High-SocieTea
"Where the Art and Elegance of Taking Tea is Treasured"
"Mrs. Potts' Cake"
With a "tale as old as time" and a "song as old as rhyme," you will want to "be our guest, be our guest" when you see this cake posing on an afternoon tea table. You'll think it's about to come alive before your very eyes and start singing the theme song from "Beauty and the Beast." But this adorable little teapot-shaped cake is good enough to eat, and you won't be able to wait to cut into it.
2 pkgs. Cake mix (any flavor)
1-1/2 cups water
4 large eggs
2 cans vanilla frosting
1 tube marzipan
Piped icing
Food coloring
Toothpicks
Preheat oven to 350°. Spray two 1-1/2 quart oven-proof bowls with non-fat cooking spray and dust lightly with flour.
Using an electric mixer, pour the cake mix, water and eggs into its bowl and beat until smooth. Pour the batter into the prepared oven-proof bowls and bake for about 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of each comes out clean.
Remove from oven and let the cakes cool for about 10 minutes before removing from bowls. Turn cakes out onto cooling racks to finish cooling.
Trim the flat sides of each cake slightly to make them level. Turn one cake over and trim off about 1" of the round side to make a flat base. This piece will make the lid for the teapot-shaped cake.
To prepare your teapot-shaped cake, place the cake with the flat base on a serving plate and spread frosting over the flat top. Place the flat side of the other cake on top, forming a ball.
In a mixing bowl, empty in the 2 cans of vanilla frosting and add a few drops of your favorite food coloring. Mix well. Pink, yellow, pale green or pale blue make pretty teapot colors. Frost the cake. Place the small round piece of cake that was cut off to form a flat base on top to form the lid. Frost this piece to match.
Color the marzipan to match the cake frosting and shape a long handle for the pot, a smaller arched handle for the lid, and another for the spout. Attach all of these pieces using toothpicks. Insert a toothpick into the marzipan piece first, then push the other end into the cake.
Make flowers, leaves, stars or any other shapes from the remaining marzipan to decorate the cake, or pipe on contrasting icing into decorative shapes all over the teapot-shaped cake. Continue piping a decorative bead of frosting around the bottom of the lid, the handle and the bottom of the teapot-shaped cake itself.
If you have a favorite tea service, you can try to copy the pattern in frosting and make a matching “teapot cake” to really impress your friends and family. To serve, separate the two cake halves and slice each individually. Serves 16.
To celebrate your masterpiece of a cake, brew a pot of Darjeeling Broken Orange Pekoe tea. Sometimes called the champagne of tea, Darjeeling tea is from Northern India and is noted for its delicate muscatel flavor. So "certain as the sun rising in the east," Mrs. Pott's cake will thrill to say the least.
