Billa Cakes: Portfolio: Keg Cake and Cake Shots

Cheers, everyone!

My sister in law Michelle celebrated her 23rd birthday this week and her only request was for a keg cake. The beer of choice was Fireman's 4, which for you non Texans, is a delicious blonde ale made right here in the heart of the Hill Country by the Real Ale Brewing Co. Michelle and I love this beer and the design was actually pretty easy to accomplish.

The Fireman's 4 logo

I went with a wooden keg mostly because I did not have any silver luster dust on hand and no time or cash to get some. Besides, wooden kegs are more elegant IMO. The cake is red velvet, but I left out the red coloring so that it would be more beer colored. It would have been a lovely light brown color, but I didn't have any regular cocoa, so I had to settle for the Hershey's dark. It was still tasty though! The icing was chocolate cream cheese frosting, natch. You can't have a velvet cake without cream cheese frosting. Michelle and I joked about doing the same cake again next year for her 24th but putting a 24 in place of the single four. I will also have to figure out how to incorporate the beer into the actual cake flavor itself. I think it will lend itself nicely to the chocolate undertone.

The keg cake! The tap was made from floral tape and plastic coathanger

After doing the cake, I had so much leftover that I made cake balls for the birthday girl's roommate who was also celebrating her graduation. My SIL christened these as cake shots since the cake was a keg. On a side note, I have now decided that I must come up with some fun flavors and create a whole line of cake shots in honor of Michie.

The cake shots

I mixed the scraps with a little bit of heavy cream and hazelnut flavored coffee creamer, then coated them in a semisweet ganache that had a hint of almond extract. I finished them off with a lazy rosette of chocolate cream cheese icing. They were scrum-diddly-umptious if I say so myself. Here is the birthday girl and company doing some shots: