Treasure Chest Cake

In 2011 I made a cake for our church's Blue and Gold Banquet.  It was so much fun to make and the scouts loved it!  The instructions are extremely detailed.  I wanted them to be easily understood by anyone.

 

Supplies needed:

·         9x5 bread loaf pan, 2 if you have them

·         2 boxes of cake mix, whatever flavor you want

·         5 wooden dowels, or chopsticks

·         1 piece of cardboard, about 20”x20”

·         1 piece of cardboard, to be cut to fit under lid of treasure chest

·         Tinfoil to wrap around cardboard under lid of treasure chest

·         Candies that you want to put into treasure chest

·         Ingredients for buttercream icing, listed below

1)      Mix both boxes of cake mix, per instructions on the box.

2)     Grease bottom of loaf pan(s) with cooking spray like pam, line bottom of pan with wax paper, then spray again and coat spray with light coating of flour.

3)     Add 4 cups of cake batter to one loaf pan (for base of treasure chest) and 2 cups of cake batter to other loaf pan (for treasure chest lid).

4)     Bake for 50-60 min @ 325^o  (check loaf pan with only 2 cups of batter in it after 20-30 min for doneness.

5)     Let cake cool for at least 30 min before taking out of pan, cool completely on wire rack before icing.

Buttercream Icing (Double icing if icing a larger cake, but one batch should be enough for this cake):

½ cup Crisco (no substitutes)

½ cup butter

1 tsp clear flavoring extract (vanilla, almond, butter, etc) Clear flavoring keeps the icing bright white, but since you don’t need a bright white, you can use regular vanilla or almond extract.

4 cups powdered sugar (approx. 1 lb)

2 TBSP milk

*Cocoa powder to taste and color

Cream butter and shortening with electric mixer (Bosch, Kitchen Aid, etc.). Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Put ¼ of icing in a separate bowl. To the ¾ of icing still in mixer bowl, add cocoa powder to taste and color. I recommend 3 TBSP. *You will need to add more milk as well so that the icing isn’t too dry. If you don’t, it will tear your cake up when you ice it. Add 1 tsp of milk at a time until it is nice and fluffy. ¼ icing that you put in a separate bowl, add yellow coloring until it reaches color of the gold bars on the cake. Keep icing covered with a damp cloth until ready to use. If you have leftover icing, keep refrigerated in an airtight container, this icing can be stored 2 weeks. You will need to let come to room temperature before you can use it. I recommend making the icing while the cakes are cooling.

·         Take largest piece of cardboard and cover with treasure chest paper. I did a image search on Google for "treasure chest" and found the one that is on there. I had to use 4 pieces of paper to cover the entire piece of cardboard. Tape paper to cardboard, then cover with plastic wrap. Make sure that the paper and cardboard are completely covered with plastic wrap. If they are not, then the grease from the icing and the cake will seep onto it and it won’t look very appealing.

·         Take the smallest piece of cardboard and place the top of the treasure chest cake on it. Trace the base of the cake and put cake back on cooling rack. Cut cardboard out to size of lid. Make three holes in the back of the lid and two in the front (that don’t go all the way through the cardboard), evenly spaced out for the dowels to go through. Put cardboard on piece of paper and copy outline and where the holes are. Make sure that the holes are big enough for the dowel to go through, but not too big that they don’t drag a bit.

·         Cover with tinfoil and poke dowels through holes on the back of the lid and make sure that no spare pieces of tinfoil are loose. It wouldn’t be fun to chew on a piece of tinfoil :p

·         Larger cake, level with a serrated knife. Run a serrated knife back and forth in a sawing motion to remove crown of cake (or curved part). Enjoy snacking on the round part you just cut off.

·         Put a little bit of icing on the large decorated piece of cardboard, where you want to put the cake. The icing will act as glue so the cake isn’t sliding around.

·         Place cake on icing, push down gently, and make sure it is secure.

·         Put a little bit of icing on the small tinfoil covered piece of cardboard and place small cake on top of it and make sure it is secure.

·         Take a cake decorating spatula, or straight edged butter knife, and ice both cakes with brown icing. Let iced cake sit for 10-25 min so icing will dry a little bit.

·         Once they are both iced, you will want to take the piece of paper that you copied the outline of the lid and lay it on top of the bottom cake. Make sure that you put it on centered. Push dowels in where the holes are. You will want to take the dowels that are in the back of the cake out and cut them to be only 1 ½ inches higher than the cake. You can cut the front dowels shorter, depending on the angle of the lid that you want.

·         Once dowels are cut and ready, paint the front dowels with brown food coloring, so they are hidden. Once food coloring is dry, push back into cake. Make sure that pointed part of dowel is sticking up, so it will go through the lid of the cake easier.

·         Put the lid on the cake. This may take two people. Have one person carefully hold the lid while the second person guides the cake to where the dowels are. If you are holding the lid, make sure that you are holding it the angle you want your lid to be at, so when you put the dowels through it the lid of the cake will be open. The second person can slightly adjust the dowels while they are in the cake so they fit according to the holes in the lid. First focus on getting the back three dowels in, then you can align the front two dowels. Now you will realize why you didn’t cut these holes all the way through. If you did, the lid will fall and you wouldn’t have a chest. With the front holes only halfway cut out, you still have a support to hold the cake open.

·         The rest is easy now!

·         Touch up fingerprints or indents from putting the lid on the cake with the brown icing.

·         Take yellow icing and put in decorating bag. Put a flat tip on bag and pipe the yellow brackets on cake, from front to back.

o   If you don’t have a decorating bag, put some icing in the corner of a Ziploc bag. Twist top of bag so icing doesn’t explode out and hold on to the twist. Cut a medium sized hole and pipe the yellow bracket. The bigger the hole, the faster the icing will come out. You may want to cut just a small hole and see how it comes out. If it’s too small, cut it a little bit bigger.

o   I did three strands across for each bracket, then two on top of those three.

·         If using decorating bag, put star tip #21 on bag and pipe stars all along bracket. Then do star border on bottom of lid and top of chest part of cake.

o   If you don’t have a decorating bag, then put yellow icing into new Ziploc bag and cut very small hole and pipe small holes all along bracket. Then do a nice border on bottom of lid and top of chest part of cake.

·         Now the fun part, decorate the cake with the candies that you bought. Put them wherever you want to. If you are making a pile of candy on the ground in front of the cake, use the leftover brown or yellow icing as glue and stick the candy and coins into it.

·         You can also use brown sugar for sand around the treasure chest. Just be careful that it doesn’t blow everywhere if you have to move the cake.