Anniversary Flower Cake

I'm afraid I must apologize again for not posting in a while. As I have quite a bit of catching up to do, I'm going to try to keep this short and sweet - pun intended ;)

This cake was for a friend of mine who wanted one to share with her husband for their anniversary. She told me she trusted my judgement and basically gave me free rein of the design. I went to Pinterest for some inspiration, and ultimately decided to go for a modern, clean cut design with a few bold colors. I also took the opportunity to try my hand at making fondant flowers, as it really opens the door to so many different cake designs.

To get started I watched a lot of YouTube videos; I found there are quite a few helpful ones that you can find with a simple search for "fondant flowers." After a while there was nothing left but to just jump in. Here was my first attempt:

Red fondant flower

Two things I learned:
1) Try to roll out the fondant as thin as possible, without compromising the integrity. If the petals are too thick, the bottom of the rose will get way too bulky.
2) If you have a way of hanging the rose upside down to dry, do so, because drying it any other way results in the flower looking misshaped.

For my two bold colors I decided to go with black and red since the two of them together look quite captivating. Since I was also going for a modern style I thought the motto "less is more" worked well in this case. And of course I decided to put a few hearts on it too, because what's an anniversary cake without hearts? The black hearts have a little gold heart on top to add just a little extra color and dimension.

I also sprayed the cake with a little bit of the Wilton Color Mist, in the shade of "pearl" so it just gives it some shimmer.

The final design was simple, yet elegant and romantic, with the flowers being the center of attention. 

I'm happy to say it was very well received! I just wish I had been able to taste a piece. That's the only downside to making cakes for other people ;)

Disney Frozen Cake, Continued

At this point the cake had been coming together quite well, and I was super pumped to add Olaf and Sven. I start with Sven, first gently placing his head in the pile of snow that I had piped out with frosting, which is now dry enough to provide a sturdy base, but still pliable enough to have objects placed in it. Then I added his two front legs, sprawled out in each side, making sure that everything was well-anchored, and that the antlers had enough snow (frosting) behind them to ensure they would not break. Then I made little snowballs out of fondant and placed them all around his head and legs.

Now it was time to add Olaf. I wanted him to be as sturdy as possible, so I decided to put him in a pile of snowballs as well, to help keep him from falling over. I used a toothpick inserted into his body through one of his feet and put the other end of the toothpick into the cake. Then I added some fondant snowballs around him, like I did for Sven, to get a more realistic effect.

My original plan was to somehow give Olaf hands, but that proved to be much too difficult because of how thin they would have to be and therefore very fragile. Instead I opted to let people assume that he has hands, by putting objects in his hands instead. I managed to attach one of the snowflakes to one side and a snowball to the other. Mission accomplished! Unfortunately, in the process, the 3 hairs on his head broke off, not overly surprising but disappointing nonetheless. My solution, which I had no idea how successful it would be, was to go buy some chocolate frosting and pipe that onto his head with a very small tip. As luck would have it, that worked wonderfully; he looked perfect!

I had then intended to put Violet’s name, made of fondant, on the cake board itself. At the last minute I decided to put it on the top layer instead, so that it would be more visible if you’re looking at the cake from the front. I thought propping the “2” up against the pile of snow was a nice touch as well, versus putting it down next to her name.

Even though the cake was supposed to be finished at this point, I decided that it was missing something. The more I looked at it, the more I thought it needed a little more color on the bottom half, and that color should be pink. So I ran out to the store again and bought some ready-to-pipe frosting. Needless to say, at that point I had no intention of making more frosting and I knew it would be such a small portion of the cake, so I wasn’t worried about it affecting the flavor.

As soon as I had piped the last pink dot, I knew that had done it. Now it was perfect. 

The next day we drove down to my grandma’s house, where we would be celebrating. I carried that cake (in a cake box) on my lap the whole way there, guarding it with my life. And when Violet (and my sister) got to see that cake, it made all of the effort and hard work completely worth it. They were ecstatic! Those smiles were all I needed. But I won’t lie, I also enjoyed watching Violet point and shout with joy, diving into the cake the moment her momma let her go, once everyone had gotten their share of pictures. I feel like I’ve set the bar a little high for myself this time. I can only hope my next big cake will turn out this well!

Disney Frozen Cake

Sadly it has been a while since I have posted. I find myself having much less free time so it's either perfecting my baking and decorating skills or blogging about it, and since the former is the more important part it tends to win out. I did, however, really want to find the time to post about the cake I made for my niece's birthday this year. It was the most intense cake I've done to date. It was also the second cake I ever made for her birthday, as the one last year was what prompted me to take on this endeavor in the first place. That said, it was a bit of a testament to how far I've come.

This was my niece's second birthday, and her latest obsession, shared by many young children, and even adults (I admit I am one of them), was the Disney movie Frozen. So I started with my usual routine, and logged on to Pinterest to see what was out there for inspiration. There was quite a wide variety, but definitely a lot of over-the-top phenomenal cakes. I wanted to shoot for one of those cakes. I figured I'd had enough practice at this point, and besides you never learn anything without challenging yourself.

I planned it all out; I would start way ahead of schedule, giving myself enough time to get everything done. I prepped the fondant figures first, starting with Olaf. He was actually so much fun to make. I was surprised how much the final product really looked like him. I also found a good tutorial on Pinterest for Olaf, which was very well done, I highly recommend using it.

Fondant Olaf, minus one arm, to be added after the rest dried.

Then I made Sven - well, part of Sven, as I had decided from some of the other cakes I had seen that I really liked the ones that had him sticking out the side of the cake covered in snow. That and it saved me from having to make his whole body. 

