Wii Bake

Sadly, not the next great cooking sim game starring Martha “I survived Jail, Paris, You Cry Baby” Stewart.

Instead, it’s the latest issue of Wired featuring a Wii cake.

Wanna bake one for yourself? The incredibly long recipe is after the jump. But, baking is fun. Feel free to bake your head if you disagree. By Lesli Heffler, Sono Baking Company and Café.

To build the cake layers: I used a White Cake recipe- multiplied several times to get the dimensions I needed to build Wii.

The recipe is as follows: I multiplied this recipe approximately 24 times to create Wii.

Please note that I omitted the baking powder when I made my recipe- as I needed the cake to be extremely dense to build Wii.

White Cake

1 time recipe

6 oz unsalted butter (room temperature)

2 cups granulated sugar

1 ½ tsp salt

3 1/3 cup cake flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

1 ¼ cup milk

¾ tsp vanilla

7 oz egg whites

½ cup granulated sugar

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and flour two 8×2” pans.

In a large bowl, sift together cake flour, baking powder and salt.

Combine the milk and vanilla. Set aside.

Using a standing mixer with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and the 2 cups granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Scrape down bowl.

On low speed add cake flour mixture alternating with the milk to the creamed butter- begin and end with the flour. Mix only until combined.

In a separate mixing bowl, using a whisk attachment beat egg whites on high speed until soft peak forms. Continuing at a high speed, add ½ cup granulated sugar in a slow, steady stream. Continue beating until medium/stiff, glossy peaks form. You have just created a meringue.

Fold meringue into the cake batter in 3 additions, being careful not to over mix.

Spread the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 40 minutes.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream – I multiplied this recipe approximately 18 times for the Wii cake

1 time recipe

10 oz Egg Whites

20 oz Granulated Sugar

2 lbs Unsalted butter, softened (cubed)

2 Tbsp Vanilla extract

Procedure:

In a large bowl, combine egg whites and sugar.

Set over a pot of boiling water- bain marie.

Using a whisk mix the white until hot to the touch and the sugar has dissolved, approximately 140 degrees.

Using a standing mixer with the whisk attachment beat the white mixture on high until glossy peaks have formed and mixture has cooled.

Lower the speed of the mixer to low and add the cubed butter, a little at a time.

After all the butter has been added, put the mixer on medium/high speed. Mix until soft and fluffy.

Add vanilla.

Mix until combined.

Wii Cake for Wired Magazine

For the large Wii cake for Wired magazine, I multiplied the above cake recipe 24 times. I filled a 16” x 3” square pan and a 14”x3” square pan. The 16” cake was for the main/top part of Wii and the 14” cake was for the silver bottom base and the remote.

Once the cake layers finished baking- I set them aside to cool. I chilled them overnight in the refrigerator so that they would be extra firm to work with.

I cut cardboard bases for each part of Wii: the main console, the silver base and the remote.

Top part of Wii/ Main part

To create the top part of Wii, I cut the 16” cake to form: 13” height sloping down to 11” height. I kept the width of the cake to 3”. The bottom length was cut to 14”. After I cut these dimensions, I put the cake in the fridge to chill.

Crumb coat: I put an initial coat of Buttercream frosting on the cake. Once my crumb coat was finished, I set the cake in the freezer to harden.

Once the cake was well chilled in the freezer, approximately 1 hour, I repeated the frosting another 2 times… again freezing in between both coats.

Buttons- I cut pieces of fondant out, approximately 1/8 “ thick. I drew the desired designs on the buttons with milk chocolate and white chocolate tinted red, blue, green. I set them aside to dry. I also used edible/colored powder… creating a solution of lemon extract and the powder to serve as “paint” to color the buttons—this made the blue slot on Wii.

Once the buttons were dry I “glued” them onto Wii using white chocolate.

Base of Wii/ Silver bottom

To create the base of Wii, I cut the 14” cake to form: 14” length x 3” height x 4” width. After I cut these dimensions, I put the cake in the fridge to chill.

Crumb coat: I put an initial coat of Buttercream frosting on the cake. Once my crumb coat was finished, I set the cake in the freezer to harden.

Once the cake was well chilled in the freezer, approximately 1 hour, I repeated the frosting 1 more time. I placed the cake again in the freezer to harden.

Fondant finish (***please note that our fondant is store bought***) – I kneaded white fondant until soft and pliable. I rolled the fondant to approximately 20”x 10”- approximately ¼ “ thick. I draped this over my buttercreamed Wii base… smoothing the top and sides of the cake with my palms- cutting away the extra fondant with a pizza wheel.

I created a solution of silver luster dust (edible luster powder) with lemon extract. I then used a paintbrush to cover the base silver with this solution.

I set the cake aside to dry.

Remote

To create the remote for the Wii cake, I used the leftover cake from the 14” pan (after I cut out the Wii base dimensions). The dimensions of the remote were 9” in length x 2” height x 3 ½ “ width. After I cut these dimensions, I put the cake in the fridge to chill.

Crumb coat: I put a first coat of Buttercream frosting on the cake. Once my crumb coat was finished, I set the cake in the freezer to harden.

Once the cake was well chilled in the freezer, approximately 1 hour, I repeated the frosting 1 more time. I placed the cake again in the freezer to harden.

Fondant finish- I kneaded white fondant until soft and pliable. I rolled the fondant to approximately 8”x 14”- approximately ¼ “ thick. I draped this over my buttercreamed remote… smoothing the top and sides of the cake with my palms- cutting away the extra fondant with a pizza wheel.

I set the cake aside while I made my buttons for the remote.

Buttons- I cut pieces of fondant out, approximately 1/8 “ thick. I drew the desired designs on the buttons with milk chocolate and white chocolate tinted red, blue, green. I set them aside to dry.

Once the buttons were dry I “glued” them onto the remote using white chocolate. I set the finished remote aside to dry.

Setting up the Wii cake:

I placed the silver finished base on my final board… I inserted wooden dowels in 3 places on the cake (top, middle, and bottom) and cut them flush to the cake. This provided the support to hold the top cake (main console).

I stacked the top console on top of the silver base and again inserted wooden dowels at 2 locations- hammering them through the dowels of the silver base. Picture wooden dowels going through the top part of Wii into the bottom base.

Now the cake has enough support to stand on its own.