This week I don’t have any custom cakes lined up, but I still wanted to work on something.

A few weeks ago, How to Cook That posted a fascinating video of how to make a Coca-Cola bottle cake. I actually collect Coca-Cola stuff so this caught my eye. And I just had to try!

Her version calls for Coke gelatin and Coke cream. I made the cream, but opted to try something else for the chocolate sauce.

Here’s a pic of the heavenly Coke cream:

   
   
I scoured the Internet for a delicious Coca-Cola cake recipe and settled on a Paula Deen recipe posted by the blog With Sprinkles on Top. What does it involve? BUTTER! Of course! I also made the chocolate frosting recipe that it called for. Both recipes came out so delightful and were quick to bake up.

I wasn’t sure if the cake recipe would make enough, however. The video calls for 8 cake rounds. I was only able to get 4 cake rounds. So I baked up a box cake (the horror!) to make up for the rest. But I think 1.5 of the recipe would do it, since I ended up with smaller circles. If I had done 4″ circles, I could have gotten 3 circles from my 8″ cakes.  I know, this is all very confusing.

That brings me to my next point. In Ann’s video she doesn’t say what size cake circle you should use. She only say “smaller than your bottle.” At first, I really thought that 4″ circles wouldn’t be large enough. So I cut my circles to 4.5″. And they were too big! So I went back to my original idea.

For her Coke cream, you cook down 500 ml of soda to 50 ml. I wasn’t sure how to tell when it was cooked enough, so I just poured it into a glass measuring cup until it was cooked down. Did I mention the cream is yummy?!

For putting it all together, I didn’t cut the bottle free hand: I made a guide line with my Sharpie. The top line was for a guide as to where to fill up my white candy to.

Dry the bottles thoroughly! Letting water come into contact with your chocolate is bad news.

Also, don’t think you can cut your bottle and let it dry for a while. My neighbor gave me a bottle from a party to use.  I cut it the night before and my bottle warped. So we had to get a new bottle, but that worked out okay because I baked with the soda.

Now let’s talk about WARPING. And chocolate. I didn’t temper my chocolate because they’re candy melts. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t let your chocolate cool down a bit! I thought to myself that maybe I should let it cool, but powered through anyway!

And my bottle warped. Ugh.

So get a thermometer and let your chocolate cool down to 90°, I would guess. A temp that won’t start to affect your bottle. There are lots of posts on the Internet about how to temper chocolate, so please do your research.

Also! Don’t rush your chocolate. It really has to set up. I put my bottle in the freezer to set, which was a good idea, but I didn’t let it rest long enough. All was going well and the chocolate started to separate from the bottle on its own, which was perfect. But then the bottom cracked! It wasn’t set enough. Or it had weak points.

The top, however, was completely set and slid right out. It was beautiful.

My adorable son couldn’t WAIT to cut the cake after dinner. He is my mini cake lover!   When we were putting it together, he kept stealing my scraps!

  

It didn’t cut very nicely, but, like I said, I rushed and it had some cracks!

I had a good amount of red fondant already made, so making the cap was easy! The cap of the bottle looked goofy because it was way too big.

The top of the cake is supposed to be solid white, but mine marbalized. This was an accident, but a happy one. The bottle looks like it is about to EXPLODE! To avoid this, just let your white set in the fridge for 15 minutes.

So I hope you enjoyed my trouble shooting post for this wonderful idea by How to Cook That.

Until next time …

Nichole