Baking question: Color crust?

December 4, 2020 11:58 AM

I want to make some Christmas treats, Santa Hats using this pan and Pistachio cake mix. Any hints on keeping the crust green? I know that when I usually bake in a metal pan, the crust comes out light brown.
posted by Marky to Food & Drink (5 answers total)

Best answer: You're not going to have green crust. If you want them to appear the green they do in your cake mix link, your best bet is going to be to bake a big sheet cake and use a circle cutter. But--looking at that cake recipe, you're still going to be in for a tough time because the texture looks like it'll just fall the heck apart if you try to manipulate it too much. But if you leave out (or greatly reduce) the oil and add a few egg yolks, that'll help.

Basically:
The easiest way with your pan will yield the least green cakes.
The greenest way will require going off book and bit more labor and and assembly.
posted by phunniemee at 12:08 PM on December 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

you can't get a green crust. What you can do is bake your cake and cut rounds out of it. But as noted above, if you bake it with cake mix proportions, you will have a soft crumbly mess.

What you can do is bake that mix as "blondies" -- that is, change the baking proportions so it will be a lot less fluffy, more solid and chewy. Look at a few web recipes for using cake mix to make blondies to get an idea of the proportions. Here is one.

Another alternative is to not use cake mix at all, and make regular blondies like this:

1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 stick of butter

dye with plenty of green food color, and cut that into rounds. The difference is that this contains no baking powder or other "fluffy" food chemistry unlike the cake mix, so it will be as solid and chewy as possible, very easy to cut. But the dye will probably be a less attractive color than the mix.
posted by fingersandtoes at 12:46 PM on December 4, 2020

Best answer: My neighbor uses a zester to gently file off the "crust" of her baked goods to get bright colors, for kids' cakes. I'd amp up the green with a few dots of food coloring, but you could absolutely bake as directed and file off the crust very gently. This is labor intensive though, so the above recommendations are probably better.
posted by juniperesque at 1:44 PM on December 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: another idea: Instead of cutting rounds of a blondie, make cake ball mix, like so:

Bake the pistachio mix in a pan as directed for a cake. Now take the cake and crumble it up fine in a bowl and mix in some white or green frosting. Start with a big fork, but you can mix with your hands at the end to get it thoroughly blended. You can correct the color at this time if you want; you can also add any additional flavor that you want. The amount of frosting you want to mix in is the amount it takes to get a texture like play-dough.

Now you have nicely colored and flavored cake ball stuff. Now you can shape this mix into whatever size balls you want.

This will reduce waste from cutouts or crumbles, and also be more toothsome than cake rounds would be. But be aware that because you are squishing out the air volume, you may wind up with less mix than you'd hoped. But they will be rich and tasty.
posted by fingersandtoes at 2:06 PM on December 4, 2020 [3 favorites]

How about using a green liner?
posted by defreckled at 4:03 PM on December 4, 2020