Cake For Dinner, Meatloaf For Dessert.
A couple of weeks ago, MrJames located this while trawling the web. Upon seeing it, we all had the exact same reaction: “Omigawd cool! We must do this for the gaming session!”
So, this past Tuesday night, MrJames began building the MeatCake. He bought all the ingredients and cooked three round pans of divine-smelling meatloaf, involving such things as mustard, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, garlic pepper, Italian bread crumbs, diced pine nuts, and other delicious things. Wednesday, after letting them cool and set up in the fridge for a day, he built them up into three layers with a ketchup and Worcestershire glaze in between, and frosted it with mashed potatoes. It looked great — like a nice, tall cake with butter cream frosting.
Meanwhile, Art had a divine inspiration to have a dessert that looked like dinner (since we were having a dinner that looked like dessert): a “cake loaf” — a cake made to look like a meatloaf. Ha! After some quibbling on what kind of cake would most look like meatloaf, we decided on chocolate. (Carrot cake and spice cake were considered, too.) We also got a chocolate frosting, and some red food coloring, to color the frosting a bit, so we could get that “baked-on ketchup” look that meatloaves get.
This morning, I baked the cake. I baked it in two bread pans to get the size, filling them up about a quarter of the way, to be sure the cake would cook all the way through properly. After the cakes cooled, I trimmed one “loaf” flat and popped it in the bottom of the bread pan, and put a bit of the reddish brown frosting on, and then put the other “loaf” on top, to get the right height. I left the top loaf domed up, like cakes (and meatloaves) get when they bake.
I frosted that, too, but then thought, meatloaf has that crumpled, cooked burger texture to it, and my cake loaf didn’t. So, I took the left-over bit of cake that I’d trimmed off and crumbled it up, mixing it into the frosting. I then clumped the remaining frosting on top, using a spatula to sort of form it up on top, so that the frosting didn’t slide down into the pan. (Because meatloaf separates from the pan, and looks like one solid mass. Frosting on a cake slides down against the pan sides and doesn’t look separated.) Finally, I took the edge of the spatula, and carefully edged a few “cracks” into the frosting, so it would look more like cooked meatloaf, which usually makes a couple of cracks on top. I was extremely pleased with the outcome.
The entire dinner was received by the gaming group with complete amusement and many compliments. Dinner and dessert was delicious, and we had a total ball doing it. We’ve been giggling with glee over this for three days.
And, of course, pictures under the fold:
And Dessert!
November 17th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Wow! Those turned out really good. You need to send your pictures to the site where MrJames got the idea…both of the pictures. Neat! It was good to see you up here tonite:) I emailed Art about the item he wanted so I had to wait to order it. See you soon. Love ya lots. MOM
November 18th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
I had already sent off the pictures.
Good to visit you guys too — good dinner! Love you!
January 14th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Inspired. I’d love to get your Cakeloaf Dessert recipe. What’s the topping?
January 16th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Thank-you! The “cakeloaf” was made with a Betty Crocker German Chocolate cake mix — it had the closest color to meatloaf. I used chocolate frosting with a few drops of red food coloring to give it that “baked ketchup” look, and crumbled part of the chocolate cake into the frosting to make it more crumbly-looking. I don’t have any actual measurements for the frosting as I kind of eye-balled the whole thing. You only need a couple of drops of food coloring, though. A little really goes a long way.
I baked the cake in two bread pans, about half the batter in each pan, so that it would bake all the way through. I shaved the first layer flat, and used the shaved-off chunk to put in the frosting. The second layer I left domed. I split the frosting in half, also, frosting the first layer smoothly, and crumbling the cake into the second half of the frosting to do the top layer. I used a spatula to etch the cracks into the frosting, and ended up going pretty heavy with the frosting on the top layer.
Hope that helps!