 Hi, and welcome to the Alabama Cooperative Extension System anti-gravity cake workshop. So today we're going to be making an anti-gravity cake, and I will tell you what that is in just a minute. Before we start, let me tell you about something that the Extension System is doing to help people that want to start an at-home business. It's actually called the Cottage Food Law. And through the Alabama Cottage Food Law, you are allowed to bake and sell these from your home. So the skills that you're going to learn today, you can actually use those to bake and sell foods from your home, but you are restricted to what kind of foods you can sell. Right now, you can only do cakes, candies, and cookies. To find out more information about the Alabama Cottage Law, go to our website at www.acesasces.edu. slash cottage food business to learn more about the Alabama Cottage Law. Now first things first, kids, it's very important that when you are using appliances in the kitchen that you have an adult with you to help you with those appliances and the foods that you're cooking. It is a safety thing, and we want to make sure that we are doing this in a safe way. So please have an adult with you to help you with the melting of the chocolates. Now the next thing that we need to discuss is food safety. It is very important that you wash your hands before you start to prepare foods that are considered ready to eat. And our cake today is ready to eat because it's already been cooked. So make sure that you are washing your hands before you start. Now, if you received a cake kit, an anti-gravity cake kit, and your kit, you should have gloves. If you did not receive a kit, it is OK. Just make sure that you have gloves when handling food that your hands will be touching because you don't want to contaminate your food with your hands. So we're going to get started. First, what is an anti-gravity cake? It is a cake that gives you the illusion that candy is being poured out of the air onto the cake. So we're actually going to create that illusion today. So what do you need to get started? First thing you need is a dowel. This is a wooden dowel, a bendable straw. I prefer the bendable straw because it does give a better illusion for the candy bag. And I'll show you how to put it all together. You'll need some candies, a spoon and some candy melts. OK, another thing that you could actually use is cotton balls. And I'll show you how to use these in just a second. So to get started, we're going to melt our candies. So if you receive an anti-gravity cake kit, you receive some candy melts. Now what I would recommend is that you take your lid, don't clamp it on tight. Just kind of lay your lid on top just like that and pop it in the microwave for about 45 seconds. Check on your candy melts. See if they're melted. If they're fully melted, you're good to go. If they're not, add about five more seconds each time until you get those candy melts completely melted. So that's what I'm going to do first. I'm going to pop these in the microwave and then we're going to see how they turn out. OK, so let's check it out. We have melted our chocolates. Look at that. See how creamy and smooth it is? It looks good. This is the consistency that you want to do your stick. Now this is what's going to help those candies stick to the stick. Let's set them to the side for just a second while we get our stick together. Now to do your stick, you're going to need a wooden dowel and a bendable straw. So what I've done is I've already cut off about four inches off of the straw because I didn't want the straw to be so tall. But guess what? If you want your straw to be tall, you go for it. Don't worry about cutting the end off of it. But today we're going to go ahead. I've already gone ahead and cut the end and I'm going to take my wooden dowel and stick it into the straw like that. All right. OK, so what's next? Now we need to cut our candy bag. So now it's really important that you cut your candy bag at the right angle if you want your words to look like they're being poured out. But if you like for your words to be upside down, however you cut it, it doesn't matter. But I'm going to cut it at the bottom, the bottom corner right here below the schedule. So we're just going to cut that bottom corner off. And you can actually use your lid to pour the skittles into. So we're just going to empty those skittles out of the bag and to fill it. Now what you want to do is take your cotton balls and stick them inside of the bag. This is going to make your bag look full. OK, now I've stuffed the bag full of cotton balls and it looks full, but not full of candy. It's full of cotton balls, but it gives the illusion that it's full of candy. So we're going to just set that to the side for now and we're going to start on our stick. Now this is probably the most difficult part to making the anti-gravity cake is getting the stick prepared. OK, so what you're going to do is you're going to take your chocolate. Now I will I will warn you or caution you that your chocolate may actually harden a little bit. So if you need to pop it back in the microwave for 10, 15 seconds, you just do so until it's nice and smooth again because it will start to harden when it sits out. So just keep that in mind. Now using your wax paper, I've already gone ahead and put my glove on because we're going to be handling the candy. So you're just going to start painting that chocolate onto that stick. Now this is where the candies are actually going to stick. So get you a good coating. You can just dab, dab, dab all the way down. Now where do you stop? You want to stop about three to four inches from the bottom because that's the part that's actually going to be sticking into the cake. So just don't go all the way to the end. If you do, it is still OK. Just don't put your candies all the way to the end because you don't want them to be inside the cake. So next, what you're going to do is just take your your skittles and place them on top. Sometimes they'll fall off. So you kind of have to just be a little patient and just start stacking your skittles all the way down like this. Kind of take them, hold them, oops. There we go. And just keep going. You can create patterns. This is a fun way to learn patterns. Now there are there are not going to stick hard. You it takes a few minutes. So just kind of keep working. Just laying them on there, but try not to move your stick. Be very, very careful and just keep going. The key is to have enough of that chocolate on that stick just so that candy can stick to that stick. So what I'm going to do is just very careful. This takes a steady, steady hand, but you just keep going and keep going. And there we've got our candies on there. So now I'm just going to let it sit here for a minute or you can just take it and pop it in the refrigerator for about maybe a minute or two and bring it out. And then we're going to do the same thing on the other side. And we're going to do that four times. They're going to do it four times. OK, so I'm just going to take this. Actually, I am going to take it just to speed it