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 ;)

All Things Fondant

Since I have decided to make a Despicable Me cake for my nephew's birthday this August, I figured it would be smart to practice making more fondant shapes and figures, as fondant will be a large part of that cake.

I was a little disappointed that this batch of marshmallow fondant didn't go quite as smoothly as the first. I have a feeling it was because I made a much larger batch this time. Consequently I now know what the author of the blog post (with the fondant recipe) was talking about when she said the fondant would be VERY sticky. I had to use a lot more Crisco this time. But I did find that the more powdered sugar I added, the less sticky it got.

Note: It helps to make fondant the day before you plan to use it, as it allows the fondant to dry a little and become easier to work with.

The first thing I made was a minion character. There are some good tutorials out there, but this was the best blog post I found for making the outfit: http://cakesdecor.com/entries/17. I hated dying the fondant, as I discovered that the dark shade of blue that's required can stains your finger nails if it gets underneath them. But if it only gets on your skin it actually washes off quite easily, even without soap.

I wish I had made time to make the fondant in advance because the worst part was trying to get it to keep its form, but since it was so fresh it wasn't quite dry enough, so it would sort of sink down and melt.

Candy eyes, which you can get from almost any grocery store or party supply store, work really well for minions. I had used them once before when I made minion characters out of Milano cookies.

I just used chocolate frosting for the goggles, hair, buttons and hands this time since I was more concerned about practicing the body and the outfit for this first time around.

Note: If you buy the pre-made tubes of frosting from Wilton, you can actually use a coupler to attach a frosting tip directly to the tube, so you don't have to put the frosting in a bag.

I think it turned out pretty well considering it was the first one.

Fondant minion.

Then I decided to use the little cut-out shapes I bought at the cake decorating supply store.

I also thought this might be a good time to practice different ways of coloring fondant in order to see the various final outcomes of each type.

So, I compared the different "looks" of fondant with food coloring added directly to it, white fondant with food coloring painted on and white fondant sprayed with Wilton Color Mist.  

Note: Use Wilton Color Mist in a well-ventilated room. Start by spraying the fondant from about 8 inches away, just to get an idea of how heavy the color looks. Then if you need it darker, spray it again until it gets to your desired color. 

White fondant bow sprayed with pink color mist (left), pink colored fondant bow (right).

White fondant star painted with yellow food coloring.

The pearl color mist is meant to give it a bit of a shine/sparkle, and I realized when trying it out that it's best to only spray one layer of color, because too much color can actually hide whatever color the fondant is (unless it's already white).

Pink fondant heart with two layers of pearl color mist (left), pink fondant moon with one layer of pearl color mist.

So one thing's for sure, next time I will make time to make the fondant ahead of time, so it's easier to work with and holds its shape better. I'm hoping that will create a better minion. I also recently purchased a Wilton 10 piece fondant tool set and I have no doubt I'll be able to use that with the minion characters as well. :)