Mirror Glaze Galaxy Cake

Happy New Year!

I decided to celebrate with a great cake!

I always see mirror glaze on cooking shows and I’ve wanted to attempt one.  After watching a cooking show with Spud, he requested a mirror glaze cake and I knew it was finally time to give it a try!

Blue is my favorite color, so I knew I wanted to use hues of blue in my cake.  

I made my cake in two single layers this time since I wanted to have multiple tries on the mirror glaze if I needed it (somehow I didn’t - I nailed it on the first try!)

Once it was poured, I really felt like it looked like a galaxy! So I added gold stars to one cake and a fondant solar system to the others.

I also decided to make this cake for this month’s Cook the Books Club.  Here’s my review:

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

What did I just read? This was a strange one for sure.

What started out as a promising dystopian story ended up stunted by a weird writing style as the author worked her way through a dystopian novel checklist:
-Climate change/pollution ✅
-food scarcity ✅
-extreme division of social class ✅
-bizarre attempt at racism (“over represented minority”)…I guess ✅
-and some LGBT thrown in for good measure ✅

From there it just got more and more bizarre.

Character wise, Aida and her dad were pretty stereotypical “bad guys”, honestly, a little mustache twirl and a maniacal laugh wouldn’t have shocked me.

And our nameless narrator was boring, self pitying and extremely whiny.

I attempted to distill the book for a family member and he said it best, “so they just went Jurassic Park on it?” Yep. They did. Only so so much weirder.

View all my reviews

Yeah…even though I’m usually all for dystopian stories, this one did not do it for me. It was bizarro land.

So how does the cake fit in?  

The food mentioned in the book was very outlandish.  It ranged from stuffy French cooking to roasting endangered animals - I’m gonna say it again - bizarre.  However, it was all supposed to be very upscale and fancy.  Oh and {SPOILER ALERT} they try to go to space at the end.

So there, galaxy cake - space and fancy - that works, right?

To sum it all up: cake good, book bad.  Happy New Year.

Mirror Glaze Galaxy Cake

Adapted from Sugar Geek Recipes

1 recipe rich chocolate cake

1 recipe chocolate frosting

4 teaspoons (2 packets) gelatin powder

2.5 ounces warm water

10 ounces white sugar

5 ounces water

7 ounces white chocolate, chopped

7 ounces sweetened condensed milk (half a standard can)

Gel food coloring: blue, navy blue, royal blue, turquoise, white

Gold leaf stars

Fondant planets (optional)

Bake the cakes to recipe instructions.  Cool and make chocolate frosting according to recipe instructions. Frost the cake on a cake board that is the same diameter of the cake and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

To make the glaze, mix together the gelatin powder and 2.5 ounces of water.  Set aside to thicken.

Place the sugar and remaining water (5 ounces) in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is melted and bubbles just begin to form on the bottom of the pan.

Turn off the heat.  Add the gelatin mixture and stir to combine.

Place the chopped white chocolate and sweetened condensed milk in a heat-proof bowl.  Pour the hot sugar mixture over the white chocolate and sweetened condensed milk.  Stir to mix and set aside for 3 minutes to melt.

Stir again, then blend with an immersion blender to make sure the mixture is fully blended.

Divide into 5 bowls and color with gel food coloring.  Set aside for 5-10 minutes or until the mixture cools to 90-95 degrees F.

Pour each color of glaze into a large bowl and gently swirl colors.

Place the cake on an inverted bowl or cup on a rimmed baking sheet.  Carefully pour the glaze over the cake until the top and sides are coated.

Allow the cake to sit for 5 minutes, then run a knife along the bottom to remove any drips.

Sprinkle gold stars over the cake or top with fondant planets.