So I’m sure by now you have all seen the mirror glaze craze! Add some gelatine and some chocolate and bam you’ve got yourself a shiny beautiful coating for your cake. Right? Wrong.
This glaze is finicky! So for someone who has never made something like this and doesn’t have the most amount of patience, it was tricky.
So, making the glaze itself, I found a recipe on Pinterest and thought I would give it a go! Basically you bloom the unflavoured gelatine in water while you do the rest of the steps. Now first thing this gelatine newbie noticed, is gelatin smells terrible! So after a quick google I discovered Gelatin is a protein obtained by boiling skin, tendons, ligaments, and/or bones with water. It is usually obtained from cows or pigs.
Let me be the first to say….EEWW!! Why just why would you want that on your cake?! I seriously recommend if you can get your hands on it, use agar agar! It’s a vegetarian safe product derived from plants and fruit. Sounds much tastier on a cake right?!
So once you have mixed all your ingredients in a small saucepan, add in your gelatine or agar agar and stir to combine. Next, to cover up the taste of the boiled animal bits in your gelatin, add 2 cups of white chocolate chips. Whisk together until all combined. Now, this next part got me. This is where a good candy thermometer and patience are the key!
Allow the glaze mixture to come to 38° C. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, rush this step. I figured around 40 degrees ish was probably fine right? Yeah, no. It’s not. This glaze sets at 32° so you need to have it to temperature in order to pour it over your frozen cake. Otherwise it will not set properly and will just run off the cake.
So, after a bunch of trial and error, I got my glaze to the correct temperature and poured over the cake! That’s when I noticed another issue, the edges in my buttercream were not quite perfect. I was very much just doing this as a trial for the glaze and wasn’t paying too much attention to a cake that only my family was going to have. In hindsight I should have made sure it was perfect as the glaze does show off every imperfection in your cake.
So, LESSON ONE: Use Agar Agar instead of gelatine, it works and it is vegetarian friendly.
LESSON TWO: Make sure you give the glaze time to come to the correct temperature. Seriously this is so important!
LESSON THREE: Ensure your buttercream cake is iced to perfection and the edges are sharp. Also, make sure your cake is frozen cold because otherwise the glaze will not set properly.
So after all the mistakes made the cake still turned out pretty cool looking, despite being a lumpy blob. This will definitely take some more attempts and practice!
Follow my steps to get the perfect mirror glaze cake!
I will be doing another post shortly with the recipe and how the cake turned out with more practice!
Happy Cakeing!
Kinton Cakes 