Abracadabra!

Let me tell you that this has been my FAVORITE cake I have worked on thus far! I had so much fun putting this cake together.

I started this cake with two tiers of chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream icing, which was the bottom portion of the black top hat. I covered this in black marshmallow fondant and created a red fondant ribbon for the base of the hat. The brim of the hat is a 10" cake board covered in black fondant.

Once I had the hat assembled, I created colored hankerchieves out of fondant and gumpaste. I laid these on the hat and arranged to make it look like they were coming out of the center of the hat. Once I had these in place, I started working n the rabbit.

The rabbit's head is made of rice krispy treats (RKT) and I placed a dowel out the bottom of it to insert into the cakeboard and cake. I covered the RKT with white gumpaste. The ears were created separately with white gumpaste, a bamboo skewer and then pink fondant in the center of the ears. Once these hardened, I inserted the bamboo skewers into the rabbits head. I added the facial features with fondant and gumpaste. The paws are just pieces of gumpaste that I formed into ovals and then created creases in them, to look like little toes.

The other pieces I created were a magic wand and some playing cards. The wand was crafted from a dowel rod covered in black marshmallow fondant and then added some white gumpaste to both ends. The playing cards are created from gumpaste and I hand painted the hearts and such on them with food coloring.

I absolutely LOVE how this cake turned out! The customer who ordered it could not pick it up today, so she sent a friend instead. I cannot wait to get an online review back from the customer to see what she and her sone, Slate thought of their extra special cake design. I will keep you posted on their comments.

Thanks for following along and reading about my magical cake design.

Happy baking to all!

A Princess In The Making

So I just delivered my Princess Tiana cake today and the client seemed to really like it. I absolutely loved working on this cake design and I enjoyed trying out some new decorating techniques.

I started this cake project by adding my lace accent to the underneath of the cake board. I tried gluing it to the top of the cake board to help hide the rough finished edges, but with the baord being finished with a wax coating, the hot glue would not attach to the top of the board.

As for the cake, I started by icing the cake layers with buttercream icing (yellow on the first layer and cream on the top layer). Then, I cut a pattern from posterboard for the white feather-looking pieces of the underneath of her dress. I used the pattern to cut out fondant accents. Then I made a larger feather-like pattern for the green layer of her dress - also made from fondant. I then dusted the green fondant pieces with a pearl luster dust to give it a little glittery effect.

I finished up the detail of the dress with a green rope of fondant at the base of the 6" round. I cut out freehand three leaves and cut some veins into the leaves for detail and attached them to the rope detail. I used gumpaste for the flower accents and cut them out with my cookie cutters. I let them dry in a curved drying rack and then attached them to the rope effect with a dot of buttercream icing. I finished off the flower detail with a bit of buttercream icing in the center of the flower and added green pearl sugar dragees.

As for the tiara itself, I made it from gray-colored fondant. In the future, I would make it from gumpaste so that it dries faster and a bit harder. I painted it with silver luster dust. Then I used thinned piping gel to paint the tips of the tiara and then shook clear sugar crystals on top of it to create the glassy-look. It took it a bit of time to dry. I secured the crown in the top layer of the cake with toothpicks from the base of the tiara.

All in all, I think this cake turned out beautiful and I hope to have the opportunity to work on another cake design real soon that challenges my technique the way this one did. Thanks for the order, Amelia!

Tenacious D Guitar Pick

So while Michael and I were in the NC mountains this weekend celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary I received a phone call for a cake order. She said she would send me a picture of the cake she wanted me to design for her boyfriend's birthday and warned me it was going to be the ugliest cake I ever decorated. A day or so later, she sent me an email with this picture for inspiration...

Tenacious D Pick of Destiny

Boy, was she right! This thing is so ugly it's kind of cute! I can't wait to begin working on it and see how she and the surprised boyfriend will like it. Thanks, Jessica, for giving me the opportunity to test my extreme food coloring skills!

Keep those custom cake orders rolling in...I always love a good challenge!