up a little bit and go ahead and pop it in the fridge and I'll be right back. OK, so I have popped it into the freezer. Y'all, it only took maybe about a minute for the candy melts to harden. So what I'm going to do now is do the same thing on the side of the stick. Here we go. So we've got our second side. So again, I'm going to pop it in the refrigerator or the freezer for just a minute. And then we're going to flip it over and do the other side and then the back and we'll be done. OK, so now I've got all of my candy stuck on the stick and I put it in the in the freezer to speed it up a little bit. So now the final step for a stick is to take our bag full of cotton balls, kind of push it, push those cotton balls out of the way so that you can have some clearance at the bottom. Get you a little bit of chocolate. OK, and you're going to put that chocolate on the stick like that. Now this is going to make the stick stick to the bag. OK, we're just going to stick it in that bag like that and then kind of hold it just like that. It's not ready yet, but it's on its way. Now it's time for the fun part or the next level of fun. We're going to prepare our cake. So you may have a different flavor. I have chocolate. It doesn't matter. Cake is cake, right? But to get our cakes ready, they may have a little hump on top. If they do, I tend to cut that hump off. So using your your butter knife, you just want to go through and just cut that top little piece off of there. Now, if you don't want to, don't worry about it. Now, one thing I will tell you about the cakes that you have in your kits. You may want them to just kind of sit out for just a little bit. They'll be a little bit easier to handle. OK, now I tend to just throw that away. But some people, they want to eat it, but you're not going to eat it yet. OK, no eating while preparing food. So you should have received a cake board in your kit. So you're going to take your cake, using that flat part and place that on the board. OK. And we're going to start to icing our cake to put icing on our cake. So using your buttercream icing and your butter knife, you're going to take that first scoop and not that much. Don't lather it on. Just put a little bit and just kind of smooth it around just like that. Put a little bit of icing in between your layers, just like that. And then take your other cake. Now, not the part we're going to flip it over. So the flat part is nice and flat on top. And we're going to place it on top just like that. OK, give it a little tug, a little press and seal right there. OK, and we're going to put the icing on the outside of the cake just like that. Now, you're going to probably see crumbs on your cake. Don't worry about it. You just keep going because we're going to cover all of that. So just go through and ice your cake. Put icing on your cake a really thin layer. OK, and I will be back when I'm done icing my cake. OK, so I have finished one trick when you're icing your cake. Use the smooth side of the knife and just kind of do one sweep across and then just rape the excess back into the cup or you can wipe it off with a clean napkin. And you can do the same for the side. Just one sweep across and kind of get it nice and smooth like that. OK, now one other thing is really, really important when you're icing your cake and we're about to work with something called fondant. We want to make sure our cake board is clean. So take a clean napkin and get all of the crumbs pressed down really hard and get those crumbs off of that cake board because you do not want your crumbs to go into your fondants. All right, so we're going to get all of this cleaned up and we're going to start with our fondant. Now what we're going to do is work with something called fondant to cover our cake. It's going to make our cake look so pretty. So this is fondant and there's a link in the description that shows you how to make your own fondant. But you basically would take your fondant. It's kind of like Play-Doh, but it's not. It's actually an edible icing that you can roll out. So this is what fondant is. Now, if your fondant feels kind of like really dry, you can take a little bit of shortening, rub it on your hands like this and work it into your fondant to kind of loosen it up some like that. Now, you should have gotten instructions to use either corn starch or powdered sugar on the surface. And basically, you're going to cover a surface with pristin seal or plastic wrap just to get a nice clean surface to work with. That keeps your fondant from being. It keeps your fondant safe. Let me say that. OK, so take your fondant, your fondant, put it on your clean sanitary surface and you're going to use your rolling pin to start rolling your fondant out. So this is pretty close to it. Then you're going to take your fondant. And kind of roll it. Don't press down. Don't press down on it and make it glue back together. You want to keep it nice and loose. Bring your cake close to your fondant. You're going to lift your fondant up. And you're going to get it close to the end and unroll it onto your cake like that. Now it's time to get it to stick to the cake. So basically take this part of your hand and you're going to press and turn, press and turn. And oh, look what we have. We have a fold. So to get the fold out, you're going to fan and press. You're going to fan it and press it. Now, using your piece of cutter, you're going to cut off the excess fondant. See, that was the purpose of cleaning around that board so that you don't get any crumbs on your fondant. There we go. OK, so we're almost done. We've got another fun part to do, and that is to put our candies on the cake. So the easiest way to do this is to take your icing and you're going to paint a triangle. So let me show you how to do this. So starting about the center of the cake, you're just going to brush a triangle like this onto the cake. Now, don't worry about your triangle being straight. It's OK, because that's where you're going to stick your candies and then go up the side of your cake. Let me flip the cake up a little bit and just kind of put a straight line to meet where you started that triangle. OK, all right. So this is where our candies are going to go. And we're going to just start an outline and we're going to place those skittles down that triangle, just like that. So next, we take a little bit more icing and just real careful, try not to get any on the skittles as much as possible, but put a little bit of icing on there and you're going to fill in that triangle. And I will be right back when I'm done. OK, everybody, we are almost done. And you probably have already guessed what the next step is going to be. You can see that I've placed all of the skittles on the cake and it looks like they're cascading down the cake. So the final step is to take your stick and place it inside of the cake. Like, and voila, we have our anti-gravity cake. It looks like the skittles are pouring out of the bag onto the cake. I hope that you enjoyed learning how to make an anti-gravity cake. And I hope that you have a lot of fun making your own. Thank you.