If there's a good tutorial for Sven out there I am not aware of it; my strategy ended up being just browsing through the cakes and looking for the simplest looking yet still visually appealing version of him. The absolute hardest part of him was the antlers. They were extremely fragile and I unfortunately had to redo them a few times. In the end what worked the best was making each antler (left side and right side) and then using a small ball of fondant to attach them to the back side of his head. In other words, placing the antler on the back side of the head and then placing the small ball of fondant over the back of that to get it to attach firmly. The reason for this is the antlers are too skinny and fragile to be able to adhere them to the head simply by pressing it on, or to simply use a little water or edible adhesive; it needed something to stabilize it.

All the parts of fondant Sven, to be put together another day when attaching him to the cake.

I also prepared the snowflakes ahead of time, which I made using fondant cutters from Amazon. I stored all the pieces in a tupperware container, and they stayed fresh the whole time, which was about a month.

I then had to decide how to incorporate Elsa and Anna, because they are Violet's favorite characters, so an absolute must-have in my mind. I haven't had much practice making fondant people yet, and of all the ones I've seen I really like the most realistic looking ones. That was a feat I was just not ready to master, at least not yet, as it would've required a lot more time for me to get up to my perfectionist standards. So I did a little shopping around and I found some edible pictures of Elsa and Anna on Amazon. They were actually intended for cupcakes but they turned out to be perfect because I wanted it to go on the side of the cake and therefore the height needed to be small enough to fit.

Edible Elsa and Anna pictures.

This would also be my first two-tiered cake, which I knew meant that I would need cake dowels to place inside the cake. I ordered those from Amazon as well. Clearly that site has been very useful for many of my cake decorating needs, as the craft stores around here don’t always have every specific thing I’m looking for. I ordered plastic ones, which I had to cut, because they were way too long, but I know that’s typical. I regular scissor worked alright, but I found that the heavy duty wire cutter that my boyfriend had in his toolbox worked much better.

I decided to make the big bottom half of the cake ahead of time, to make the whole process a little easier, plus when you only have a few hours here and there, you have to find some way to break it up. I also read that many bakers make the cake itself early and then freeze it until one or two days before, then take it out to frost and decorate it. I wanted to see for myself how well that worked. I made three 8-inch vanilla cakes, and made each layer a different color, so it would look fun and festive when you cut into the cake as well. They were frozen for a week, and I’m happy to report that everyone who had a piece of the cake said it tasted just the same as if it had been baked that day. Next time I plan to try freezing some for much longer, as I have read some bakers have left them frozen for up to 10 months! If that works it would make my decorating life so much easier.

The same day that I took out the bottom layers from the freezer, I also made the smaller top layer. That cake was chocolate so I obviously didn’t color those layers.

Then I rolled out the fondant to cover the layers.

I decided that of all the Frozen cakes I saw on Pinterest, the ones with the fondant looked the most clean-cut. I chose white for the bottom layer, and a light blue for the top layer. The white fondant was from Wilton, and the blue fondant was from Cake Boss, and as much as I loved the blue color of the Cake Boss one, my experience in this case was far better with the Wilton brand. The Wilton fondant was much easier to roll out, and it stayed smooth, while the Cake Boss fondant cracked, and nothing I did made it better (I tried all the tips I could find). I tried to cover some of the cracks with some white dots (or “snowballs,” if you will) but it still has to look somewhat natural and evenly spaced so I chose to cover the bigger ones and left some of the smaller, less noticeable ones. Next time, if I need that color, I will just have to bite the bullet and color the Wilton white fondant since they don’t make that color in their pre-made fondant.

Right before I decided to add the white dots, I placed the edible picture on that top cake. It ended up being really easy to work with. I just brushed a small amount of water on the cake where the picture would go (but not too much or it can make the colors of the picture run together), and gently peeled it off the paper, and placed it on the cake. I smoothed the edges down as much as possible but since it was not on a flat surface the picture did not lay 100% flat at the edges. Luckily all I had to do was make a border around it out of frosting (which I planned to do anyway because I thought it would look nice), and it covered that stuff completely.

Elsa and Anna picture added to the top tier, with a white border.

Then came one of the hard parts: stacking the cakes. I read a few tutorials, which were helpful but I knew the best way to figure it out was going to be just diving in. I placed four cake dowels, in a square shape, in the bottom layer. This is to assist the bottom layer in holding up the next layer, and keeps it from caving in from the added weight. Trying to pick up the next layer, without messing it up, and place it on bottom layer, was much easier said than done. I think I will buy the cake lifter tool that’s specifically designed for that for next time, but for the time being, the best help I had was a spatula. It worked but I had to be very careful. I ended up having to repair a couple of decorations, but they were quite minor. Then I strategically placed the snowflakes around the bottom layer, leaving room for where I knew I wanted Sven to go. I had decided to use a mix of frosting (to ensure full coverage and full adhesion) and fondant to capture the look of him stuck under a pile of snow/snowballs. I piped out a very large glob of frosting, followed by little globs, to look like snowballs.

The final stage of the cake, all prepped for the fondant figures.

I book-ended that pile of snow with a pretty teal rosette border, which I thought fit well with the theme of the cake.

At this point the cake was ready for me to add the Sven and Olaf figures. I decided to leave that part for the following day, as I was extremely exhausted at this point, and probably should've have taken a break a lot sooner. I guess that's what happens when you love to make cakes! Check out my follow-up post to see how I added the final touches to bring everything together!