Something possessed me to offer my extremely limited cake-making abilities to my niece, Leia, when I found out she was getting married.
{See Wedding Cake Adventures Part 1 here.}
She took me up on it and graciously told me she really didn't care about the cake...perfect! Permission to really mess it up!
I drew a sketch of a beautiful 5-tier cake. Two bottom square layers (largest 16" square, next 12" square, then a 10", 8" and 6" round cake. Colors to match hers; red, black and blue.
She mentioned Roses and black lace. Really, having known my niece since she was born, it was quite easy to picture the perfect cake for her. a Princess cake!
I made the cakes and got them in the freezer, almost 20 batches of cake!
I started on the Roses a couple of weeks ago. Made out of sugar paste, I googled every Gum-paste rose tutorial I could find and made my first attempt.
Bah!
My first five just didn't look very good, but I started getting the hang of it and started in on what would become a very long process.
I started by coloring the fondant to a deep red. It took a ton of red paste to achieve that color, but I will say, that after letting it sit, the color became more bright and red.
I rolled out a small piece of gumpaste and cut out my petals. Then each petal had to be rolled out to a very thin and slightly curved petal. It kept drying out on me, so I got very good at keeping the paste and petals covered.
I used 6" sticks for the pick and created the bud first (small tear drop shape at the end of pick).
With a little brush of water, I started to curl each petal around the bud. You can see the progression in this photo. Each Rose took about 18-20 petals. I made almost 40 Roses, but 12 of them were not fully opened.
In the end (about 1/2 hour per Rose...is that slow?) I had a whole bouquet of sugar Roses, making the cake completely edible. Not that anyone would enjoy eating one of these!
I made a ton of little blue flowers in two sizes. The larger ones got a sugar pearl in the center, the smaller one got a silver non-pareil. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to use them, but wanted a little touch of the blue in the cake. I ended up using the smaller ones in the center of each quilt intersection, and they also hid a few dowels!
Sunday morning I started to assemble the cake.
I started with the largest layer, the square bottom. I got it all iced and ready for the fondant. The next few hours were not pleasant.
Try as I might, I simply could not get the fondant on that cake without it cracking. I'm not entirely sure what the problem was, but I think it may have had something to do with the red and black color paste I used in it, as the texture was very different than using white fondant. It was also very hard to roll out a large enough piece to cover a 16" x 16" x 4" cake!
After four 4 tries, I gave up.
We tore off the red fondant and took a picture or it and the cake underneath. Not so pretty. Within seconds of this moment, the doorbell rang. There was Leia, her husband-to-be and her cousin...big smiles! Anxious to see how the cake was coming along.
Argggggg! We all stood guard and unequivocally told them 'no, sorry, you can't see it'.
I think Leia thought I was joking, but a few minutes later, she knew it wasn't funny at all! There was simply no way I was going to get her all stressed out over my disaster on the kitchen table.
I took a deep breath and made a decision. My 5-tier cake was turning into a 4-tier cake! Instead of taking out the next square layers out of the freezer, I cut down the one I had already been working on. It was still very challenging to get it covered with the red fondant, but somehow (with a little prayer), we got it on. The corners were horrible, but I had plans for camouflage!It was such a relief to get the bottom layer done, but it was getting late. I still had a lot to do! The round cakes and white fondant went together quickly. In the process, I did pick up one trick. Place your cake turn-table on a large #10 can or something similar. The fondant will stretch out and hang a bit, which made creating smooth sides much easier.
Next, I created the quilted look on the 3rd and 1st layer. I bought a quilt cutter and wow, do I love that tool! I didn't space it very well, because I was short on time, but I loved the look and was very quick.I piped a decorative border around the edges of the white round cakes and started on the bottom red square cake. This was going to be a challenge. Somehow I had to make it look good. I made the mistake of using cornstarch on it, as I was rolling it out and it did not look very good. A little alcohol and a brush helped that situation out.
I had several ideas for creating a black-lace look on this layer, but went with what I thought would be the easiest and the quickest; piping cornelli lace. My hand and wrist were killing me by the time I was done, but it successfully hid alot of my mistakes.
By now it was time for bed, but I stayed up to finish the quilting. I created more of the little blue flowers (55 in all) to use on the quilt intersections of top layer. I loved the look! They were so sweet! I was done by 12:30am. We had to get up early for the wedding the next morning, but I knew I would have a little bit of time the next afternoon (before the reception) to finish the cake topper.
After a wonderful wedding and luncheon, we made it home around 3:30pm. I had two hours before I had to bring the cake over to the reception center. I pulled my new Cricut Cake (in all it's bright red shinyness!) and cut Leia's and Brandon's monograms. I really should have let my gumpaste sit for 24 hours, so it wasn't perfect, but at this point, I wasn't being picky.I pasted the monograms to two white circle medallions I had made and then brought the cake and everything else over. My friend Cheryl and I held the cake in the back seat of my husband's truck, holding our breath on each pot-hole, train track and curve, but all was well and safe. Phew!
Leia & Brandon cut the cake and smushed it all over their faces.
We clapped.
We smiled.
It was a great day and I was honored to be a part of it.
