, but only in small quantities. Isomalt is sugar alcohol, an ingredient used in sugar-free cough drops, like Halls, and is difficult for our bodies to digest in large amounts (says so on the Halls label that "excessive consumption may cause a laxative effect"), so that's why you can only eat like one piece every 2 hours. Anyway, I highly doubt anyone will be eating this much isomalt off of the cake, especially when it is unflavoured and tastes like nothing. My kids were not interested in eating the isomalt ice cubes at all after tasting of a small piece of it. 

pour liquid isomalt into the moulds while it's hot and leave to cool completely at room temperature

1 hour later...cool isomlat ice cubes!

Anyway, back to the cake! If you're wondering why there are two crabs beside the beer bucket, and why one of them has a moustache, it's cuz my husband recently got promoted (yay!) and I wanted to commemorate the event together with his birthday, just like with this cake for his last promotion! 

2 cute crabs!

one of them had a moustache (& goatee, ha!)

We had the cake for dessert after having xiao long bao (soup dumplings) and spicy mala hot pot for dinner. My mouth was on fire and I couldn't wait for the Earl Grey buttercream to quench the burn. 

the birthday boy and his mini-me

I only placed the cans of beer on at the venue. I would've drained the beer and used empty cans, but since this was a surprise cake and I didn't want to drink 3 cans of beer, I just put the full beer cans directly on the cake. Maybe that wasn't the best idea cuz the weight of the beer caused the cake to bulge and kinda displaced the fondant planks. Oh well! 

Beer Bucket Cake, all lit up

yep, that's a 35cm cake sparkler!

make a wish!

My kids couldn't wait to dig into the cake. They love fondant. They didn't care that the black fondant stained their mouths. The cake was pretty much naked even before my hubby got to take the obligatory "cake cutting" shot. Happy 38th Birthday, papa!!

3 monkeys!

cake cutting pic

slice of earl grey chocolate chip cake